The writers of the time speak of these things with the greatest freedom.We learn that the population of the city amounted in the year 1422 to 190,000 souls; the Italians were, perhaps, the first to reckon, not according to hearths, or men able to bear arms, or people able to walk, and so forth, but according to 'animae,' and thus to get the most neutral basis for further calculation.About this time, when the Florentines wished to form an alliance with Venice against Filippo Maria Visconti, they were for the moment refused, in the belief, resting on accurate commercial returns, that a war between Venice and Milan, that is, between seller and buyer, was foolish.Even if the duke simply increased his army, the Milanese, through the heavier taxation they must pay, would become worse customers.'Better let the Florentines be defeated, and then, used as they are to the life of a free city, they will settle with us and bring their silk and woollen industry with them, as the Lucchese did in their distress.' The speech of the dying Doge Mocenigo (1423) to a few of the senators whom he had sent for to his bedside is still more remarkable.It contains the chief elements of a statistical account of the whole resources of Venice.Icannot say whether or where a thorough elucidation of this perplexing document exists; by way of illustration, the following facts may be quoted.After repaying a war-loan of four million ducats, the public debt ('il monte') still amounted to six million ducats; the current trade (it seems) to ten millions, which yielded, the text informs us, a profit of four millions.The 3,000 'navigli,' the 300 'navi,' and the 45 galleys were manned respectively by 17,000, 8,000 and 11,000 seamen (more than 200 for each galley).To these must be added 16,000shipwrights.The houses in Venice were valued at seven millions, and brought in a rent of half a million.These were 1,000 nobles whose incomes ranged from 70 to 4,000 ducats.In another passage the ordinary income of the State in that same year is put at 1,100,000 ducats;through the disturbance of trade caused by the wars it sank about the middle of the century to 800,000 ducats.
If Venice, by this spirit of calculation, and by the practical turn which she gave it, was the first fully to represent one important side of modern political life, in that culture, on the other hand, which Italy then prized most highly she did not stand in the front rant.The literary impulse, in general, was here wanting, and especially that enthusiasm for classical antiquity which prevailed elsewhere.The aptitude of the Venetians, says Sabellico, for philosophy and eloquence was in itself not smaller than that for commerce and politics.George of Trebizond, who, in 1459, laid the Latin translation of Plato's Laws at the feet of the Doge, was appointed professor of philology with a yearly salary of 150 ducats, and finally dedicated his 'Rhetoric' to the Signoria.If, however, we look through the history of Venetian literature which Francesco Sansovino has appended to his well-known book, we shall find in the fourteenth century almost nothing but history, and special works on theology, jurisprudence, and medicine;and in the fifteenth century, till we come to Ermolao Barbaro and Aldo Manuzio, humanistic culture is, for a city of such importance, most scantily represented.The library which Cardinal Bessarion bequeathed to the State (1468) narrowly escaped dispersion and destruction.
Learning could be had at the University of Padua, where, however, physicians and jurists the latter for their opinion on points of law received by far the highest pay.The share of Venice in the poetical creations of the country was long insignificant, till, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, her deficiencies were made good.Even the art of the Renaissance was imported into the city from without, and it was not before the end of the fifteenth century that she learned to move in this field with independent freedom and strength.But we find more striking instances still of intellectual backwardness.This Government, which had the clergy so thoroughly in its control, which reserved to itself the appointment to all important ecclesiastical offices, and which, one time after another, dared to defy the court of Rome, displayed an official piety of a most singular kind.The bodies of saints and other relics imported from Greece after the Turkish conquest were bought at the greatest sacrifices and received by the Doge in solemn procession.12 For the coat without a seam it was decided (1455)to offer 10,000 ducats, but it was not to be had.These measures were not the fruit of any popular excitement, but of the tranquil resolutions of the heads of the Government, and might have been omitted without attracting any comment, and at Florence, under similar circumstances, would certainly have been omitted.We shall say nothing of the piety of the masses, and of their firm belief in the indulgences of an Alexander VI.But the State itself, after absorbing the Church to a degree unknown elsewhere, had in truth a certain ecclesiastical element in its composition, and the Doge, the symbol of the State, appeared in twelve great processions ('andate') in a half-clerical character.They were almost all festivals in memory of political events, and competed in splendor with the great feasts of the Church;the most brilliant of all, the famous marriage with the sea, fell on Ascension Day.
