AUTHOR’S APPENDIX

1. P. 19.-FOUNDATION OF VENICE

I FIND the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any:¹ the following sentence from De Monaci² may perhaps interest the reader:-

“God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian province (which, from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalbertus Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March.”

It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was founded by good Christians: “La qual citade č stada hedificada da veri e boni Christiani:” which information I found in the MS. copy of the Zancoral Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark’s.*

Finally, the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by Sansovino,³ will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: “Fu interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire VENI ETIAM, cioč, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai, sempre vedrai nuove cose, e nuove bellezze.”

* Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I. [The Cronaca Zancariol, a first-rate authority down to 1446, where it stops; written about 1519.]

¹ [The date, March 25, 421, is based upon “a document well known to Venetian historians, the famous commission of the three Consuls who were sent from Padua to superintend the building of a city at Rialto.” There is, however, “little doubt that the document, as we have it, is a forgery:” see H. F. Brown’s Venice: an Historical Sketch of the Republic, ed. 1895, p. 4.]

² [Lorenzo de Monacis: Chronicon de rebus Venetis, Venetiis, 1758.]

³ [Venetia Citta Nobilissima, ed. 1663, p. 5. “The word Venetia is interpreted by some to mean Veni Etiam, which is to say, ‘Come again and again;’ for how many times soever thou shalt come, new things and new beauties thou shalt see.”]

417

IX. 2D

[Version 0.04: March 2008]