Marco Casolo

Marco Casolo , also Casulo († end of May / beginning of June or end of September 1172 in Venice ), was a Venetian assassin whose name appears in the sources almost half a millennium after the murder. It can be considered certain that on May 28, 1172, Doge Vitale II. Michiel was so badly injured with a weapon outside the Doge's Palace at the nearby monastery of San Zaccaria while fleeing from an angry crowd that he died in front of or in the monastery. The sources describe the process in a highly contradicting manner. The circumstances and the time of Casolo's execution are also contradictory. About Casolo, also called Marcus Casuol , has only become known through recent research that he probably came from one of the leading families in Venice. He became the first named doge killer in Venice, which has a number of such murders in its early history.

background

In March 1171, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos had all of Venice's merchants, thousands of whom were resident in Constantinople , arrested, whereupon the Venetian councilors possibly drove the Doge into war. However, the punitive expedition turned into a debacle. While there had been heavy looting and lengthy negotiations, an epidemic broke out among the crews - the disease is unknown - which killed several thousand men on the ships. Thousands more fell victim to the deadly disease that brought the returning fleet in Venice.

The councils now assigned all guilt to the Doge personally and possibly incited the people against him. At the people's assembly ( Concio ) in the Doge's Palace, in which Vitale Michiel wanted to justify himself, the murder of the doge, who was on the run, occurred on the street near San Zaccaria on May 28, 1172. Depending on the source, Casolo was arrested immediately after his act and brought to justice, or months later when the new Doge Sebastiano Ziani was in office. Accordingly, he was sentenced to death and executed either at the end of May / beginning of June or at the end of September 1172.

The entire process was part of a social upheaval in the course of which the popular assembly forfeited the right to elect the doge. The social and power-political changes within the leadership groups in Venice can only be partially recognized, especially since Venetian historiography has been downplaying these internal conflicts since the late Middle Ages in favor of an image of increasingly perfect social balance.

Casolo's deed led to the replacement of the doge election system, which until then had been based on a popular assembly, with a complicated electoral system that gradually added elements of randomness to prevent the domination of individual families. It also avoided the turmoil that had occurred again and again at the popular assemblies in which the parties tried to get their candidate through.

reception

Different versions of the storyline appeared immediately after the murder, but the earliest sources withhold the name of the perpetrator. Numerous contradictions have increased in the course of the history of reception until very recently. The contradictions range from the question of whether it was an individual perpetrator or a group, whether the perpetrator acted from this group or as the leader of the group, then again it is said that he committed the murder from the shadow of a house. It remains unclear whether the Doge escaped from the Doge's Palace on foot, by boat or even by gondola , whether he still reached the San Zaccaria Monastery or not, whether he died on the way there, or only hours later in the monastery. The murder weapon - sword or knife - also changes, some do not even mention the weapon, but only name the serious or fatal injury. A work by Irmgard Fees suggests that it was by no means a random perpetrator who killed the doge out of indignation, but a relative of the abbess of San Zaccaria. Only nuns from the group of leading families in Venice were accommodated there.

The Doge Andrea Dandolo reports in his Chronica brevis that after the “shattering” the Venetians called a popular assembly (“concionem publicam convocarunt”) “pro sua reformatione”. The doge could not withstand the "tanto furori" so that he left the palace ("descendit") and wanted to cross the sea ("per viam maris") to the monastery of San Zaccaria. On the way there he became “a quodam lethaliter vulneratus”, that is, he was 'fatally wounded by someone'. He could no longer move "imminente sibi morte", but a priest who went to him from the monastery took his confession from him ("sua peccata confessus est"). Then the Doge died (“ad Deum transvolavit”). Thereupon the dismayed people (“Quod cum divulgatum foret, afflictis afflictio addita est”) and the clergy buried the dead worthy.

The Cronica di Venexia detta di Enrico Dandolo from the late 14th century, the oldest vernacular chronicle of Venice, describes how the doge "Vidal Michiel" went to "Sen Zacharia" on Easter day, "secondo usança d'i suoi precessori" as was the custom among his predecessors, but he does not even mention the name of the assassin. He only thinks that the doge is "d'alguni suo 'citadini et iniqui homeni fu morto". Accordingly, there were several 'disgusting' or 'malicious' men. The subsequent tumult, which prevented an election for months, is only metapaphorically described as “unde la Terra fo in grande scomesseda”, which the editor translates as “sconquassamento”, “shock” or rather “shattering” - similar to Andrea Dandolo in terms of total defeat in the fight against Byzantium.

In 1502, Pietro Marcello said in his work, later translated into Volgare under the title Vite de'prencipi di Vinegia , that thousands died of an epidemic with the return of the fleet. When the people were called together for deliberation, the Doge was blamed and called a “traditore dela Republica”, a “traitor to the republic”. The doge, who saw his life threatened, had "segretamente" left the meeting and headed for San Zaccaria. There he met, “non sò chi”, “I don't know who”, who inflicted a huge wound on the Doge (“gli diede una grandissima ferita”). 'Some say', said Marcello, that the appointed Council of Ten was given the task of avenging the 'parricidio' (parricidio) and pursuing it with cruel torture ('crudel supplicio'), 'se alcuno havesse manomesso il supremo Magistrato ”if someone attacked the Doge.

Even the chronicle of Gian Giacomo Caroldo does not name the perpetrator. But this is also a single man, more precisely a cittadino . Accordingly, he became a "Cittadino assalito con l'arma nuda et ferito a morte". Hardly could a priest who was present there show him the “segno di penitenza”, the sign of repentance, and grant absolution . According to Caroldo, the Doge died on "XXVIJ di Maggio", on May 27th.

The Frankfurt lawyer Heinrich Kellner (1536–1589), who had studied in Padua , first describes the catastrophic defeat of the fleet under the leadership of the Doge or “Hertzog”, and: in the assembly “Rieffen why everyone should be beaten to death. Because now the good Hertzog did not apologize / and saw / how he was in danger of life and limb / he secretly lost himself from the gathering / crawled into S. Zacharie Kirchen / Allda met in one / the gift in such a stroke / that he died from it ”. Kellner also reports that some are of the opinion that the Council of Ten was created for the reasons mentioned (an incorrect assumption, since it was only founded in 1310).

In essential points, Alessandro Maria Vianoli describes differently in his Historia Veneta , which was published in Nuremberg in 1686 in a translation under the title Der Venetianischen Herthaben Leben / Government, and Dying / Von dem Erste Paulutio Anafesto an / bis on the now ruling Marcum Antonium Justiniani , the doge murder, also specifies the scene of the crime. But even he does not initially name a name. The doge had gone to him “called la Rasse” because he “wanted to go to Vespers in S. Zachariæ churches”. He was there "with such a swift push (as was done by a daring villain) out of the middle / that even those who accompanied him / were not aware of it / while he was still biting the door of the churches / from them Clergy there led into the closter / in which several hours afterwards he had ended the misery of his life / after 16 years of government /. ”His successor tried to avenge the murder,“ which he also soon made to work / by his done diligence the villain / who gave the stab at the heart / and who was / was discovered and hanged by the name of Marcus Casuol ”(p. 232).

In 1687 Jacob von Sandrart in his Opus Kurtze and increased description of the origin / recording / territories / and government of the world-famous republic of Venice sufficed to say that the Doge had been "killed by the revolted people as a traitor".

Another different version of the murder is provided by Johann Friedrich LeBret , who published his four-volume State History of the Republic of Venice from 1769 to 1777 , in which he stated in the first volume, published in 1769: “The Doge was accused of negligence; one shouted at him as the traitor of the fatherland, and whenever one of their nobles died of the plague, so often the people were armed with a new furious hatred against him, and they wanted him to pay for the misfortune of his fatherland with his head ... One entered the palace with an armed hand, and the doge, who saw himself too weak to withstand her fury, went out of the palace through the back door to save his life, and on the sea side the monastery of Heil . Zacharias to: but here too the furious mob pursued him, and one of the cheekiest stuck a dagger into his body. He was still trying, where possible, to reach the monastery: but a priest from the same met him, in whose arms he passed away. "

In his Il Palazzo ducale di Venezia from 1861, Francesco Zanotto reports that after the people's assembly in the Doge's Palace had not been calmed down, the Doge fled. He wanted to retire to the monastery in question, but a short distance from the monastery, "sopraggiunto da alcuni tra i più disperati, fu ucciso". So here it was 'some of the most desperate' who killed him.

Again in the Archivio Storico Italiano of 1843, p. 311, the name Marco Casolo was mentioned as the perpetrator. Giuseppe Cappelletti also named Marco Casolo as the murderer in the first volume of his work Storia della repubblica di Venezia dal suo principio sino al giorno d'oggi , published in 1850 , but he only gives “qualche cronaca” as the source. Also here he is not the murderer of Vitale Michiel II, but of Vitale Michiel I (1096–1102).

Samuele Romanin , the historian embedded in the wider historical context, reported more precisely , who presented this epoch in 1854 in the second of ten volumes of his Storia documentata di Venezia . He also gives the name of the perpetrator, but does not name its source. Romanin first describes the doge's return, the defeat, the disease that was brought in, and the doge's attempt to justify the people's assembly. The doge, who thought he was lost, tried to flee to the said Zacharias monastery, but was caught up by 'some of the most furious' ("alcuni dei più arrabbiati") and murdered near the monastery (p. 89). The successor of the murdered, the Doge Sebastiano Ziani , had Marco Casolo identified as the perpetrator as his first official act and brought out of his hiding place. His house on Calle delle Rasse, between the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Church of S. Filippo e Giacomo, as the author adds in a footnote, was about to be demolished. The perpetrator was hanged ("impeso alle forche"). In addition, it was decreed that his house should never be rebuilt in stone again. In addition, future doges should never again take the route across the Riva on their traditional route to San Zaccaria , but rather through the "via de 'santi Filippo e Giacomo".

Within a very short time, Marco Casolo also found its way into the lexicons , such as the Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni ... , occasionally taken verbatim from Romanine. The author of a thematically rather remote publication, namely in Karl von Holteis For the cemetery of the evangelical community in Gratz in Styria , a reference to a source appears in a footnote: “Marini Sanuti vite dei duchi di Venezia, by Muratori, op. Cit., Col. 455 "

In some respects Heinrich Kretschmayr presented the process differently in the first volume of his three-volume history of Venice in 1905 : “In an excited popular assembly, wild curses were loud against him [the Doge]. Threatened in life and limb, abandoned by his councilors, who carefully searched the distance, he fled in a boat against S. Zaccaria. He was stabbed to death in front of the church by a Marco Casolo. It was on 27/28. May 1172. He also found his resting place in S. Zaccaria. The murderer was arrested and hanged ”. The situation is different again in the Prussian Yearbooks of 1906, where it says on p. 39: "Fleeing on a gondola, Vitale was stabbed to death by a certain Marco Casolo in front of the church of S. Zaccaria."

Margarete Merores speculated in an essay in 1926 about whether Casulo was possibly not “an unknown Popolane”, but a member of the “tribuni anteriores”. Merores did not substantiate her assumption, but Gino Benzoni joined her in his Storia di Venezia. L'età del comune 1992. For Giorgio Cracco, on the other hand, Casulo 1967 was more an expression of a struggle between social groups, which was mainly carried out by the rising families, possibly even acting on behalf. In Pierre Cabanes' Histoire de l'Adriatique , published in 2001, Casulo was a “representative typique de ce popolo vecchio, qui avait tout perdu”, a typical representative of the popolo vecchio who had lost everything. For Cyril Mango , however, it's just “tempting to believe that the murderer, Marco Casulo, belonged to that group of merchants in the east who had lost their property, especially considering that members of the same family are attested in the years that followed as being temporarily or permanently in Constantinople or the ports of the empire ".

Andrea Da Mosto points out in his overview work I dogi di Venezia nella vita pubblica e privata , published several times since 1939 and most recently in 1983 , that Andrea Dandolo's chronicle knows nothing of a violent death of the Doge, but other chronicles - he does not name any concrete works - would be named by Marco Casolo, both in the murder of Vitale Michiel I and Vitale Michiel II (p. 57 and 64). Mario Hellmann, for his part, knows in San Nicolò di Lido nella storia, nella cronaca, nell'arte from 1968 that Casolo was the leader of the group that murdered the Doge (p. 33), as did Claudio Rendina in his opus I dogi. Storia e segreti from 1984.

In his simplistic History of Venice, which largely ignores the historiographical discourse , John Julius Norwich depicts the murder in a highly imaginative way . Immediately after his return in mid-May 1172, the Doge called a people's assembly with him. "He was heard in tight-lipped silence," claims Norwich. The doge brought forward the news of the defeat, but what could not be forgiven, he just "to have brought back the plague". "The assembly itself rose up against him; and though outside the palace a mob had gathered and was even now calling for his blood, Vitale Michiel saw that he must flee. Slipping out through a side-door, he hurried along the Riva towards the convent of S. Zaccaria. He never reached it. The way to S. Zaccaria led over the Ponte della Paglia and then, 100 yards or so further along the quay, up a narrow alley known as the calle delle Rasse. Just as he was about to turn the corner, he was set upon by one of the mob who sprang out from the shadows of a neighboring house and stabbed him to death. It is hard to not feel sorry for Vitale Michiel ”, the author concludes pathetically.

In Thomas F. Maddens Venice. A New History , in 2012 the murderer was again the scapegoat for the revenge of the people, who, however, could not wash off their guilt (through the execution). Romanin, on the other hand, described the punishment of Casolo as the first official act of the successor of the murdered man.

Irmgard Fees, on the other hand, stuck to the sources much more strictly in 1998 in her work on the nuns of San Zaccaria. She was able to prove that Casota Casolo came from the family of Marco Casolo and that this abbess had a brother named Marco Casolo. Only women from the group of leading families in Venice were accommodated as nuns in the monastery.

In 2010, Marco Pozza, in his article on the Doge in Volume 74 of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, offered fewer explanations than the brief information in the early chronicles. According to him, the fleet did not arrive in Venice in mid-May 1172, but only 'a few days' before the attack. During the popular assembly there was severe criticism, the consiglieri abandoned the doge, and from a rebel (“facinoroso”) named Marco Casulo or Casolo “fu colpito” (“was beaten”) - the author adds in brackets to the name “ (poi giustiziato) ”, meaning '(later executed)' - and died shortly afterwards of serious injuries near the church of San Zaccaria.

Remarks

1. ^ Digitized version of the Muratori Edition, Milan 1728 (= Rerum Italicarum Scriptores , 12), p. 296.
2. ^ Roberto Pesce (Ed.): Cronica di Venexia detta di Enrico Dandolo. Origini - 1362 , Centro di Studi Medievali e Rinascimentali "Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna", Venice 2010, p. 66 and p. 66, note 287.
3. ↑ Pietro Marcello : Vite de'prencipi di Vinegia in the translation of Lodovico Domenichi, Marcolini, 1558, p 75 f. ( Digitized version ).
4. ↑ Șerban V. Marin (Ed.): Gian Giacomo Caroldo. Istorii Veneţiene , Vol. I: De la originile Cetăţii la moartea dogelui Giacopo Tiepolo (1249) , Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Bucharest 2008, p. 147. ( online ).
5. ↑ Heinrich Kellner : Chronica that is Warhaffte actual and short description, all life in Venice , Frankfurt 1574, p. 30v ( digitized, p. 30v ).
6. ↑ Alessandro Maria Vianoli : Der Venetianischen Herthaben life / government, and withering / from the first Paulutio Anafesto an / bit on the now-ruling Marcum Antonium Justiniani , Nuremberg 1686, p. 228 f. ( Digitized version ).
7. ↑ Jacob von Sandrart : Kurtze and increased description of the origin / recording / areas / and government of the world famous Republick Venice , Nuremberg 1687, p. 36 ( digitized, p. 36 ).
8. ↑ Johann Friedrich LeBret: State history of the Republic of Venice, from its origins to our times, in which the text of the abbot L'Augier is the basis, but its errors are corrected, the incidents are presented in certain and from real sources, and after a Ordered in the correct time order, at the same time new additions, from the spirit of the Venetian laws, and secular and ecclesiastical affairs, from the internal state constitution, its systematic changes and the development of the aristocratic government from one century to another , 4 vols., Johann Friedrich Hartknoch , Riga and Leipzig 1769–1777, Vol. 1, Leipzig and Riga 1769, p. 334 ( digitized version ).
9. ↑ Francesco Zanotto: Il Palazzo ducale di Venezia , Vol. 4, Venice 1861, p. 102 ( digitized version ).
10. ^ Giuseppe Cappelletti: Storia della repubblica di Venezia dal suo principio sino al giorno d'oggi , vol. 1, Antenelli, Venice 1850, p. 418 ( digitized version ).
11. ^ Samuele Romanin : Storia documentata di Venezia , 10 vols., Pietro Naratovich, Venice 1853–1861 (2nd edition 1912–1921, reprint Venice 1972), vol. 2, Venice 1854, p. 89 (murder of the Doge) and p 96 (Attribution and prosecution) ( digitized version ).
12. ↑ Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni ... , Vol. 112, Venice 1858, p. 79.
13. ↑ Karl von Holtei : For the cemetery of the evangelical community in Gratz in Styria , Braunschweig, Vienna and Graz 1857, p. 606.
14. ↑ Heinrich Kretschmayr : History of Venice , 3 vol., Vol. 1, Gotha 1905, p. 257 ( digitized , pages 48 to 186 are missing!).
15. ↑ Margarete Merores : The Venetian nobility. A contribution to social history , in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 19 (1926) 193–237, here: p. 220 f.
16. ^ Gino Benzoni : Storia di Venezia. L'età del comune , Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1992, p. 128, note 196.
17. ^ Giorgio Cracco : Società e stato nel Medioevo Veneziano , Olschki, 1967, p. 26.
18. ↑ Pierre Cabanes: Histoire de l'Adriatique Seuil, 2001, p. 185.
19. ^ Constantinople and its hinterland. Papers from the Twenty-seventh Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Oxford, April 1993 , Variorum, 1995, p. 238.
20. ↑ Claudio Rendina : dogi I. Storia e segreti , Newton Compton, 1984, p. 124 f.
21. ^ John Julius Norwich : A History of Venice , Penguin, London 2003.
22. ^ Thomas F. Madden : Venice. A New History , Penguin, 2012.
23. ↑ Irmgard Fees : Le monache di San Zaccaria a Venezia nei secoli XII e XIII , Centro tedesco di studi veneziani, Venice 1998, p. 6.
24. ↑ Marco Pozza:  Michiel, Vitale. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 74:  Messi – Miraglia. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2010.