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War and Beatitude: The Fall of Negroponte to the Ottomans in 1470 and Female Sanctity in Venice

April 20, 2010 19:00

ASCSA, Cotsen Hall, 9 Anapiron Polemou, 106 76 Athens

LECTURE

Presented by

Cotsen Lecture Series

Speaker

Reinhold Mueller (University of Venice)

210 - 72.10.536 (ext. 101)

Professor Reinhold Mueller of the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Venice will speak on “War and Beatitude: The Fall of Negroponte to the Ottomans in 1470 and Female Sanctity in Venice.”

Having earned his doctorate in 1969 from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), with a dissertation titled: “The Procuratori di San Marco and the Venetian Credit Market: A Study of the Development of Credit and Banking in the Trecento” under the direction of Frederic C. Lane (published in 1977; see below), he took a position at the University of Venice where has has become a reknown historian of the Medieval Social and Economic History of Venice. For this lecture Reinhold Mueller turns his attention to a topic that takes on the relations of Venice with its Mediterranean Empire.

His long list of publications includes the following books and more than 50 articles and essays:

The Procuratori di San Marco and the Venetian Credit Market: A Study of the Development of Credit and Banking in the Trecento, in the series “Dissertations in European Economic History”, New York: Arno Press, 1977.

(with Frederic C. Lane) Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice, vol. 1: Coins and Moneys of Account. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

edited book (with Benjamin G. Kohl): Frederic C. Lane, Studies in Venetian Social and Economic History, London: Variorum, 1987.

The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics and the Public Debt, 1200-1500 (vol. 2 of Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice). Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

edited book (with L. Molà e C. Zanier, eds.) La seta in Italia dal Medioevo al Seicento. Dal bacco al drappo, Marsilio, Venezia 2000.

book in preparation: (with Ph. Braunstein) critical edition of “Description ou traictie du gouvernement ou regime de la cité et seigneurie de Venise”, anonymous tract of ca. 1500 (Memorie, Ist. Veneto di Scienze, lettere ed arti).

 

Professor Mueller’s lecture will be in English; a Greek summary will be provided.

A summary of the lecture follows:

“WAR AND BEATITUDE: THE FALL OF NEGROPONTE TO THE OTTOMANS
IN 1470 AND FEMALE SANCTITY IN VENICE”

Persons interested in learning more about the fall of Negroponte to the Turks on 12 July1470 can find useful leads by navigating with Google. But aside from names and facts, not always correct, they will discover the Venetian heroine Anna Erizzo, supposed beautiful daughter of the former bailo Paolo Erizzo, one of the last defenders of the last tower still in the hands of Venetian forces, a woman who chose to be a martyr rather than succomb to the desires of the victor, Mehmet II. They will discover that a novel Anna Erizzo was published in 1783 by Vincenzo Antonio Formaleoni; that the story was adapted to opera (or “ballo serio”) for Carneval 1836-37 by Antonio Montacini under the title Anna Erizzo, ovvero la Presa di Negroponte; that the story was the subject of paintings, such as T. Cremona’s Maometto II, angered by the resistance of Anna Erizzo to his desires, is about to decapitate her of 1860. Finally, they will find that for historians of our day the heroine of Venice and of Christianity was a figment of the imagination. My paper, on the other hand, will show that some of this story can be salvaged.

I shall describe summarily what is known: about the assault and conquest of Negroponte, after the careful preparation and planning by Mehmet himself of the attack on the most important Venetian colony that remained in the Aegean after the fall of Constantinople; about the crucial element of revenge and vendetta that motivated him after the assault on Aenos (14 July 1469), its sack and destruction by the Venetian fleet commanded by the same captain general Nicolò da Canal, with his doctorate from the University of Padua, who would fail to come to the aid of the government and citizens of Negroponte exactly one year later. Particularly interesting, if only an episode, is the fact that one of the cavalry brigade commanders of the assault on Aenos was Tommaso Schiavo, the man who was unmasked by an old woman as a traitor to the Turks during the assault on Negroponte and, after being summarily executed by the governors of the city, was hung by his feet on the balcony of the governmental palace for all to see.

If the massacres, first of the Turkish attackers by the defenders of Negroponte and then of the adult males amongst the surviving defenders of the city by the victorious attackers, are well-known, the fate of the surviving women and children of the Venetian colony are little known and it is in this setting that we can connect the tragedy of Negroponte with female holiness in Venice.

First of word about the young boys: some, perhaps many, were brought up as janissaries in the Muslim faith. One of these was the eye-witness Giovan Maria Angiolello, originally of Vicenza, whose brother Francesco had been killed while he was defending one of the gates of the city. Others were Marchesotto and Nicolò Zorzi of the branch called «da Boudoniza» or «da Negroponte», who returned to Venice only at the end of the century, whose experiences were recently recounted by Ennio Concina.

More importantly, the women began trickling back to Venice, some escaped, most redeemed by money payments to their captors. Many of them, even the nobles, were purely colonials (the petition says all were “born in Negroponte”) and may never have seen Venice before. Half of da Canal’s sequestered wealth from booty was earmarked for redemption of prisoners and public funds were set aside to that end beginning in 1471. The women and orphans arrived as “shame-faced poor”: once wealthy, they now had nothing at all on which to survive in what was for them a strange city. Some were welcomed by members of the Giustinian family, feudatories of the castles of Karistos and Styra on the island of Negroponte and often members of the Venetian colonial government there. Almost five years after the fall of the city, some 15 adult women survivors, many accompanied by minor children (for a total of 27 “bocche”), penned the most moving petition ever recorded in the deliberations of the Venetian Senate. The women recounted the tragedy they had been forced to witness when their menfolk – husbands, sons, brothers, in-laws – were executed before their eyes, and how their own survival had itself been a miracle.  Pennyless, they requested the basics of life, namely, lodging, food and firewood, and they listed their names. Despite the financial straits in which the government found itself in the midst of the longest war to date against the Turks (1463-1479), the senators found a way to come across with aid to these survivors. Dowries for entering a convent and annuities were granted, even though parsimoniously. The petition indicated that “tutto el mondo” already knew of their fate, reflecting the fact that they had learned of the “Lamentations” in prose and epic poetry that had been printed and distributed in Italy and the rest of Europe by a nascent printing industry. Noteworthy is the fact that the reigning doge at the time of the petition was Pietro Mocenigo, da Canal’s successor as Captain general.

Some of the women were put up in the monastery of SS. Filippo e Giacomo across the canal behind the ducal palace, others in the Vioni hospice on the Riva Schiavoni dedicated since 1409 to female pilgrims waiting to embark to the Holy Land. And it was in the latter hospice that some of the survivors, including two on the list of the petitioners, founded the convent of the San Sepolcro for the Observant Franciscan Third Order. The two were the elderly Polissena Premarin and the young and beautiful Beatrice Venier, members of the largest noble families resident in Negroponte. We know about them from the Vita beatae Clarae Bugni (d. 1514), one of their consorelle, written by the Observant Franciscan humanist of the nearby convent of S. Francesco della Vigna. Beatrice’s story was this: she was about to hang herself by her long blond hair in order to save her virginity “from the military license of the barbarians”, but was led – by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary – to a ship aboard which she found Polissena Premarin, whom she knew as a compaesana. Here is the vague and tenuous connection with the story of the supposed heroine Anna Erizzo, daughter of Paolo, with which we began. Very likely the two women Polissena and Beatrice, together with many other of the survivors and refugees, had taken a vow that they would lead a life of chastity as nuns if they were saved from death. Locally they found two other holy women, the noble Maria da Canal and the citizen Orsa Usnago, who joined them as co-founders of the convent. Beatrice, Maria and Orsa (Orsola), together with their young consorella Chiara Bugni, performed many miracles in their lifetime and were duely beatified by the Franciscan hagiographers.

If to these we add Antonio Pizzamano, bishop of Feltre and administrator of the miraculous convent of Motta di Livenza, perhaps designed by Francesco Zorzi, and Antonio Contarini, patriarch of Venice and reformer of female convents, both of whom were involved in the life of suor Chiara, that makes six “beati” all of whom were acquainted with one another; perhaps that constitutes a record; it is surely sufficient for a Vita…., and a life-time.