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.

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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. 

Italy | Venice | San Giorgio Maggiore | St. Stephan

From Greece I wandered north to Venice. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, I am back at my old haunt, the We Crociferi. This is an old Jesuit monastery that has been remodeled into a hotel. They even stuck me in the same room, top floor, at the end of the hall, the most remote place in the whole immense pile. Apparently I am not cool enough to be mixed in with all the young hipsters who stay here.

We Crociferi on the right (click on photos for enlargements)

After throwing my portmanteau in my room I took the water bus to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island of the same name  about a third of a mile south of St. Mark’s Square 

Domenico Dandolo, the leader of the Dandolo clan at the beginning of the twelfth century, had at least four sons: Pietro, Vitale, Bono and Enrico. He was the grandfather of the Enrico Dandolo—not to be confused with his uncle Enrico—who masterminded the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople. Vitale oversaw the family’s business in Venice and Pietro became a monk at the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. Bono managed the family business in the Venetian Quarter of Constantinople, which had been established by the Chrysobull of 1082. Enrico, as we shall soon see, became an important figure in the Church. Signatures of the Dandolos pop up on various documents at this time, attesting the rising status of the family. For example, in June 1107, Domenico and his son Vitale signed as witnesses to a document granting large donations to the Benedictine monastery at San Giorgio Maggiore. Later the year Domenico and his sons Vitale and Pietro served as witnesses to a document transferring ownership of properties in the Venetian Quarter in Constantinople to a church dignitary in the Venetian Lagoon. In February of 1113 Pietro witnessed a thirty-day loan of 130 lire to one Bona Kecii and her daughter Matilda. When the women were unable to pay up he also witnessed the foreclosure and seizure of the property.

Domenico’s son Bono, while managing the family business in the Venetian Quarter of Constantinople, was also involved in the translation of relics, “translation” being the technical term for moving relics from one place to another. Such “translations” were considered furta sacra, sacred theft, because according to Catholic belief at the time, a relic could not be moved unless the spiritual force associated with the relic allowed it to be moved. There were many example of relics which were apparently satisfied with their present location and thus resisted all attempts to move them. If attempts to move, or translate, the relic succeeded, this was prima facie evidence that it wanted to be moved. Thus while it may have appeared that the Venetians were stealing the relic they were actually performing the very pious act of carrying out the wishes of the relic itself. Ultimately, it was God’s Will that the relic in question would end up in the hands of whoever deserved it the most.

In 1107 or thereabouts his brother, the monk Pietro, arrived in the city to take over a post at a church owned by Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore. In the course of a conversation with a priest at another church nearby the latter let slip that within his church was hidden the body of Saint Stephan, Christianity’s first martyr (I had earlier visited the Church of St. Stephan in Iran). The two went to church and sure enough, the sweet smell often associated with the bodies of saints was soon detected emanating from the altar. They broke into the stone altar and discovered the coffin containing the body of Saint Stephan. Pietro spirited the body back to the Venetian Quarter and placed it in his own church until arrangements could be made to send it back to his monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. 

Meanwhile, word of the theft of the relic leaked out. The Byzantines were furious, but apparently they did not have the legal authority to enter the Venetian Quarter and remove the body from the sanctuary of the Venetian church. They did, however, make stern objections to the relic being sent back to Venice. So the relic remained in Pietro’s church for a year. Finally the Byzantines cooled down and the the matter of the theft was largely forgotten. Arrangements were made to ship the relic back to Venice by boat. Seventy-two Venetians, important men in the Venetian Quarter, escorted the body of Saint Stephan the Protomartyr to Venice. Among them were Bono Dandolo and Orio Dandolo, a relative of Bono’s. The boat arrived back in Venice in July 7, 1109 (or perhaps 1110), where it was met with great ceremony. The Doge himself oversaw the transport of the body to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where it was placed in the monastery church. For the next six hundred years the acquisition of the relic was celebrated by an annual ceremony. For the Dandolo family the whole affair was yet another feather in their cap. The relics of Saint Tarasius had been brought back to Venice by the first Domenico Dandolo. Now his great-grandsons Pietro and Bono were instrumental in adding Saint Stephan the Protomartyr to Venice’s great collection of Christian relics.

The original monastery and attendant church on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore was destroyed by an earthquake on Christmas Day, 1223. A new monastery was rebuilt and the church itself rebuilt or remodeled at least twice, and then starting in 1560 under went major revisions according to the plans of the great architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). Palladio’s neo-classical facade of the church, visible across the waters from the area of the Ducal Palace, is now one of the most iconic sights of Venice, and perhaps just as famous for eliciting one of art historian John Ruskin’s most memorable outpourings of bile: “It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard.” 

The current status of the relics of St. Stephen supposedly translated here from Constantinople by Bono Dandolo and his compatriots remains somewhat unclear. The relics were presumably present when famous English peregrinator Thomas Coryat visited the church in 1608, two years before the Palladian facade was completed: “I was at the Monastery of the Benedictine Monks called Saint Georges, which is situated on a very delectable Island about half a mile [sic: Coryat did not have the benefit of Google Earth; the distance from the Mol in front of the Piazzetta San Marco to the front of the church is 0.28 miles] Southward from Saint Marks place. It is a passing sumptuous place, and the fairest and richest Monastery without comparison in all Venice . . .” Coryat was told the relics of “Saint Stephen the first Christian Martyr” were “under a goodly Altar of red marble . . . ” but he did to see them himself. He was apparently referring to an altar of red marble still found in the north transept of the church. Above the altar is the painting “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen” attributed  to Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto. No English language signage indicates that St. Stephen’s relics are located here, and no modern-day guidebook I am aware of mentions them. The docent will say only that the “relics may be in the altar.” As is the wont of his tribe, he refuses to elaborate. 

St. Stephan and St. George, the island’s namesake, are memorialized by full-length statues in niches between the columns on the monument facade of the church. On either side of the columns are sarcophagi, topped by busts, of Doge Tribuno Memmo, who along with Orso Dandolo and 133 other prominent citizens of Venice signed to document which established the Benedictine monastery on the island back in the year 982, and Sebastiano Ziani  (r. 1172–1178), who, as you may recall,  brought about the reconciliation of Pope Alexander III (c. 1100–1181) and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190) which resulted in the 1177 Treaty of Venice.

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore. Ruskin was utterly appalled.

Palladian facade of San Giorgio Maggiore. The sarcophagi, topped by busts, of Doge Tribuno Memmo and Doge Sebastiano Ziani  are to the left and right of the columns.

St. Stephen (left) and St. George (right)

St. Stephen

St. George

Apparently this is Coryat’s “goodly Altar of red marble” which may contain the relics of St. Stephen. Above the altar is the “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen” attributed  to Jacopo Tintoretto and/or his school.

Detail of the “Martyrdom of Saint Stephen”

Greece | Saronic Gulf | Hydra

Hoping to escape the end of the year hubbub in Athens I wandered out to the island of Hydra in the Saronic Gulf, about 50 miles south of Athens and just over two hours by one of the “Flying C” catamaran ferry boats. Apparently this place is hugely popular in the summer but it is very quiet right now. After the last boat of the day heads back to Athens the harbour area is pretty much deserted.

Hydra  (click on photos for enlargements)

Harbour of Hydra

Quiet cafe at the harbour

Equine Transport

No cars allowed on the island, so if have heavy luggage to take to your hotel, or you are unable to walk, you have to rent a mule or a horse. Of course all I had was a small easily carriable portmanteau, and I am still able to walk, so I did not avail myself of equine transport.

Old Fortifications. Hydra played a prominent role in the 1821 War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks.

Coastline east of Hydra Town

View from my hotel room

Addendum: I thought I had picked out Hydra at random from a list of Greek islands easily accessible from Athens, but I kept having this nagging suspicion that I had heard of it somewhere before. Not until my third day on the island did it suddenly occur to me where I had first encountered Hydra. It is mentioned in the book The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller, which I had read in college, along with the Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus, Plexus, Nexus. Miller had a lot to say about Hydra. Here is just a sample:

Our destination was Hydra where Ghika and his wife awaited us. Hydra is almost a bare rock of an island and its population, made up almost exclusively of seamen, is rapidly dwindling. The town, which clusters about the harbor in the form of an amphitheatre, is immaculate. There are only two colors, blue and white, and the white is whitewashed every day, down to the cobblestones in the street. The houses are even more cubistically arranged than at Poros. Aesthetically it is perfect, the very epitome of that flawless anarchy which supersedes, because it includes and goes beyond, all the formal arrangements of the imagination. This purity, this wild and naked perfection of Hydra, is in great part due to the spirit of the men who once dominated the island. For centuries the men of Hydra were bold, buccaneering spirits: the island produced nothing but heroes and emancipators. The least of them was an admiral at heart, if not in fact. To recount the exploits of the men of Hydra would be to write a book about a race of madmen; it would mean writing the word DARING across the firmament in letters of fire.

Curiously, several years ago I bought a Kindle version of The Colossus of Maroussi with the thought of rereading it, but for some reason I never got around to it until now. It has been sitting in Kindle Cloud all this time, apparently just waiting for me to reach Hydra myself.