Don Croner’s Wanders: 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 Uncle Enrico. The boy was named Enrico, like his uncle. At the time the entire clan, including Vitale and his three sons, were living in the family compounds clustered around the Parish Church of San Luca. Given that this Enrico Dandolo eventually became a doge, played a leading role in the Fourth Crusade and expulsion of the Byzantines from Constantinople, and, with the possible exception of Marco Polo, was the best-known Venetian of the Middle Ages, it is surprising that almost nothing is known about his life prior to 1171, when he was sixty-four years old. In June of 1164 his signature was affixed to a loan agreement but other than that his name is entirely absent from the historical record until seven years later. We do know he married a woman named Contessa (née Minotto?) 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 1171, the assumption has been made that he spent the early decades of his life engaged in commercial ventures overseas, perhaps working with his brother Giovanni in Constantinople, Acre, Alexandria and elsewhere in the East, and thus was 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 1171 may be attributed to the fact that his formidable father Vitale 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 near the end of his life. Three years before Vitale’s death in 1174 Enrico Dandolo does enter the historical record as an advisor to Doge Michele on an ill-fated military campaign against the Byzantines and a year later in 1172 he was sent to Constantinople as an envoy to the court of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos.

Venetian relations with the Byzantine Empire had been deteriorating over the years and had reached their nadir by 1172. Back on December 10, 1167 Byzantine envoys arrived in Venice to seek the aid of the Venetians in a military campaign against the Normans, who from their base in Sicily sought to control the southern Italian Peninsula and Dalmatia, east of the the Adriatic Sea (the coastline of modern-day Croatia). Emperor Manuel I Komnenos cherished the dream of reasserting Byzantine control over these areas and he hoped the Venetians would offer their support. After all, Venice had sided with the Byzantines against the Normans before, most notably in 1081, when a Venetian fleet attacked and nearly destroyed an armada of Norman ships led by Robert Guiscard (“the Crafty”) in the southern Adriatic, off the coast from Durazzo (current-day Durrës, in Albania). A century later, however, the political landscape had changed. Venice had entered into a peace treaty with Norman King William II and it was not willing to abrogate this agreement and wage war against the Normans just to accommodate the Byzantines. Doge Doge Michele had to advise the Byzantine envoys that Venetian aid in any planned war against the Normans would not be forthcoming.

Emperor Manuel I Komnenos was furious that his ambitions had been thwarted by the perfidous—in his eyes—Venetians. Such was his wrath that Doge Michele advised Venetian merchants to avoid Byzantine ports least they suffer from retaliation at the hands of Byzantine authorities. Venetian envoys were eventually dispatched to Constantinople in an effort to smooth over Manuel’s ruffled feathers, and by 1170 business relations were pretty much back to normal. However, that same year Manuel allowed Pisan and Genoese merchants back in the city. Eight years earlier Manuel had ejected them from the city for internecine brawling and disturbing the peace. Venetians in their own quarter had enjoyed a near monopoly on all west-bound trade in the city since the expulsion of the Pisans and Genoese and were now disgruntled by the competition.

Having established themselves in their own quarter, Venetians, never lacking in a sense of their own importance, had managed to antagonize a good portion of the Constantinople populace, especially those who did not directly profit from trade with them. The Venetian Quarter had become a virtual mini-state where they could do pretty much whatever they pleased. We have already seen how Bono Dandolo and his brother Pietro, while living the Quarter, had translated (stolen) the purported relics of St. Stephen and placed them in a church within the Venetian Quarter, where Byzantine authorities apparently had no legal authority to take them back, and how, despite the stern objections of the Byzantines, the relics were eventually taken back to Venice, probably on a Dandolo-owned ship. Theft of precious relics, although justified by the Venetians on the grounds of furta sacra, (sacred theft), would not have been forgotten or forgiven in a city obsessed with such sacred remains. Also, many Venetians in Constantinople had become very wealthy and they did not hesitate to flaunt their wealth and self-proclaimed superiority before the native inhabitants of the city, who in turn viewed the Venetians as boorish, arrogant, and condescending.

Byzantine court official and historian Nicetas Choniates (c.1155–1217), in his monumental history O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, presents what may have been the viewpoint of the Byzantine elite. Condescending in tone, his description of the Venetians makes it sound as if they were some obscure tribe from the fringes of the Byzantine Empire that had somehow managed to insinuate itself into Constantinople and then proceeded to commit mischief:

Having reached this point in my history, I shall include the following. There is a gulf in the western sea called the Adriatic which recedes from the Sicilian sea and, separating itself as an effluence of the Ionian, flows a long way in the direction of the north wind. The northernmost recesses are inhabited by the Enetoi, who, in their own dialect, call themselves Venetikoi; nourished by the sea, they are vagabonds like the Phoenicians and cunning of mind. Adopted by the Romans [Byzantines] when there had been need for naval forces, they had left their homeland for Constantinople in swarms and by clans. From there they dispersed throughout the Roman [Byzantine] empire; retaining only their family names and looked upon as natives and genuine Romans, they increased and flocked together. They amassed great wealth and became so arrogant and impudent that not only did they behave belligerently to the Romans but they also ignored imperial threats and commands.

Emperor Manuel I Komnenos could not have been pleased by the increasingly impudent behavior of the Venetians. Also, the recent refusal of the Venetians to ally themselves with him against the Normans must have still rankled. Then there was the curious incident back in 1148 when the Venetians and the Byzantines were ostensibly allied against the Normans, who had seized the island of Corfu. As we have seen, the brother and son of the recently deceased Doge Pietro Polani were in charge of the Venetian fleet sent to aid the Byzantines in dislodging the Normans from the island. But there was considerable ill-will among the nominal allies and at times they even attacked each other. At one point, according to one historian:

They ([the Venetians] captured the Imperial [Byzantine] galley, dressed a negro slave in the Imperial ensigns, placed him under a canopy, and paraded him before the Greek [Byzantine] camp at Corfu, making mock obeisance to him in scorn and insult . . . Emperor Manuel did not forget the insult he had received in the person of the negro slave, nor did he lay aside his hostility. . . He was presently enabled to satisfy his desire for revenge . . .

All of the Emperor’s various grudges against the Venetians were no doubt festering in his mind when Venetians supposedly attacked the Genoese Quarter in Constantinople, even after he had given stern warning to all the various foreign trading quarters to refrain from in-fighting and maintain peace among themselves. It has been suggested that the attack was the work of agents provocateur in the pay of the Byzantines themselves; in any case, the blame fell squarely on the Venetians. The time had come to rein in the obstreperous people from the Lagoon. Nicetas Choniates continues:

Buffeted by a series of villainies, one worse than the other, the emperor now recalled their offensive behavior . . . and turned the scales against them, spewing forth his anger like the tempestuous and stormy spray blown up by a northeaster or north wind. The misdeeds of the Venetians were deemed to be excessive, and letters were dispatched to every Roman province ordering their arrest, together with the confiscation of their communal properties, and designating the day this was to take place.

On March 12, 1171 every Venetian man, woman, and child on Byzantine territory was arrested and imprisoned and all their property confiscated. Over 10,000 Venetians in Constantinople alone were thrown into prison, and when the prisons overflowed monasteries were turned to temporary jails. Another 10,000 or more were arrested and imprisoned in other cities of the empire.

As John Julius Norwich points out, the mass arrests all over the empire would have called for considerable planning and coordination and thus must have been contemplated long before the attack by the Venetians on the Genoese traders in Constantinople, the ostensible reason for the emperor’s actions. Indeed, rumors of possible repercussions against Venetian traders had been afloat for the past several years. Reacting to these rumors, in 1169 or 1170 Doge Michele had seen fit to send two envoys, Sebastiano Ziani and Orio Mastropiero (both of them future doges) to Constantinople to seek assurances that Venetians in the Byzantine Empire were in fact safe and free to carry on business. The emperor not only gave his assurances that Venetians were under no threat but also encouraged more Venetian traders to enter his empire. Following the crackdown of March 12, 1172, the insinuation was made that the emperor had purposely lured additional Venetians into his empire just so he could seize them and their property. In the eyes of the Venetians this was just more more indication of Byzantine perfidy.

Meanwhile, news of the disastrous events in Constantinople filtered back to Venice via traders and ship captains who had managed to escape the general dragnet and sail back home. As word spread outraged Venetians, many of whom had relatives and business interests in the Byzantine Empire, assembled in front of the Ducal Palace to demand that the government take military action to free their countrymen from Byzantine prisons and restore Venetian property that had been confiscated. This throng qualified as an arengo, or assembly of the general populace, which at least theoretically was still the ultimate political authority in Venice. Now the people were baying for Byzantine blood.

Doge Michele, it would appear from the historical record, favored diplomatic overtures to the Byzantines. Surely they would see the benefits of restoring favorable relations with Venice and the entire affair could be resolved without bloodshed. Business was the business of Venice, he believed, and the most important concern was to secure the release of the prisoners, seek compensation for Venetian financial loses, and resume commercial relations without resorting to warfare. He suggested that envoys be send immediately to Constantinople to begin negotiations with the Byzantines. Apparently his three chief advisors, Orio Mastropiero, Sebastiano Ziani, and Vitale Dandolo, father of the future Doge Enrico Dandolo, felt the same way.

At these juncture ships arrived in Venice with still more tales of outrages inflicted on Venetians by the Byzantines. The arengo, or assembly of the populace, simmering since the first news from Constantinople had arrived, now broke into a boil. Its representatives ordered that a fleet of 120 to 130 vessels be constructed and sent to smite the nefarious Byzantines who had so cruelly abused their fellow Venetians. They also ordered that the Doge Michele personally take command of the fleet. Faced with the will of the people, as demonstrated by the arengo, the doge had no choice but comply. Venice’s famously efficient shipyards constructed an entire fleet of 120 new ships in 100 days. To pay for the campaign against the Byzantines the financial wizards of Venice came up with the novel idea of forcing the populace to buy bonds which paid four percent per year interest. “The bonds could be bequeathed, mortgaged, or sold,” says one historian, “and so we find in this forced loan the earliest instance of government stock, certainly in the history of Venice, perhaps in the history of Europe.”

In September of 1171 fleet sailed down the Adriatic under the command of Doge Michele. On the same ship as the doge, and apparently acting as one of his advisors, was our hero, Enrico Dandolo, the future doge. After leaving the Adriatic the fleet rounded the Peloponnese and entered the Aegean Sea, soon reaching the island of Negroponte (modern-day Euboea), off the eastern coast of Greece, where they invested Chalkis, the capital of the island. The Byzantine governor of Negroponte, anxious to avoid hostilities with the Venetians, suggested sending sending his own envoy to Constantinople in hopes of opening negotiations with Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. Accompanying the governor’s envoy were two Venetians, Manasse Badoer and Bishop Pasqualo of Jesolo.

Under the impression that war had been avoided for the moment, Doge Michele ordered the fleet to proceed to the island of Chios, ninety miles east of Negroponte and 235 miles southwest of Constantinople, where it would hole up for the winter. Here news reached Doge Michele that the emperor Manuel refused to negotiate with the Venetians as long as their fleet remained in Byzantine waters. The emperor did however send an envoy to Chios. This envoy claimed that the emperor might be amenable to negotiations if the Doge dispatched another envoy to Constantinople. The envoy to Chios was probably just a spy sent to sound out the Venetian fleet and the promise of negotiations nothing more than a delaying tactic while the Byzantines explored their options. Nevertheless, the doge, ever optimistic that a diplomatic solution could be reached, sent yet another embassy to Constantinople.

Meanwhile, all was not well with the fleet at Chios. “There, in idleness, discipline became relaxed; the crowded ships grew filthy and unhealthy; plague broke out, more probably the result of dirt than of poison; thousands died,” we are told. (The mention of poison refers to the rumor which spread throughout the fleet that the Byzantines had poisoned the wells used by the Venetians.) Hoping to escape the epidemic, the fleet sailed for the nearby island of Panagia. Here news reached the doge that the second embassy he had sent to Constantinople had been turned away by the emperor. But the returning envoys said, amazingly enough, that if a third delegation was sent the emperor might possibly meet with it. Clearly Emperor Manuel I Komnenos was stalling for still more time. Yet the doge had little choice but to make one last attempt at a negotiated settlement. The plague still raged through his fleet and the ability of the Venetians to actually wage war was lessening by the day.

The third delegation to the court of the Byzantines consisted of Enrico Dandolo and Filippo Greco. Enrico Dandolo was as we have seen on the doge’s ship and acting as one of his advisors. Almost certainly the influence of Enrico’s formidable father Vitale had something to do with Enrico being appointed as an advisor to the Doge on this expedition, but Enrico must also have had some experience in diplomatic matters that led the Doge to believe he was the right man for this last ditch effort at a negotiated peace with the Byzantines. What this experience might have been, however, it is impossible to say, because as noted we know almost nothing about his life up until this point. In any case, his first recorded foray into diplomacy was not a success. He and his fellow envoy were never granted an audience with the emperor and all their other entreaties came to nought.

While Enrico was in Constantinople the plague continued to ravage the Venetian fleet. In a futile attempt to escape the disease the fleet sailed to the island of Lesbos and later to Skyros, but the sailors continued to die off. “At length the Venetians could endure no more,” intones one historian, who continues:

The crews mutinied, and set sail for Venice. So complete was the collapse of the Venetian armament, so sweeping the mortality, that, as legend declares, the whole Giustiniani family, with one exception, perished . . . The disaster was complete. The shattered remnants of this splendid Venetian armament, created by generous sacrifices and bearing the hopes of the Republic, returned to the Lido in the spring of 1172. Instead of booty, it brought the plague; in place of victory, death.

Meanwhile the 20,000 or more Venetians arrested in Constantinople and elsewhere in Byzantine territory languished in prisons. The Venetians had suffered an ignominious defeat and someone’s head had to roll as a consequence. Doge Michele, although he had opposed the military expedition from the beginning, was held responsible for the disaster and would end up paying the ultimate price.

Although Enrico Dandolo’s first appearance on the historical stage ended in failure, he no doubt learned a lot about the Byzantines and their preferred methods of dealing with outside threats. Manuel I Komnenos probably never intended to engage the Venetians in actual combat, nor was he amenable to a negotiated settlement that included any concessions to them. He had sent his first envoy to Chios ostensibly to negotiate a settlement but more likely he was there to assess the strength of the Venetian fleet (there is no proof Manuel had the wells of the island poisoned). The Byzantines soon learned that the plague out broken out among the Venetians forces wintered at Chios. They probably figured that if they could stall long enough the plague would defeat the Venetians for them. The two additional peace overtures had been a ruse to buy time The Venetians had been misled and manipulated by the duplicitous Byzantines and the result was a disaster. Enrico Dandolo experienced this humiliating defeat first hand. Thirty-two years later, upon his return to Constantinople, he would be given ample opportunities to exact his revenge against the Byzantines.

The badly battered Venetian Fleet limped back into Venice in late May of 1172. The people of Venice had given Doge Michele a mandate to smite the Byzantines and had provided him with a fleet to do so, but he had never even engaged the enemy in combat. The fleet, paid for by bonds extracted from the populace, had been decimated and still more than 20,000 Venetians remained in Byzantine prisons, their property expropriated. The survivors who had sailed back with the fleet let known their opinion: “‘We were poorly led, and if we had not been betrayed by the doge dragging out matters with legates, then all of these troubles would not have overtaken us!’” The citizens of Venice were likewise outraged:

There was a considerable section of the community, probably bereaved and disconsolate families, which openly and loudly accused the Doge of being the author of their misfortunes . . . The animadversions of this party were bold, violent, and bitter. They soon wore a really formidable aspect. Their clamours and maledictions gradually arrested the public attention. The subject which formed their ground of complaint became the leading theme of conversation. It was canvassed on the Rialto. It was agitated in the parliament, where it gave rise to frequent and angry controversies, in which the speakers freely vituperated each other. The sitting of the 27th May was stormy and tumultuous beyond precedent. The debate turned on the affairs of the Republic and on the causes and consequences of the recent catastrophe; all sides spoke with great warmth and emotion: and high words were exchanged.

As one of the his most trusted advisors, Vitale Dandalo was in the presence of Doge Michele right up until the moment it became obvious that the assembled populace outside and its representatives within the palace were now baying for the Doge’s blood. Vitale and Michele’s other advisors then slipped away, leaving the Doge to his fate. Attempting to escape on foot from the Ducal Palace to the sanctuary of the Zaccaria Convent, 800 feet away, he crossed the Ponte della Paglia—the bridge now famous for its view of the Bridge of Sighs—and then turned left on Calle delle Rassa where he was overtaken by an enraged mob, one of whom stabbed him repeatedly with a knife.

Ponte della Paglia, with the current version of the Ducal Palace on the left (click on photos for enlargements)

Entrance to the Calle delle Rasse

Calle delle Rasse. The dwelling of Marco Casiolo, the assassin of Doge Michele, would have been on the left. The site is now occupied by the Danieli Royal Excelsior Hotel.

He managed to stagger to the gate of the convent compound, where he died in the arms of a priest. The assassin, one Marco Casiolo, was quickly identified and arrested. Found guilty, he was decapitated on front of his own dwelling on the Calle delle Rasse. The dwelling was then razed and the order given that no stone building should ever again stand on the site. This edict remained in effect for 776 years. Not until 1948 was the Danieli Royal Excelsior Hotel erected on the site of Marco Casiolo’s old dwelling.