September 1st, 978. After two years’ successful administration, the rebuilding of the Basilica (at his own expense), and a series of threats against his life, the 23rd Doge Pietro Orseolo had had enough. In the middle of the night, without telling his wife or his son he left Venice :

“... there grew daily in him a desire to withdraw into monastic life. This desire was fostered, and came to a climax when a certain Fra Guarino arrived from Aquitaine. The Doge resolved to quit the world, but feared the opposition of his people. He resolved to escape secretly. On the night of 1st September ... he left his palace, passed the lagoon to Fusina, found horses to Sant’ Ilario, rode rapidly through North Italy, and reached the monastery of S. Michele di Cusano in the (foothills of the) Pyrenees, where twenty-nine years of pius life and religious exercises procured him the honours of canonisation.”
Horatio F, Brown 'Venice an Historical Sketch of the Republic' (1895).

An accusation made against him in the Middle Ages to the effect that he entered the monastery out of remorse for having been an accessory to the murder of his predecessor is probably baseless.


The Abbaye St Michel-de-Cuxa is three kilometres South of Prades in Pyrénées-Rousillon.


July 31st, 1945. Ven. Lonsdale Ragg died in Bath aged 78. He had been British chaplain in Venice 1905-1909 and wrote, with his wife Laura, two worthwhile publicationss on the city, the Venice volume of the attractive A & C Black Colour Book series, (with the wishy-washy watercolour illustrations that embellish those volumes, these by Mortimer Menpes, but the house style is pretty unvariable, though invariably pretty), and a little book 'Things Seen in Venice' (this too one of a popular series, to which Laura on her own contributed 'Things Seen in the Italian Lakes'). Lonsdale, as befitted his cloth, also wrote a number of Christian essays, 'The Book of Books', 'Evidences of Christianity' 'The Gospel of St Barnabas (with Laura), 'The Church of the Apostles'. Nor should we forget 'Dante and his Italy', still less, 'Some of My Tree Friends' (later, 'Trees I Have Met'). He was something of a draughtsman himself and liked to draw trees, though he would have found limited opportunites in the Serenissima. Back home he illustrated 'The Lyrical Woodlands' for Margaret Sackvile, as well as his own amicable tree book.
In the handbiter Rolfe's 'The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole' Ragg appears thinly disguised as Exeter Warden (subsequently Londonderry Bagge).

Third weekend of July, this year July 17th/18th. Festa del Redentore. In 1576, with Venice in the grip of one of the worst plagues in its history, the authorities attempted to bribe God to relent, promising as a quid pro quo for deliverence the construction of a magnificent temple to Christ the Redeemer. A site on the Giudecca was chosen over two others in the city and the 68-year-old Andrea Palladio comissioned to provide alternative round and rectangular plans. Meanwhile more profane and practical measures were also being taken with regard to the quarantining of victims and citizens at risk, which are graphically described in the chapter on the Lazzaretto Nuovo in our 'The Abandoned Islands of the Venetian Lagoon'. Whether through divine or civic intervention Venice eventually emerged on the other side of the plague and the 'Redentore' was duly built (although Palladio, who died in 1580, did not live to see it) and became the focus of an annual pilgrimage by means of a pontoon bridge, originally from near Harry's Bar, latterly from the Zattere, which continues to this day. It is interesting that what has become very much a boating event, with all kinds of colourful craft decked out with picnic tables and Chinese lanterns (very likely these days from China) descending on the Bacino, was in earlier times exactly the opposite, the pontoon bridge offering a rare opportunity to visit the gardens of the Giudecca without having to pay for the passage. Here is an early nineteenth century description of the event from Giusina Renier Michiel's 'Feste Veneziane' (first edition, 1817-27). Her chapter opens grandly “Qual tempio è questo che si maestosamente torreggia?” and she goes on to write, with egalitarian fervour:
“The Feast of the Redeemer continued always to be regarded as a sacred and solemn event and it was the custom every year to repeat the ceremony. But in the course of time there came to be mixed with it something of the profane. The facility offered by this extraordinary bridge for passing over on foot from the other side and exploring the gardens and canal-sides of the Giudecca and enjoying the cool evening air under its pergolas encouraged the populace to extend through the whole night this rare holiday, or as it came to be called by the Venetians, the 'Sagra' (festival) of the Redeemer. Soon you could see the streets, the fondamente and the gardens there thronged, like those of Santa Marta [another area greener then than now] with those mobile kitchens, those simple and gay suppers, where nothing could spoil the most innocent pleasures. It was wonderful to see brigades of artisans, workmen, gondoliers, with their wives and children, mixing freely with groups of fine ladies and gentlemen, lying full-length on the grass, or seated around rudimentary tables. Equal to all the joys and pleasures, equal among all the foodstuffs: roast chicken on that evening the hero of the hour. Everyone shared with genuine satisfaction in an equality which crowned the general delight.”


July 14th, 1902. At 9.55 a.m. The Campanile in St Mark's Square collapsed. Reuter's terse communiqué read as follows

The Campanile of St. Mark’s Cathedral, 98 metres high (about 318 feet), has just fallen down on to the Piazza. It collapsed where it stood, and is now a heap of ruins. The cathedral and the Doge’s Palace are quite safe. Only a corner of the royal palace is damaged. It is believed, but it is not certain, that there has been no loss of life. A cordon of troops is keeping the Piazza clear.

The only casualty was in fact the sacristan's cat, who had refused to leave the building (the disaster had threatened for some days).

This is Horatio Brown's account, from 'In and Around Venice' (1905):

"… by Monday morning early … it was evident that the catastrophe could not be averted. Dust began to pour out of the widening crack, and bricks to fall. A block of Istrian stone crashed down from the bell-chamber, then a column from the same site. At 9.47 the ominous fissure opened, the face of the Campanile towards the church bulged out, the angel on top and the pyramid below it swayed once or twice, and threatened to crush either the Sansovino’s Library or the Basilica of San Marco in their fall, then the whole colossus subsided gently, almost noiselessly, upon itself, as it were in a curtsey, the ruined brick and mortar spread out in a pyramidal heap, a dense column of white powder rose from the Piazza, and the Campanile of San Marco was no more."

Some Venetians claimed that St. Mark’s Square looked better without the tower, and others thought it was foolish to spend taxpayers’ money on a replacement. In the end, donations from outside Venice covered most of the expense, and a rebuilt Campanile was christened on April 25th 1912, exactly 1000 years after the foundations of the original structure had been laid, confirming what the Mayor of Venice had said when the Campanile collapsed, 'com'era, dov'era', as it was, where it was. The very same words were used again in 1996, by the then Mayor Massimo Cacciari, when the Fenice Theatre burned down, com'era, dov'era'.
E così fu.

June 30th. Festa di San Marziale (vulg. S.Marcilian). Martial was one of the seven bishops sent out by the third century Pope Fabian to preach the Gospel to the Gauls, who were sufficiently unappreciative to martyr most of them. The best known of the bunch was Saint Denis (Paris), but although the life and deeds of St. Martial are obscure, the abbey of Limoges which bore his name and housed his remains was one of the splendours of the early Middle Ages, its library second only to that of Cluny. This was utterly destroyed during the rabid (if thoroughly earned) anticlericalism following on the French Revolution, and modern Limoges's Place de la Republique built over it, to emphasise the point. Venice's San Marziale is rather less splendid; the present late 17th century structure, considerably restored in 1958 (replacing an earlier church dating back to the 13th c.), is unremarkable, to say the least, though the iron gratings over the windows onto the Misericordia canal are elegant. The adjacent Ponte S.Marziale was one of the many battlegrounds for the semi-formalised stave (bastoni), later fist (pugni) fights between the Castellani and Nicolotti factions.

June 15th. Festa di San Vio (St Vitus, as in Dance).
On this day, or rather night, 700 years ago in dim and distant 1310, an attempted coup against the Republic was foiled by a combination of treachery, lack of mobile phones, bad weather and a well-aimed mortar (with which an ancient markswoman, Giustina Rossi, felled the rebels' standard-bearer from an upper window). The ringleaders were duly done to death, with the exception of Baiamonte Tiepolo, who escaped abroad into the sort of posthumous charisma enjoyed by Ned Kelly, Robin Hood and other such spitters at the law. He was eventually hunted down by the Venetian Mossad and murdered in Croatia some twenty years later. No doubt Russell Crowe is already limbering up to play him as a revolutionary dog-loving democrat – such at least must be the hope of adoptive veneziana Michelle Lovric, who has taken him to her bosom and tonight leads a waterborne cortège of the Settemari Club's finest to lay mortars on the site of his razed palace at S.Agostin. Bring your own pestle.

June 11th. Feast of San Barnabà.
In the later republic impoverished nobles were (modestly) lodged at the public expense in this parish, and were known consequently as 'barnabotti'. "Too proud to work - and lose their patent of nobility - too stupid to play any part in the Government, they led lives of shabby gentility, preying on the State for lodgings and a small dole which they augmented out of the pockets of tourists." (Hugh Honour - The Companion Guide to Venice). They could also occasionally earn a little extra by selling their Great Council votes.