Bucintoro
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The Bucintoro , also outdated Bucentaur or Golden Barque , was the state ship of the Doges of Venice . There was a magnificently equipped Venetian Galeasse or galley 168 rowers to 42 belts . The Bucintoro, built of wood in the arsenal in Venice in 1728 , measured 43.8 × 7.3 × 8.4 meters. A Bucintoro 1253 was mentioned for the first time.
The name
The name supposedly comes from a chimera of the Greek world of legends, a mixture of cow and centaur - at least that is one of the common explanations. According to another, it is a corruption of ducentorum , the Latin name for a ship with 200 crew members. The derivation of cinto d'oro - ie “gold girded” or “gold clad” - is common. The derivation of buzzo d'oro ("golden belly") is to be understood rather mockingly and related to the position of Venice as the most important Italian trading city in the Middle Ages .
Sposalizio
On the day of Ascension Day in 997 (according to other sources in 1000) the Doge Pietro II. Orseolo set sail with a galley to free Dalmatian coastal cities from pirates . This liberation action established the long-term rule of Venice over the Dalmatian coast, later over the entire Adriatic Sea and far beyond.
This is how the ceremony goes back to celebrating the sposalizio del mare - the spiritual marriage of Venice to the sea - on Ascension Day each year . The Doge, members of the clergy, and foreign ambassadors took the ship out onto the lagoon. The Patriarch of San Elena blessed a ring, which the Doge then threw into the Adriatic as a sign of sposalizio as he drove past the Lido , saying the words:
“Disponsamus te, Mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii.”
"We marry you, Meer, as a token of our true and lasting rule."
When the rite came about is unknown. The presence of the foreigners was of course by no means a gesture of friendship; rather, they should consciously participate in a demonstration of the Serenissima's claims to power .
The marriage to the sea is a rite that has been widespread in other Italian cities and regions since the late Middle Ages .
First mentions of ships of the Doge, Bucintoro
In the Chronica altinate it is said that the Doge sailed “in navi sua”, that is, in his own ship. Martino da Canal wrote of “maistre nef” in the middle of the 13th century. But only in 1253 the Bucintoro explicitly in the promissio ducale of Lorenzo Tiepolo mentioned. As we learn from the poet Pace del Friuli , at the beginning of the 14th century it was a very rich ceremonial ship.
Goethe on the Bucintoro
Goethe was also extremely impressed by the Bucintoro on his Italian trip :
“To pronounce the term bucintoro in one word, I call it a magnificent galley. The older one, of which we still have images, justifies this name even more than the present one, which blinds us about its origin with its brilliance.
I always come back to my old life. If the artist is given a real object, he can achieve something real. Here he was entrusted with forming a galley worthy of carrying the heads of the republic on the most solemn day to the sacrament of their traditional sea lordship, and this task is excellently performed. The ship is completely ornamented, so one must not say: overloaded with ornamentation, completely gilded carving, otherwise for no use, a true monstrance to show the people its heads in a splendid way. We know: the people, how they like to decorate their hats, also want their superiors to be splendid and dressed. This magnificent ship is a real inventory item, from which you can see what the Venetians were and what they thought themselves to be. "
The end of the magnificent ship
The last Bucintoro was largely destroyed by Napoleon's soldiers . On January 9, 1798, they broke into the arsenal of Venice with axes and smashed the rich ornamentation of the ship into small pieces - in the hope of getting hold of the little gold leaf, the value of which they probably overestimated. The hull ship was later repaired and put back into service under the name Hidra ( Hydra ). It served to defend the port on the Lido and was finally scrapped in 1828. Remains are kept in Venice in the Civico Museo Correr and in the Arsenal.
- Model of a Bucintoro in the Maritime Museum in Venice
overall view
The stern
The bug
literature
- Lina Urban Padoan: Il Bucintoro. The festa e la fiera della "Sensa" dalle origini alla caduta della Repubblica. Centro Internazionale della Grafica di Venezia, Venice 1988.
Web links
Remarks
- ^ Popular festivals in Emilia-Romagna
- ^ Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan : Le Moyen-Âge de Venise. Des eaux salées au miracle de pierres. Albin Michel, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-226-31500-7 , note 2854.