Italy | Venice | Church of San Zaccaria

Wandered by the Church of San Zaccaria, just east of St. Mark’s Square. Zaccaria (Zechariah), as you probably recall, appears both in the Bible, where he figures as the father of John the Baptist and the husband of Elizabeth, a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and in the Quran, where he named as the guardian of Mary and also as the father of John the Baptist. The gruesome remains of his body, presumably mummified, can still be seen here. The church is located on Campo San Zaccaria, a square which was once considered the private property of the Benedictine convent that grew up around the church. The square can only be entered by two narrow alleyways, one coming from the Grand Canal to the south and another from the small Campo San Provolo to the west. In each of these alleyways was a gated portal that allowed the square to be locked up at night and other times when the nuns did not want to be bothered by the public. I enter the square via the lane from the Campo San Provolo. Above the lintel on the outer face of the portal can be seen a marble relief of the Madonna and Child between John the Baptist and St. Mark. A half-figure of St. Zaccaria himself is poised above the pointed arch of the portal.

Portal to Campo San Zaccaria (click on photos for enlargements)

There may have been a church on the current site of San Zaccaria as early as the seventh century. We know for sure that Doge Agnello Partecipazio built a church on the site in 827 and that it was dedicated to St. Zaccaria, whose bones were sent as a gift to Venice by the Byzantine Emperor Leo V while the church was being built. Around this time a nunnery was also established. It became famous, and eventually notorious, as the depository for the unwed daughters of the Venetian aristocracy, not all of whom felt strictly bound by their oaths of celibacy. Many of its abbesses were the daughters of doges. Doges, however, were only allowed to visit the nunnery once a year, on Easter Monday.

One famous visitor to the convent was Pope Benedict III, who in 855 was granted refuge here during the upheavals surrounding the ascension of the notorious Antipope Anastasius, named pope over the objections of church hierarchy by Louis II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Anastasius was eventually sent packing and Benedict III placed on the papal throne. In gratitude to the sisters who had succored him in his hour of need (I am not suggesting anything untoward here), Pope Benedict donated to the convent a significant collection of relics, including the remains of the Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–298—373) and a piece, one of many, of the True Cross. (Athanasius is also a saint according to the Egyptian Coptic tradition. During a visit to Rome in 1973 Pope Paul VI gave the Coptic Pope Shenouda part of Athanasius’s remains, which were then taken back to Egypt. The relics are now in Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo.) The convent built during the days of Doge Agnello Partecipazio burned down in 1105. One hundred nuns are said to have died in the inferno. A new convent was built and in the1170s the church was rebuilt or at least remodeled. During the years 1483–1504 a new church was alongside the old one, parts of which can still seen. The new church, which finally was consecrated in 1543, is the one the dominates the square today.

The latest version of the church, consecrated in 1543

The church opens at 10:00 a.m. and I enter with two dozen other visitors, including elderly Europeans, some of whom are clearly on their last legs, marking Venice off their bucket lists while they still mobile, and several groups of young and middle-aged Chinese. Many make a beeline for the Giovanni Bellini’s painting “Madonna and Four Saints” over the second altar on the left wall, probably the most famous of the many paintings which almost completely cover the walls of the church. It had been looted by Napoleon when he seized Venice in 1797 and carted off to Paris but was eventually returned. Several of the Chinese start taking photos despite the signs everywhere saying no photos. A docent appears and quietly—there are also signs stating that it is forbidden to talk loudly in the church—tells them to stop.

I head for the right wall, where stretched out on a shelf high on the wall can be seen the body—presumably, hopefully, mummified—of St. Zaccaria, donated to the church almost 1200 years ago by Byzantine Emperor Leo V. On a shelf below is the body of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, donated to the church by Pope Benedict in the 850s in gratitude for the succor he had received from the Benedictine nuns. Two Chinese girls, maybe sixteen years old, come and stand beside me. They gape wide-eyed and fearful at the relics, which could pass for props in some Gothic horror movie, Forget Bellini and the rest of the paintings—famous paintings are a dime a dozen in Venice—this is stuff to tell their girl friends back home about! One surreptitiously snaps a photo with her smart phone.

Further along on the left side is the entrance to two side chapels that have been turned into a museum. Entrance is €1.50 but photography (without flash) is allowed. The first, the Chapel of Saint Athanasius, contains an assortment of paintings, including two by Venetian stalwarts Tintoretto and Palma Giovane. The Tintoretto over the altar is said to be one of his early works and to my untutored eye is not particularly impressive. While I am examining it a woman in maybe her forties and a girl, presumably her daughter, come and stand behind me. The women is sheathed in a luxurious ankle-length fur coat—could it actually be sable?—and has a perfectly coiffured helmet of short blonde hair. Her daughter, maybe fourteen years old, is less elegantly dressed in faded jeans ripped across the knees and thighs and a waist-length coat of mangy, piled purple wool that looks like it may have come from a thrift shop. A huge, unruly mass of russet ringlets surrounds her face and cascades down over her shoulders. She has a ring in her nose and lip and her eyelids are shaded purple, perhaps to match her coat. Her mother leans in and eyes the sign on the painting. “It’s a Tintoretto,” she says. Rolling her eyes, her daughter announces, “If I see one more Tintoretto I-am-going-to-hurl.” I sidle over to a painting of the Madonna and Saints that the sign says was by Palma Vecchio. The most recent guidebooks say, however, that it has been re-attributed to one Marco Basaiti. In any case, the figures are clearly delineated and the colors are crisp and clear, making it in my eye much more attractive than the muddy looking Tintoretto. The mother and daughter move over to view it and I quickly move on. I do not want to be here if the purported Palma Vecchio makes the daughter hurl.

Painting by Palma Vecchio, or perhaps Marco Basaiti

Detail of painting by Palma Vecchio, or perhaps Marco Basaiti

A hallway to the left leads to the Chapel of St. Tarasius. This chapel was the real reason I was visiting the Church of San Zaccaria. I was curious to see if the relics of St. Tarasius had survived. Tarasius (c. 730—806) was born and raised in Constantinople and later the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople of the  Byzantine capital. He was a noted iconodule who believed in the veneration of icons, in staunch opposition to the iconoclasts who had come to power after Byzantine Emperor Leo III had ordered the destruction of many icons back the 720s and 730s. Before accepting the post of Patriarch of Constantinople in 784, Tarasius made the Empress Irene promise that she would restore the veneration of icons, which she did. He was also active in the movement to unite or at least reconcile the Roman and Orthodox churches. For this he was granted sainthood by both branches of the faith. His feast day is celebrated on February 25 by the Eastern Orthodox Church, using to the Julian Calendar, and on March 10 by Roman Catholics, the same day according the Gregorian Calendar.

Tarasius’s rule as a unifier of the two churches resonated strongly in Venice, which throughout the first centuries of its existence had swerved back and forth between allegiance to Constantinople and Rome. It was firmly in the Catholic camp in religious matters, but due to its trade ties with the East it was still inextricably linked with the Orthodox world of the Byzantines. Not for nothing was it known as the westernmost city of the Orient. These bonds, it was thought, would be further strengthened by having the body of Saint Tarasius, the unifier, in Venice where it would be properly venerated. No less, it would attract pilgrims from all over the Catholic world who would drop a lot of cash in the city, pilgrims at the time being the equivalent of today’s tourists.

Some enterprising Venetians merchants and priests in Constantinople soon located the body in a monastery near the city and concocted a plan to steal it. Surreptitiously they moved the remains of Tarasius to an awaiting ship belonging to Domenico Dandolo, who then transported it back to Venice. Dandolo was greeted with hosannahs and the body was transported with great ceremony to the Convent of St Zaccaria. This signaled the rise of the rise to prominence of the Dandolo family, one of whom, Enrico Dandolo, would mastermind the Fourth Crusade and oversee the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

Above the altar is a stupendously ornate gilded altarpiece and perched on the walls on either side are wooden statues of saints Benedict and Zaccaria. But there are no remains of St. Tarasius anywhere to be seen. Could they are inside the altar?

Chapel of St. Tarasius

Magnificent altarpiece in the Chapel of St. Tarasius

Altarpiece in the Chapel of St. Tarasius

The Chapel of St. Tarasius is actually the remodeled apse of one of the earlier versions of the church of San Zaccaria, possibly even the earliest version of the church built in the 800s. A section of the tile floor from the twelve-century church that burned down can still been in front of the altar, and fragments of the floor from the ninth century church have been preserved under glass.

Remains of the mosaic floor from the twelfth century church

Below the Chapel of St. Tarasius is crypt that contains the tombs of eight doges. There is usually several inches of water on the floor. 

Crypt with water on the floor

One of the eight doges’s tombs in the Crypt

Painting of the church and monastery by Francesco Guardi (1790)

Italy | Venice | Enrico Dandolo #4

According to tradition, the city of Venice was founded at the stroke of noon on Friday, March 25, a. d. 421. On the Catholic calendar it was the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrating the day when the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The story goes that around this time three Roman consuls from the city of Padua on the mainland came to a group of islands two miles from the coast known as  the Rivoalto,  or “high bank”. On slighter higher ground on both sides of a deep channel running through the area settlers from the mainland had established a small community. The area where they settled became known as the Rialto, a corruption of rivoalto, and adjacent channel was eventually transmogrified into the Grand Canal. The three consuls had supposedly come to the Rialto to set up a trading post and found a church dedicated to St. Giacomo (James), thus sanctioning the small settlement.  A church of St. Giacomo di Rialto still exists, just north of the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal, but the building itself apparently dates to around the eleventh century. The area around the Rialto Bridge, where Venice was founded, remains to this day the most commercial and often most crowded part of the city. 

 

The Lagoon of Venice with Venice in the center of photo. It is separated from the rest of the Adriatic Sea by long narrow barrier islands (click on photos for enlargements). 

 Venice in center of photo. The S-shaped Grand Canal can be seen running through the middle of the city.

It is understandable that the promoters of the origins legend wanted to link the founding of the city to the Day of the Annunciation, an extremely important event on the Catholic calendar. It is not clear why the origins legend states that the city was founded precisely at the stroke of noon. Was this when the church dedicated to St.  Giacomo was consecrated? We don’t know. Indeed, the historicity of the whole legend has been questioned. Could it possible havebeen contrived simply to add luster to Venice, a city which as it evolved was never lacking in its sense of self-importance? We do know, however, that people were living on the island of the Rivoalto in the early fifth century. A few may have been long-time residents, isolated groups of fishermen, hunters, and salt gatherers. Some may have been criminals, hiding out from the authorities on the main land. Most, however, were refugees from the Goth invasions. 

Today the Goths are known mainly for giving their name to horrible pop music, even more execrable clothing, and a dubious lifestyle. At one time, however, they were a potent political force in Europe.  For centuries the Goths, a Germanic people possibly originating in Sweden, had been fighting their way south towards the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the beginning of the Christian era they had crossed the Baltic Sea into what is now Germany and by the second century the tall, light-skinned, largely blonde-haired marauders, notoriously for their ferocity, were causing havoc all along the northern border of the Roman Empire. They eventually broke into two groups, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. In the 390s the first Visigoth ruler, Alaric I, even dared advance on Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine, or East Roman, Empire. His attack  on the capital having been thwarted by the Byzantines, he turned his army to the southwest, into Greece, where he sacked Corinth, Sparta, Piraeus (the port of Athens), and other cities. He then set his sights on the Western Roman empire and its capital of Rome. Utilizing the superb Roman-built roads he and his army soon founded themselves in the ancient region of Veneto, positioned on the broad strip of land between the Adriatic Sea and the Dolomites and other mountains of the Alps to the north. Blessed with numerous rivers, plentiful rainfall, fertile soil, and bountiful forests, its famously industrious people had made this one of the richest regions in the Roman empire, dotted with prosperous cities like Padau, Vicenza, Asolo, Patavium, Concordia, Altino, and Montagnana. The provincial capital of Aquileia, with a population of 100,000, was deemed by the fourth-century Roman poet and scholar Ausonius (c. 310—c. 395) to be one of the nine great cities in the world, mentioned in same breath as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and others.

In 402 Alaric and his rampaging Goths thoroughly pillaged noble Aquileia, sending shockwaves of panic throughout Veneto and beyond. Those with the means to do so fled in advance of the Goth onslaught. Some sought refuge on the islands of the Rivoalto, where it was hoped the Goths had neither the desire nor means to pursue them. Alaric was indeed focused on Rome, which he finally ransacked in 410. He moved south to Calabria, the toe of the Italian peninsula, planning from there to cross the Mediterranean and invade Africa, but he died the same year, 410, before this plan could be carried out. Meanwhile, some of the people who had fled to the islands of Rialto decided to stay there, perhaps surmising, correctly as it turned out, that Alaric would not be the last barbarian from the north to rampage through their  former abodes on the mainland to the north (not one had yet heard of Attila the Hun, but they soon would), and that they were safer on the islands in the Laguna Veneta, the lagoon of Venus. This, then, were the people met by the three Roman consuls who came to the Rialto on the Feast of Annunciation in 421.

The citizens of Veneto at the time of the Goth incursions were a mixed lot. The belt of land between the Adriatic Sea and the mountains to the north served as a bridge between western Europe and the land to the east—the Balkan Peninsula, Greece, Asia Minor, and beyond, and for centuries people from both the Occident and Orient had been traveling through the region. Excellent roads, including the ancient Via Pustumia (built c. 148 b.c. by Roman consul consul Spurius Postumius Albinus Magnus), which began in Aquileia, the capital of Veneto, and continued the whole way across the top of the boot of Italy to Genoa on the western coast of the peninsula, facilitated travel and the relatively easy movement of trade goods. The ports of Veneto at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea attracted travelers and trade from the entire Mediterranean, linking the province with the ports of western Europe, northern Africa, and the Levant. With all the people passing through Veneto it was inevitable that some, attracted by its fertile countryside and rich cities, would decide to stay. Over the centuries this emigration resulted in a rich bouillabaisse of cultures. In addition to the ancient local stock there were Romans and other Italians, other Europeans from further west, Greeks, Levantines, north Africans, Arabs, and probably even Persians and Mesopotamians, backwash from the Roman Empires’s many wars in the Mid-East.

One alternate historian, Joseph Farrell, in his provocatively entitled book Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money, Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle Ages and Renaissance has even suggested that slaves brought back from Mesopotamia by Roman legions eventually settled in Veneto and it was they who went on to found the city of Venice. He claims that the real hard core Venetians down through the centuries were mostly of Mesopotamian descent and that the great lengths to which the Venetian aristocracy would eventually go to impede marriage outside of their own circle was in fact a stratagem to maintain these bloodlines dating back to the ancient Mesopotamia. He also maintains that the legendary financial acumen of Venetians was a result of the arts of accounting and money management first invented by the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia and refined by their descendants, who eventually ended up in the Lagoon of Venice. Mesopotamia was, after all, where money was invented.

I know of no mainstream historian who agrees with the postulation that Venice was founded by Mesopotamian slaves (DNA studies of living members of the Venetian aristocracy would certainly be interesting, however). Mainstream historians like Jane Gleeson-White do provide tantalizing links between Mesopotamia and finance as it evolved in Venice. In her breathtakingly suggestive book Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance, she points out that writing, invented in Mesopotamia, started out as a way of counting objects: keeping count, or “accounting.” She adds:

Apart from its role in the invention of writing, accounting is significant for human civilization because it affects the way we see the world and shapes our beliefs. To take this early example, the invention of token accounting in Mesopotamia was important not only because it facilitated economic exchanges and generated writing, “but because it encouraged people to see the world around them in terms of quantifiable outcomes”. For the first time we had tools which allowed us to count and measure— to quantify— the world around us and to record our findings.

She goes on to trace how the art and science of accounting, founded by Mesopotamian pebble counters—an early version of today’s bean counters— developed in ancient Greek and Rome and eventually became practiced in the mercantile cities of Italy. It would be honed to perfection in Venice. By Enrico Dandolo’s time the Venetians had become masters of a world-view dominated by ”quantifiable outcomes”. Balancing of their ledger books became the all important consideration. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 was motivated by the need of the Venetians to even their accounts with the Crusaders, who owned them a vast amount of money, and then add a quantifiable profit to compensate for the risk they had taken. Enrico Dandolo was above all a masterful book-keeper. The Mesopotamians pebble counters would have been proud.

Italy | Venice | Enrico Dandolo #2

The Hotel Casanova where I am staying is located on Frezzeria Street, named after the arrow (frecce) shops with which it was once lined. Arrows were an important commodity in fourteenth century Venice, when all adult males were expected to be proficient in the use of the crossbow. Arrows have gone the way of Zip discs; now the street hosts hotels, restaurants, and up-scale clothing stores geared toward tourists. The legendary swordsman and memoirist Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) once lived just off Frezzeria Street, in the Corte del Luganegher; no doubt the hotel got it name from this association. The English gadabout, poet, and prime-time cad Lord Byron (1788–1824) found lodging just up the street from my hotel at building number 1673 when he first arrived in Venice in 1816, and he very quickly managed to seduce his landlord’s wife, the delectable twenty-two year old Marianna, who according to Byron was “in her appearance altogether like an antelope.” Presumably this was meant as a compliment. Near Byron’s former lodging I veer into a coffee bar for a double expresso and latte chaser. This is literally a bar. Sissified customers requiring stools or tables and chairs need not enter. You drink your coffee standing at the bar the way God intended it to be done. Locals, tradespeople from the neighboring shops, pop in for a quick expresso bracer which they toss down at one go, like a cowboy downing a shot of whisky in an old-time saloon, and then quickly depart. The only thing missing is the swinging doors. 

The first item on my agenda is the birthplace of Enrico Dandolo. There are, of course, no cars in Venice. Travel is by foot or boat. I set out on foot. Venice consists of six sestieri, or districts: San Marco, Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, San Polo, and Santa Croce. My hotel and the birthplace of Dandolo are in the San Marco district. Each district has numerous campi (singular campo = square) and campielli (smaller squares). The easiest way for the visitor to navigate the city, assuming that he is unfamiliar with the byways, seems to be to proceed from square to square, although this may not be the shortest route to where one is going. The Dandolo residences—there were several Dandolo families in the area—are near the San Luca (St. Luke) Church, itself close to the Campo Manin. The church is indicated on detailed maps of the city, but the residences, to my knowledge, are not on any maps, nor do they appear in any tourist guides I am aware of. I have been able to locate them only by means of a scholarly biography of Enrico Dandolo and some recondite articles in obscure journals. My map of Venice indicates that I have to go through five campi or campielli to get there. 

The first is the Campiello San Moise, the small square in front of the San Moise Church. Although the church itself is ancient, build in the eighth century, the elaborately baroque facade, festooned with any number of rococo sculptures, dates from the 1660s. It was this facade that had infuriated the extremely opinionated nineteenth-century historian John Ruskin, one of Venice’s most famous, notorious even, elucidators. I had read, or at least glanced through Ruskin’s classic The Stones of Venice during a brief Anglophile period when I was a college student, and last night in my hotel room I had downloaded a copy to my Kindle and skimmed through it again. “I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418,” intoned Ruskin, “the visible commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later.” To him the floridly ornamented facade of San Moise represented a perfect example of the frivolousness to which the once stern and austere Republic of Venice had devolved since the Fall. The facade was “frightful,” he railed, adding that it was “one of the basest examples of the basest school of the Renaissance.” 

Facade of the Church of San Moise. John Ruskin was not amused (click on photos for enlargements). 

The half dozen people in the campo taking photos of the facade, including two using serious looking cameras on tripods, are no doubt blissfully unaware of Ruskin’s fulminations. Few twitter-era people have the desire or fortitude needed to wade through the swamps and thickets of Ruskin’s notoriously dense Victorian prose. If he is remembered at all by most people it may be because of the 2014 movie Effie Gray, starring the adorable Dakota Fanning as Euphemia Chalmers Gray, better known as Effie, the wife of John Ruskin, and heartthrob Greg Wise as the great historian himself. According to the commonly accepted story (the truth may be more nuanced), on their wedding night Ruskin was so shocked by the sight of his bride’s naked body—he was particularly appalled by her pubic hair (apparently Victorian ladies did not shave)—that he was rendered impotent, and remained so for the rest of their married life. Bizarrely, Ruskin had had a crush on Effie ever since she was twelve years old, but apparently he had not thought through the physical aspects of the relationship, at least not until their wedding night, when he made his disquieting discoveries. Claiming that the marriage had never been consummated, Effie was eventually granted an annulment and went on to marry her ex-husband’s erstwhile friend and protégé John Everett Millais, with whom she had eight children. For more on this unfortunate threesome see Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais.

On the far side of the campo is the canal called Le Rio (rio = canal) de San Moise. The bridge across it is called, predictably, Le Ponte San Moise (ponte = bridge). This is the first canal west of tourist-magnet Piazza San Marco and thus the bridge is a very popular spot for hiring gondolas. At least fifty people are lined up on both sides of the canal waiting to board their boats. Every one of them is Chinese. They appear to be members of at least three tour groups. The tour leaders shout in Mandarin, trying to direct their charges, some of them elderly and not too sturdy on their pins, onto the awaiting gondolas. The usual rate, I have been told, for using a gondola is about $100 for a forty minute ride with up to six people, although the prices can vary considerably. So a ride are not especially cheap but hey, what’s Venice without a gondola ride? The first thing you are going to be asked when you get back to Shanghai is “did you take a gondola ride?” and you better be prepared to say yes.

 Chinese tourists waiting to board a gondola

Chinese tourists setting out on a gondola ride

From the Le Ponte San Moise I mosey down Calle Larga XX Marzo (calle = street) to the end, then hang a left onto Calle de Ostreghe, which soon makes a dogleg turn to the right. After crossing a bridge I emerge into the Campo Santa Maria del Giglio. On the northern side of the square is the Church of Santa Maria del Giglio (Saint Mary of the Lily), of some note because its flamboyantly rococo facade contains no religious images at all, but is instead a bombastic memorial to one man, Admiral Antonio Barbaro (d. 1679). Barbaro had an extensive military and political career, holding posts in Rome, Padua, Corfu, and elsewhere, but most notably on the island of Crete, once part of the Byzantine Empire but which Enrico Dandolo claimed as war booty in the name of the Republic of Venice after the fall of Constantinople in 1204. Crete became the Republic’s first overseas colony and served as one of the most important way-stations in the trade networks linking Venice with Constantinople and Alexandria. Candia, the capital (now known as Heraklion), was believed to be the most strongly fortified city in the eastern Mediterranean. In 1648 the Ottoman Turks, intent on seizing Crete, invested Candia, resulting in a siege lasting twenty-one years, one of the longest in military history. Barbaro served as the governor of Candia and was also one of its defenders during the siege. Finally, in 1669 the Ottomans captured Candia and they soon controlled the entire island. 

It was a terrible blow to Venice, which had lost one of its most important trading and military strongholds. Barbaro emerged unscathed, however, and he when died he left a considerable amount of money (30,000 ducati) for the refurbishment of the church on the northern side of the square. Dating back to the ninth century, the original structure was known as known the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo, named after the Jubanico (Zobenigo being a corrupted form of Jubanico) family who had donated much of the money for its construction (some maps still call the square Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo). Barbaro’s 30,000 ducati bequest was used to update the church, most notably adding the baroque facade. A relief the Barbaro family coat-of-arms can be seen at the top of the facade. In the center is statue of Barbaro himself, with representations of Honor, Virtue, Fame, and Wisdom on either side. The entrance is flanked by statues of various family members. Also depicted are marble relief maps showing the various places where Barbaro served.

Facade of Church of Santa Maria del Giglio, with statue of Barbaro in the middle

A representation of Fame trumpeting Barbaro’s deeds to passersby in the square

Barbaro family members on the facade

All of the self-glorification seen on the facade of Church of Santa Maria del Giglio might be considered excessive, especially when we consider that Crete, one of the jewels on the Venetian necklace of islands stretching across the eastern Mediterranean, was lost during Barbaro’s watch. The easily irritated John Ruskin, predictably, was utterly appalled by this spectacle of baroque self-indulgence, yet another example of the decadence into which once noble Venice had devolved. The church reeked of “insolent atheism,” he fumed, adding that it was “totally destitute of religious symbols and entirely dedicated to the honour of [the Barbaro family].” He had plenty of opportunities to hone his outrage, since for eight months he had lived just three hundred feet away. The Campo Santa Maria del Giglio opens onto another square, the Campo del Traghetto, which extends south to the Grand Canal. By the side of Campo del Traghetto, facing the Grand Canal, is the Palazzo Gritti, where Ruskin and his long-suffering wife Effie rented rooms in 1851–52. Aficionados of American literature may recall that the character Colonel Cantwell in Ernest Hemingway’s novel Across the River and into the Trees also stayed here, as did Hemingway himself. Now the palazzo is home to a very up-scale hotel, the Gritti Palace (cheapest room $538 a night; cheapest suite is $1,934 a night). I would stay here myself, but I am experiencing a cash flow problem, one that, unfortunately, has been dogging me for decades. 

Italy | Venice | Early Life of Enrico Dandolo

In the first decade of the twelfth century, probably in 1107, although this date is disputed, a son was born to Vitali Dandolo, brother of Pietro, Bono, and Enrico.  The boy was named Enrico, like his uncle. This was the future Doge Enrico Dandolo, the purported mastermind behind the sack of Constantinople in 1204. At the time the entire clan, including Vitale and his four sons and grandchildren were living in the family compounds clustered around the parish church of San Luca. Given that Enrico Dandolo would eventually become a doge, would play a leading role in the Fourth Crusade and the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire, would eventually become the most famous of the Dandolos, and, with the possible exception of Marco Polo, the best-known Venetian of the Middle Ages, it is surprising that almost nothing is known about his life prior to 1172, when he was sixty-five years old. In June of 1164 his signature turns up on a loan agreement but other than that his name is entirely absent from the historical record until 1172. We do know he was married to a woman named Contessa and had children, one of whom, Ranieri,  would serve as vice-doge while his father was accompanying the Fourth Crusade. A second wife named Felicita, daughter of Pietro Bembo, a procurator of San Marco in 1143, is mentioned, but only in a dubious genealogy which most modern historians have discounted. 

Lacking any real evidence about Enrico’s life prior to 1172, the assumption has been made that he spent the early decades of his life engaged in commercial ventures overseas, perhaps in Constantinople and Alexandria, and thus is absent from the historical record in Venice. Trade, however, produces a prodigious paper trail, and no documentary evidence of Enrico’s early commercial activities—if there were any—has survived. Enrico’s absent from the historical record prior to 1172 may be attributed to the fact that his formidable father Vital did not die until 1174, when Enrico was sixty-seven years old. According the Venetian law a father could emancipate his children by giving them their share of the patrimonial inheritance before he died. This severed the legal relationship between father and son, leaving the son free to act entirely on his own, as a separate legal entity as it were. Vitale Dandolo emancipated none of his sons, meaning that they lived very much in his shadow until he died. It is only after the death of his father that Enrico Dandolo’s own life comes more clearly into focus. Yet while Enrico spent the first six decades of his life in obscurity his family continued to play a leading role in the business and civic life of Venice. His uncle Enrico also became ensnared in a religious dispute which spilled over into the political realm and almost led to the permanent downfall of the entire Dandolo family.  

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In 1134 Doge Pietro Polani nominated Uncle Enrico as Patriarch of Grado, the highest ecclesiastic office in the Veneto region. Formerly located in Aquileia, the Patriarchate was moved by the Patriarch Paulinus to the island of Grado, located just off the coastline, six miles to the south of Aquileia and fifty miles east of the Venetian Lagoon, after the Lombards invaded the mainland in 568. The Grado patriarchate had under its control six dioceses, including Torcello, Venice’s own diocese of Castello, and others. Uncle Enrico was only in his thirties at the time, young for such a prestigious church position, and he was not even an ordained priest before named Patriarch of Grado. Apparently he had spend the previous decade working as a lawyer. His main qualification may have been that he was a member of the influential Dandolo family. The Polani and Dandolo families were neighbors in the parish of San Luca and Uncle Enrico and Pietro Polani had known each other since childhood. Doge Polani no doubt assumed that Uncle Enrico would do his bidding as Patriarch of Grado. This was especially important since one of Doge Polani’s kinsman, Giovanni Polani, was the Bishop of Castello, the most important church position in Venice, although technically subordinate to the Patriarch of Grado. Doge Polani may have assumed that his childhood friend would do nothing to impinge on the power of his kinsman Giovanni Polani. 

Uncle Enrico did not prove to the docile placeholder of the Grado Patriarchate that Doge Polani may have hoped for. In June of 1135 he attended the Council of Pisa, which was also attended by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), one of the early adherents of Cisterian Order founded by Robert of Molesme and others in 1198. St. Bernard along with twelve other monks went on to found the celebrated Abbey of Clairvaux, famous for its monastic discipline.  It is not clear if Uncle Enrico personally met with Bernard, but he does seem to have fallen under the spell of the charismatic preacher. According to one historian Bernard “was the standard-bearer of reform in twelfth-century Europe, preaching a message of purification of every element of Christian society. It appears that Uncle Enrico learned from Bernard the importance of ecclesiastical liberty and the duty of a shepherd of souls to instruct even the most powerful.” 

Uncle Enrico launched his advocacy of St. Bernard’s ideals by establishing the first Cistercian monastery in the Venetian Lagoon soon after his return to Venice from the Council of Pisa. He also set about reforming the clergy in Venice, in particular the clergy of the Church of San Salvatore, in the heart of Venice, not far from the Dandolo family compounds. His goal was to create canons regular, associations of clergy who agreed to live under the Rule of St. Augustine, established around 400 a.d. by Augustine of Hippo (354–430). This, Uncle Dandolo believed, would allow them to lead lives less concerned with worldliness and more devoted to the traditional Christian virtues of humility, chastity, poverty, fasting, care of the sick and needy, and others advocated by St. Augustine. In 1139 the clergy of San Salvatore, with Uncle Enrico’s blessing, announced that they were embracing the Rule of St. Augustine, a radical departure from their previous, less-demanding  practices. The Church of San Salvatore, however, fell under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Castello, Giovanni Polani, the kinsman of Doge Polani. The Bishop had not been consulted about the reforms and he felt that Uncle Enrico had gone behind his back and abrogated his authority within the Castello bishopric. He thereupon placed the Church of San Salvatore under interdict, which meant that members of the congregation could not participate in various Catholic rites, including presumably baptism, communion, and confession. 

A relief in the portal tympanum of the former Augustinian convent of San Stefano in Venice portrays St. Augustine surrounded by Augustinian monks. In St. Augustine’s left hand is a open book inscribed with the opening words of the Rule of Augustine: "First of all, most beloved brothers, God shall be loved, thereafter the neighbor, for these instructions have been given to us” (translated from the Latin).(click on photos for enlargements)

After attempts at reconciling the dispute locally failed, Uncle Enrico took the dispute to Rome where he appealed directly to Pope Innocent II. The Pope was an advocate of the Augustinian rule favored by Uncle Dandolo and the clergy of San Salvatore and decided in their favor. Not only was the interdict of the Bishop of Castello annulled, the Pope also put the Church of San Salvatore under his personal protection and sent two clergyman to Venice teach the new Augustinian rule. Bishop Giovanni Polani had suffered a humiliating defeat the hands of Uncle Enrico. It not perfectly clear how his kinsman the Doge Polani thought about these developments but it might be assumed he was not happy. It was he who had put Uncle Enrico in a position of power in the first place. 

The San Salvatore Affair was the wedge that opened the divide between the Dandolo and Polani families. A number of smaller controversies added fuel to what soon became a full-blown feud. Matters came to a head with the death of Nella Michiel, the abbess of the convent of San Zaccaria. Doge Polani, as was the custom at the time, nominated a successor, apparently one of his kinswomen. This in itself was not unusual. By tradition abbesses of San Zaccaria came from the family of the doge. The nuns of San Zaccaria voted on Doge Polani’s nominee and elected her as the new abbess. At this point Uncle Enrico interjected himself into the affair. Perhaps San Zaccaria was of special interest to him, since the Dandolo family, as we have seen, had contributed the relics of Tarasius to the church back in the early eleventh century. In any case, he pronounced that the Doge, as a lay official, had no right to nominate an abbess for San Zaccaria and that the nuns could only vote on someone they themselves had nominated. Doge Polani’s stance in the San Salvatore Affair was ambiguous, but now he was utterly infuriated. San Zaccaria was the wealthiest and most influential convent in Venice, and nominating a new abbess had traditionally been one of the perks of the doge.  Uncle Enrico, Doge Polani felt, had clearly overstepped the bounds of his authority. 

Once again Uncle Enrico took a dispute between himself and Polani family to a higher authority. In January of 1146 he met with two cardinals in the city of Verona and presented his case. The ruling of the cardinals was not clear, but it remains a fact that the office of abbess remained vacant until September 26, 1151, when a named named Giseldrude was named as the new abbess. She was not a Polani or a member of any of the other leading families of Venice. Given her unusual name, it has been suggested that she was not even a Venetian. Whether or not this was the outcome Uncle Enrico favored is unclear. He had managed to keep a Polani kinswomen from the post, however. This was not something Doge Polani would forget. 

The feud between Uncle Enrico and Doge Polani reached its culmination in the events surrounding the Norman capture of the island of Corfu in 1147. Corfu was just south of Strait of Otranto, which connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea. Just as they had back in 1081, the Normans were threatening to blockade the Adriatic Sea, thus cutting off Venice’s access to Constantinople and other trade centers in the eastern Mediterranean. They also plundered  Byzantine cities on the western coastline of Greece, including Corinth and Thebes, and were threatening the rest of Greece. If they succeeded in dominating Greece the next target would be Constantinople itself. Just as they had back in 1081 the Byzantines turned to Venice for aid in expelling the Normans from their territories. In late 1147 Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1143–80) issued a chrysobull reaffirming all the rights Venice enjoyed in the Byzantine Empire as a result the chrysobull of 1082 and allowing the Venetians to expand their Quarter in Constantinople. In return, Doge Pietro Polani prepared a Venetian fleet and sent it to attack the Normans in the Spring of 1148. 

The Patriarch of Grado, Uncle Enrico, objected to this alliance between the Venetians and Byzantines. He pointed out that the Byzantines were Eastern Orthodox in religion and thus were, in his eyes at least, dangerous schismatics outside the fold of the true Catholic Church headquartered in Rome and led by the Pope. He denounced Doge Pietro Polani for coming to the aid of these enemies of the True Church and further asserted that he had the right to overrule secular leaders whose actions threatened the well-being of Christianity in general.

Uncle Enrico was going out on a limb here. Most of the Dandolo family, along with many other prominent Venetians, were heavily involved in trade with the Byzantine Empire and had every reason to throw their support behind Doge Pietro Polani and Emperor Manuel I Comnenus in the struggle against the Normans. The Papacy itself had earlier declared war on the Normans for their activities on the Italian Peninsula, and it supported the Byzantines in part because Emperor Manuel I Comnenus had come to the aid of the Second Crusade, which the popes themselves had advocated. Also, the Patriarchate of Grado, which Uncle Enrico headed, had extensive property holdings in Constantinople and derived much of its income from the city. Thus Uncle Enrico stood opposed to the interests of his family, the interests of Doge Pietro Polani and the city-state of Venice, the policies of the Pope, and the financial well-being of the Patriarchate that he headed. 

Doge Pietro Polani, who had appointed his childhood friend to the office of Patriarch of Grado in the first place, was incensed by Uncle Enrico’s stance. He was still the secular leader of the city-state of Venice and using his considerable powers he now ordered that Uncle Enrico be sent into exile, effectively if not officially removing him from his post. He also exiled Uncle Enrico’s supporters among the clergy, several members of prominent families who had backed the Patriarch, and most if not all members of the Dandolo clan, even though there was little indication that they had actually backed the policies of Uncle Enrico. In a final blow, he ordered that all the Dandolos compounds around the Church of St.Luca be leveled to the ground. The Dandolos, once one of the most prominent families in Venice, had apparently come to an ignominious end. 

Uncle Enrico was down, but certainly not out. A practiced counter-puncher, he traveling to Rome where he presented his case to the recently elected Pope Eugenius III (r. 1145–53), who was clearly cut from different cloth than his immediate predecessors. Sided with Uncle Enrico, the Pope promptly excommunicated Doge Pietro Polani and put the entire city-state of Venice under interdict. The Doge, who had more important matters on his mind, was not particularly impressed by the Pope’ actions. He himself took command of the fleet that set sail for Corfu in the summer of 1148. He died of indeterminate causes not long afterwards. The fleet, now under the command of his brother and son, joined with the Byzantines and besieged Corfu. After a year the Normans were finally ejected from the island. In return for their aid, Emperor Manuel Comnenus granted the Venetians still more trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire. 

With Doge Pietro Polani dead and gone the feud between his family and the Dandolos began to cool down. The new doge, Domenico Morosini (1148–55), rescinded the exile of clergy who had supported Uncle Enrico, but the Dandolos were not yet able to return to Venice. Some apparently gathered around Uncle Enrico in Rome while others took up residence in Constantinople. In late 1149 discussions finally began between the Pope, Uncle Enrico, and the new doge, Domenico Morosini. The doge immediately conceded to one of Uncle Enrico’s main concerns and agreed that henceforth he and other lay powers in Venice would not attempt to exert any influence on ecclesiastical matters in Venice nor would they interfere with elections to religious posts. Uncle’s Enrico’s objections to the role of the doge in the election of the Abbess of St. Zaccaria was, it will be remembered, one of the factors that had ignited the whole controversy to begin with. Now Doge Morosini actually agreed that he and subsequent doges would take an oath vowing to stay out of church affairs altogether. Surprisingly enough, even though Uncle Enrico had brought his own family to the very brink of total ruin in the process, he had in the end achieved one of his most cherished goals. There was a concomitant price to pay, however. Just as lay officials no longer had any power over ecclesiastical matters church prelates henceforth could not take part in the business of government. This was to have consequences in the run-up to the Fourth Crusade, when some churchmen might well have had objections to the actions of some of the key players. Ironically enough, it was Uncle Enrico who set the stage for his nephew Enrico Dandolo to play his part as the undisputed leader of the Venetian continence and arguably the mastermind behind the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople. No religious figure, not even the Pope himself, would have any real influence on him.

  

The Dandolos remained in exile, however and city of Venice remained under interdict until the fate of the Dandolo family could be decided. The Polani-Dandolo feud was still smoldering and threatened to flare up again if the Dandolos returned to Venice. Hoping to reconcile the two families, Doge Morosini resorted to the time-honored practice of uniting them in marriage; he proposed a union between Andrea Dandolo, the nephew of Uncle Enrico and brother of future doge Enrico Dandolo, and Primera Polani, the niece of now-deceased Doge Pietro Polani. Once the marriage proposal was accepted Doge Morosini agreed that the Dandolos could return to Venice and that the state would pay to rebuilt their houses, which had been destroyed by order of Doge Polani. These concessions having been made, Pope Eugenius II lifted the interdict against Venice, and in the 1151 or 1152 the Dandolos returned to Venice and set about rebuilding their compounds around the Church of St. Luca. 

Uncle Enrico had prevailed and the Dandolos were back in town. He scored a further triumph in 1156 when he built a patriarchal palace at St. Silvestro, directly across the Grand Canal from the family compounds around St. Luca. Hitherto the Patriarchate of Grado had been officially headquartered in Grado, fifty miles to the east of the Venetian Lagoon. Now Uncle Enrico had effectively moved the Patriarchate to Venice.  Giovanni Polani, the kinsman of Doge Pietro Polani, was still the Bishop of Castello and nominally the head of the Church in Venice, but the Church law against one prelate residing full-time within the jurisdiction of another was simply ignored.  The Bishop of Castello was now overshadowed by Uncle Enrico, the Patriarch of Grado, ensconced just a few hundred feet from commercial heart of the city, not far from the future site of the Rialto Bridge. Giovanni Polani could not have been happy about this development but there was not much he could do about it.

Assuming that Enrico Dandolo, the future Doge, was born in 1107, he would have been forty-four or forty-five when the Dandolos returned from exile and began rebuilding their family compounds in the parish of St. Luca. As we have seen, Domenico Dandolo, the grandfather of Enrico Dandolo, had four sons: Bono, Pietro, Enrico (Uncle Enrico, the Patriarch of Grado) and Vitale, Enrico’s father. Bono, who had managed the family business on Constantinople, had died relatively young, apparently sometime in the 1130s, and had no children. Uncle Enrico, as a churchman, was not entitled to any of his father’s property. Thus Pietro and Vitale had inherited the family compounds when Domenico Dandolo died, also sometime the 1130s. After the family returned to the city Pietro built a new compound fronting on the canal known as the Rio di San Luca and just to the north of the Church of St. Luca.

Rio di San Luca. Pietro Dandolo’s compound would have occupied the site of the buildings on the left.

Bridge over the Rio di San Luca

Between the rear of the church and the compound was a small square, now known as Campiello de la Chiesa (often identified, incorrectly, in guidebooks and even scholarly literature as the Campiello di San Luca). Vitale, Enrico’s father built his family compound on lots to the north of the Church of St. Luca, fronting on the Grand Canal. It was here that Enrico, the future doge grew up and presumably spent most of his life before being elected as the forty-first doge of Venice in 1192, at the age of eighty-five. 

Campiello de la Chiesa

Church of St. Luca from across the Rio di San Luca. This is the latest reiteration, but it stands on the same place as the parish church founded by the Dandolo family.

This Gothic arch was reportedly part of Pietro Dandolo’s compound; it was eventually incorporated into later buildings. 

The three palazzos in the middle now occupy the site of  Vitale Dandolo’s compound.

Vitale soon became the acknowledged leader of the clan. Within a year or two after returning from exile he was appointed as a judge, instantly catapulting him back into the highest levels of Venetian society. He was also named as the advocate of St. Zaccaria Convent, making him in effect the order’s legal council. This position did not, however, actually require legal training. One only had only to be an outstanding and well-respected member of the community. That Vitale was chosen as advocate of St. Zaccaria, one of the wealthiest and most prestigious convents in Venice, was just another indication of just how quickly the Dandolos had recovered from their apparent downfall at the hands of Doge Polani. His brother, Uncle Enrico, now the most powerful religious figure in the city, no doubt helped Vitale climb the rungs of Venetian society, but it is clear that Vitale was a formidable figure on his own. 

Vitale had been born c. 1187. By 1164, when he was in his late 70s, he apparently retired from active pubic life. Yet such was his standing in the community that he was often called upon to mediate disputes. He also retained his position as advocate of St. Zaccaria Convent and served as an unofficial counselor to the Doge. Eventually, however, he began to cede control of family affairs to his sons, Andrea, Giovanni, and Enrico (daughters, if he had any, are absent from the historical record). Andrea, who married the niece of Doge Polani, thus burying the hatchet in the Polani-Dandolo feud, apparently managed the family’s business affairs in Venice, although little else is known about his life. Giovanni apparently took over the role of his uncle Bono, overseeing the family’s interests in Constantinople, Acre, and other foreign ports. 

As we have seen, what Enrico was doing at this time remains somewhat of a mystery. His first significant entry into the historical record occurs in 1172, when he was sixty-five years old. 

Turkey | Istanbul | Hagia Sofia | Enrico Dandolo

There are few greater ironies in History than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed—and half of Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule—by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged, and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old doge must accept the responsibility for the havoc that they have wrought on the world.

— Byzantium: The Decline and Fall — John Julius Norwich

Hagia Sofia, in the Sultanahmed District of Istanbul, may be one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. The one-time church, then mosque, and now museum with its immense dome and soaring salmon-colored walls has become the symbol of Istanbul and of Turkey itself. 

Hagia Sofia (click on photos for enlargements)

The site where Hagia Sofia now stands, located on a prominent headland overlooking the Bosporus Strait, which flows from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara and separates Europe and Asia, was the Acropolis of the ancient city of Byzantion. The current Hagia Sofia was the third and last of three churches built at the same location. The first, known as the Great Church, was built by Constantius II (r. 337–361), son of Constantine the Great, who founded a new city on the site of ancient Byzantion in a.d. 324. He dedicated the city and on May 11, 330 and renamed it after himself: Constantinople. The Great Church built by Constantius II, later to be called Hagia Sofia (“Holy Wisdom”) was dedicated on February 15, 360.This church was destroyed by fire in 404 during riots triggered by John Chrysostom (c. 349–407), the 37th Patriarch of Constantinople, who in a series of hair-raising sermons from the pulpit of Hagia Sofia fulminated against the unbridled licentiousness of the Byzantine Emperor Arcadius and his court, singling out for particular opprobrium the Emperor’s consort, Eudoxia, whom he compared to the Biblical Jezebel. These sermons got him banished from Constantinople. Following mass demonstrations among his followers, who had been driven to a frenzy by his sermons (his name Chrysostomos in Greek, anglicized as Chrysostom, means “golden-mouthed”), he was allowed back into Constantinople, where he again preached from the pulpit of Hagia Sofia, this time comparing Empress Eudoxia to Herodias, the mother of Salome, demanding the head of Saint John the Baptist on a platter. This and other infelicities got him exiled from Constantinople yet again. His infuriated followers protested and in the ensuing riot Hagia Sofia was set aflame and almost completely destroyed.

Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) rebuilt the church and dedicated it on October 10, 415. This second version of the church lasted until January 14, 532, when it was burned to the ground the during the so-called Nika Riots. This uprising was caused by, in the words of Byzantine historian Procopius (c. 500– c. 54), “some men of the common herd, all the rubbish of the city . . . the lowest dregs of the people in Byzantium” who attempted to overthrow Emperor Justinian. Nika, Greek for “conquer”, was the rallying cry of rebels; thus the Nika Riots. Faced with this formidable insurgency Justinian at first had considered abdicating and fleeing the city but then was bucked up by a rousing speech by his famous, not to say notorious, wife, the former ecdysiast and prostitute Theodora. She dismissed with scorn “the belief that a woman ought not to be daring among men or to assert herself boldly among those who are holding back from fear,” and concluded: 

For while it is impossible for a man who has seen the light not also to die, for one who has been an emperor it is unendurable to be a fugitive. May I never be separated from this purple [the color of royalty], and may I not live that day on which those who meet me shall not address me as mistress.

Bucked up by these words, Justinian ordered a savage reprisal. Thirty thousand rioters were corralled by forces loyal to the Emperor and slain on the floor of the huge stadium known as the Hippodrome, located not far from Hagia Sofia. 

Theodora (c. 500 – 28 June 548) portrayed on a mosaic in a church in Ravenna, Italy (not my photo)

Wasting no time, in February 23, 532, thirty-eight days after the destruction of the second Hagia Sofia, Justinian began the construction of the third and final version of the church. Amazingly, the immense structure, then and for the next thousand years the largest building the world, was completed in five years, ten months, and four days, and dedicated on December 27, 537. On this day, Justinian, in a curious holdover of pre-Christian pagan rites, sacrificed 1,000 oxen, 6,000 sheep, 600 stags, and 10,000 various birds in honor of the new church. In a more Christian mode, he donated 30,000 bushels of grain to feed the poor of the city. Entering the completed church for the first time he gazed up at the immense dome and proclaimed “Glory to God, Who has deemed me worthy of fulfilling such a work. O Solomon, I have surpassed thee.”

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Despite structural flaws that required major revisions and damage from earthquakes (a temblor on May 7, 558 brought down the original dome), fires, riots, and aging, the basic structure of Hagia Sofia remains the same to this day, although of course it no longer serves as a church. It was converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmed II on May 29, 1453, the day Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and Byzantium, after 1123 years and eighteen days, came to an end. Then in 1935 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular state of Turkey, ordered that Hagia Sofia be turned into a museum.

Over three million people a year visit the museum of Hagia Sofia, making it Turkey’s biggest single attraction. Every morning hundreds of people line up by the entrance gate for the 9:00 opening, this despite the spate of terrorists attacks that have plagued Istanbul in recent years. On January 6, 2015, a female suicide bomber killed herself and one policeman in front of the police station just 200 feet from the entrance to the museum. On January 12, 2016, a Syrian member of ISIS blew himself up and killed thirteen tourists in front of the Obelisk of Theodosius, 1,000 feet from the museum entrance. (The obelisk stands on what was once the old floor of the Hippodrome, now Sultanahmet Square, where the Nika rioters were massacred. According to legend their bones are still buried there.) But still crowds stream into Hagia Sofia. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, mill around the main floor of the building, which measures 220 by 250 feet. Some stand in the exact center of the main floor, where an inset disk of dark marble known as the Omphalos marks the spot believed by some to be the Navel of the World. Almost everyone cranes their necks upward to the vast dome, 102 feet in diameter and peaking at 182 feet above the floor. The more curious may take note of the 104 columns in the interior, including eight huge shafts of porphyry taken from quarries in Upper Egypt and believed to have first stood in the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek, in what now Lebanon, the eight columns of green marble from the quarries of Thessaly in Greece, and the many other columns of variegated stone, all transported here to grace Hagia Sofia.

Most visitors will trudge up the broad stone steps, the centers of which are worn down inches by centuries of foot traffic, to the galleries overlooking the main floor. Adorning the walls of the the South Gallery are several magnificent Byzantine-era mosaics that have been painstaking restored after being plastered or painted over when Hagia Sofia was a mosque. Perhaps the most famous mosaic, The Deesis, is on the side wall the middle bay of the South Gallery. In Byzantine art a Deesis (Greek for “prayer” or “supplication”) is an iconic representation of Christ flanked by John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. John and Mary are shown turned toward Christ with the their hands raised in supplication, interceding with Christ on behalf of mankind at the time of the Last Judgement. The Deesis in Hagia Sofia, measuring 20 feet wide and 13.5 feet tall, was probably created in the latter part of the thirteen century, although this dating is disputed, making it one of the very last mosaics added to the church and in the opinion of some the very finest. The mosaic had been covered with plaster and paint when Hagia Sofia was a mosque. In 1934 the American historian Thomas Whittemore and a team of craftsmen and restorers from the Byzantine Institute of America began the painstaking work of uncovering and restoring the Dessis. Not until 1938 was the restoration completed.

The Deesis

The Deesis

Almost everyone who enters the South Gallery stands for at least a few minutes in front of the Deesis, many snapping photos with cameras, smart phones, and tablets. Most then turn and proceed to other mosaics at the end of the gallery. Before leaving the middle bay a few may notice near the wall opposite the Deesis a blue sign bearing the words “Grave of Henricus (Enrico) Dandolo, Doge of Venice and commander of the armies that invaded Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. He died during the expedition and was buried in Hagia Sofia.” Of the few who notice the sign even fewer stop to glance at the stone inset in the floor bearing the inscription “Henricus Dandolo”. This, allegedly, is his tombstone. Enrico Dandolo was the only person ever buried within the confines of Hagia Sofia. Most Byzantine emperors, including Constantine the Great, were entombed at the Church of the Holy Apostles, which was demolished in 1462 and replaced by Fatih Mosque (Mosque of the Conqueror). The tomb of the Conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, can still seen there today. Other Ottoman sultans were entombed in courtyards just outside Hagia Sofia and at various other locations around Istanbul, but none were ever buried within Hagia Sofia. Enrico Dandolo alone was accorded this honor.

Alleged tombstone of Enrico Dandolo

Alleged tombstone of Enrico Dandolo

The Latin Empire of Constantinople created by the Frankish Crusaders and Venetians under the leadership of Enrico Dandolo lasted until 1261, when the Byzantines ousted the occupiers and recaptured the city, but their empire would never recover its former greatness. Irreparably weakened, the Byzantines stumbled forward for another 247 years, but were finally defeated by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, creating the fault lines between Islam and the Occidental Christian world that exist to this day.

—

Writing in the early 1950s, historian Steven Runicman, author of the three-volume The History of the Crusades, states flatly: “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade,” adding that the disastrous event was “unparalleled in history.” In light of the world wars, nuclear bombings, and holocausts that took place during the first half of the twentieth century, to say nothing of the ethnic cleansings and other wholesale atrocities that have occurred since, this may sound like an exaggeration. Yet it is true that the wounds created by the Fourth Crusade are still raw today. In 2001, 797 years after the fall of Constantinople, Pope John Paul II felt compelled to issue a statement on the matter: “It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. That they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret. . . . How can we not share, at a distance of eight centuries, the pain and disgust?”

Three years later, on the 800th anniversary of the fall of the city to the Venetians and Frankish Crusaders, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the 270th Archbishop of Constantinople and the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose headquarters is located in the Fener district of Istanbul, accepted the Pope’s apology: "The spirit of reconciliation is stronger than hatred. We receive with gratitude and respect your cordial gesture for the tragic events of the Fourth Crusade. It is a fact that a crime was committed here in the city 800 years ago . . . [but] the spirit of reconciliation of the resurrection . . . incites us toward reconciliation of our churches.”

On November 27, 2004, in what was hoped would be a further gesture of good will, Pope John Paul II presented two sets of relics to Patriarch Bartholomew while the later was on a visit to Rome. One group of relics contained the bones of Saint John Chrysostom, who as we have seen instigated the riots which resulted in the burning of the second Hagia Sofia. The second group included the bones of Saint Gregory Nazianzus (c.329–390), a priest from southwest Cappadocia in Turkey who eventually become the 35th Archbishop of Constantinople. These relics, which had placed in new crystal reliquaries, were to be transported to Istanbul and on November 30, feast-day of St. Andrew, patron saint of the city, installed in the Patriarchate headquarters the Fener district.

These relics, it was generally believed, had previously been in Constantinople and had been seized as war booty after the sack of the city in 1204. Patriarch Benjamin alluded to this in a sermon given on November 20, 2004: “For 800 years these relics have been in exile, although in a Christian country, not of their own will, but as a result of the infamous Fourth Crusade, which sacked this city in the year of our Lord 1204. . .” While Benjamin was grateful for Pope John Paul’s gesture, he added that the return of the relics was a “warning to all those who arbitrarily possess and retain treasures of the faith, piety, [and] civilization of others.”

This apparent chastisement did not sit well with some in the Pope’s camp. A Vatican spokesman first cast doubt on whether the relics of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus had ever been in Constantinople in the first place. Instead, he claimed, the relics had been translated (the technical term for moving relics from one place to another) to Rome for safe-keeping in the eighth century by Greeks nuns. Other accounts, however, insist that in 950 his relics were moved from his birthplace at Nazianzus to Constantinople and were subsequently seized by the Crusaders and taken to Rome. As for the relics of Saint John Chrysostom, the spokesman would only allow that they had been translated to Rome “at the time of the Latin empire of Constantinople.” He also insisted that the relics had not been stolen, since according to well-established Catholic belief relics could not be translated unless the relics themselves, which were believed to possess spiritual power, allowed it to happen. Ultimately, it was God’s Will that the relics had ended up in Rome. Thus while the Pope was apologizing for the sack of Constantinople in 1204 he was not apologizing for the translation of the relics to Rome. The return of the relics was a good-will gesture only and not an admittance of any wrong doing. This point being made, the relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus were, as planned, handed over to Patriarch Benjamin on November 27, 2004, and they now reside, apparently of their own volition, at the Patriarchial Cathedral of St. George in the Fener district of Istanbul. Thus have the events of 1204 reverberated down to the twentieth-first century. 

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Although the relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus ended up in Rome, innumerable other relics were translated to Venice—stolen, in less technical terms—by the Enrico Dandolo-led Venetians. Relics were, of course, just part of  the Vast Array Of Loot seized during the sack of Constantinople and transported back to Venice, much of which is still on display in the city to this day. But relics may have had a special importance to Enrico Dandolo, since his family had long been involved in the “translation” of religious artifacts to Venice, and indeed the rise to prominence of the Dandolo Family was due at least in part to the honor bestowed upon it by what in the eyes of their fellow Venetians were these acts of religious piety. Thus when Enrico Dandolo translated relics to Venice he was just continuing a tradition initiated long before by his illustrious family.