Chapter 17

The French Crusaders had engaged the Venetians to take them to the Holy Land, but did not assemble at Venice at the time appointed, nor had they the money ready to pay for their transport. The Venetians, being men of business, demanded cash down; and so the favourable time for reaching Syria was allowed to pass without the expedition setting forth. Provisions and ships had been prepared, and the Venetians, wishing to use them, with the consent of Doge Enrico Dandolo, proposed to the French an attack on Zara, part of the booty to be used to pay for their passage. The attack took place on November 10, 1202, and the French stayed till April 7, 1203. The Venetians took all the booty, and threw down the wall on the seaward side, but it was restored shortly after. They also sent colonists to Zara after a rebellion and a reconquest in 1243.

The Venetian counts were generally citizens of Venice, and had no defined term of rule. In 1311 the city again returned to the Hungarians, and the result was the siege of 1312-1313, which ended in the condottiere Dalmasio, who was besieging, being offered the countship by the ban of Dalmatia and Croatia. To prevent this the Venetians offered to leave the Zaratines free to choose their own count, only reserving the right of confirmation. In 1345 Zara rebelled for the seventh time, when Andrea Dandolo was doge, and in consequence a long siege commenced on August 12. The Venetians had at Nona 20,000 men, horse and foot, who devastated the fields for three days and set fire to the villages; the countrymen fled to the city, so that there were more than 20,000 within the walls, of whom 6,000 only were armed. On August 30 they closed the port with a chain made of thirteen beams, and on September 1 sent an envoy to Andrew, king of Naples, to ask for aid. On the 8th they received letters from the King of Hungary promising help, and raised the Hungarian flag. The king sent the bani of Bosnia and Croatia to help them, but the Venetian senate bought the rescuers off! In January, 1346, the Venetians took the Castle of S. Damian and broke the chain of the port. The Venetian trenches consisted of a bastion 200 yards long and 100 yards broad built of wood on three sides. On the east it had ten towers, as many on the west, and fourteen on the north, being open on the south towards the fleet. They now controlled 25,000 men. On June 2, Ladislas of Hungary came to help the besieged, and encamped at Zemonico, seven miles away, with 100,000 cavalry. On July 10 he advanced close to the city with 2,000 of his best men. The citizens welcomed him with much joy, and the next day sent legates with great solemnity to offer him the keys of the city. On the 16th he attacked the bastion. On the 20th, Bernardo, patriarch of Aquileia, entered the city; but the king held aloof. The Venetians tried in vain to make terms, and the Zaratines attacked the bastion with good heart, burning one of the towers; but the Hungarians only looked on while the Venetians repelled the assault. The king's behaviour is mysterious. On July 30 he returned to Vrana, and so to Hungary; and, although his promised envoys went to Venice, they went for other purposes. He appears to have been using Zara as a pawn in some great game. Famine obliged the Zaratines to surrender, and the Venetians entered the city on December 21, 1347, the war having lasted two years and six months, and having cost the Republic from 40,000 to 60,000 ducats a month for soldiers' pay alone, without counting the shipping. Eleven years later Zara again became Hungarian, but was finally ceded to Venice in 1413 by the peace of Trieste.

The dialect spoken in the city is pure Venetian, and the municipality is the only Italian one in Dalmatia. Zara is still the capital, and the diet meets in the city. Here, too, are the only Italian schools in the province, the Slav majority in most places exercising its power to veto everything Italian. The only flourishing industry is the manufacture of maraschino, of which 300,000 bottles are exported annually. The cherries, which are the raw material, are imported from Sebenico, Almissa, and Poljica, near Spalato. The streets are narrow and impossible for carriage traffic; merchandise is put upon long narrow carts, with long poles projecting in front and cross-pieces at the end; the cart is then pushed and pulled by several men. The population is 13,000, and is increased by many country people in the mornings, who come to market, so that the streets and piazzas are crowded with a most distracting variety of costumes. Both men and girls from the country wear little red caps. The men have great light-coloured woollen coats which they throw over their shoulders without putting their arms in, light shirts, sometimes with an embroidered jacket, trousers with embroidery round the pocket-holes (which are in front of the thigh) and a split at the lower part of the side which is buttoned up. They sometimes have a sash round the waist with a knife. The women wear leggings woven roughly in patterns like the wrong side of a tapestry curtain, and shoes somewhat the shape of gondolas, thick skirts with patterned aprons, and small waistcoat-like jackets. Their hair is plaited round the head. The dress of the townspeople is less individual; the head is covered with a white or coloured kerchief, the dress is frequently black, and the modern blouse is sometimes seen. It is interesting to watch the boatloads of country-folk arriving either by the Porta Terra Ferma, close to which are steps and a small harbour, or on the quay by the Porta Marina. Lambs and kids are brought alive and killed and skinned on the quay, the women holding pots or jugs to catch the blood, which they seem to think valuable. The wall of the quay was being rebuilt when we were there the second time, and a diver was working at it. It looked odd to see the stones and buckets of cement lowered into the water with ropes.

There are two antique columns still erect: one, fluted, is in the Piazza S. Simeone, set up in 1729, and the other is in the Piazza dell' Erbe; it was used as a pillory, and the chains with the iron collars still hang to it, having, by centuries of friction, cut deep-curved grooves in the marble with swinging to and fro. This column also has sockets for the insertion of flagstaffs, and attached to it is a much-worn piece of eighth-century sculpture, with the motif of an ornamented cross beneath an arch fastened with clamps. The chroniclers of the seventeenth century record that near this place several drums of columns projected from the earth, and that two entire pillars were erect and united by a piece of the architrave. One was moved to S. Simeone, near to which Mr. T.G. Jackson saw in 1884 the base of a Roman arch excavated beneath the level of the piazza. Other similar fragments have been used in the foundations of S. Donato.

In the year 380 a bishop of Zara (Felix) is mentioned for the first time. S. Donatus is reckoned the fourth bishop, Andrew and Sabinianus (who are shown on a reliquary with Felix) traditionally preceding him. As his episcopate lasted into the ninth century it is evident that the list is not complete. His diplomatic mission took him either to Diedenhofen or Aachen and then to Constantinople, where he had the relics of S. Anastasia given him. It is probable that the sight of the great churches which he saw during his journeys suggested the plan of S. Donato, which was originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Porphyrogenitus compares it to S. Sophia, Constantinople, which seems strange in a Byzantine. It is circular in plan, about 60 ft. in diameter. Six gigantic piers, wider than the arches which rest upon them, placed ten feet from the wall, sustain a barrel vault, about 28 ft. high, over the ambulatory, which has strengthening arches. The piers of the upper story sustained the drum of a cupola which no longer exists. Opposite the entrance are three vaulted apses, the central one larger and deeper than the others and with four windows, the others having but one each; and these apses are repeated above, without the windows. In front of them are two smooth columns of Oriental yellow marble 7 ft. round, in place of piers, and thinner columns cut short occupy the same relative place above. The caps are antique and a good deal damaged. Three are composite like the arch of Septimius Severus, and one is Corinthian. The roof is now tiled. A Roman inscription on the fourth pilaster seems to indicate that there was a great temple to Augusta Livia, wife of Augustus, here; and when the floor level was lowered in 1888 a number of inscriptions were found, and portions of carved friezes and pillars used as foundation material and simply laid on the pavement of the Roman forum. Among these were portions of columns resembling both of the two still upright. Part of a flight of steps was also found, which may have been part of the sub-structure of the temple. Fragments of four different buildings have been recognised. Two stairs have served the upper story of the church--an early one with carved hood mould of the ninth century to the external door, now blocked up, and a second from the interior, which lands in a vestibule where some early mediæval carvings are arranged. The upper portion is a double flight, arranged, perhaps, to use when this stair was a "Scala Santa" ascended by the faithful on their knees, whereby they gained the same indulgences as were attached to the Scala Santa at Rome. The building was a military magazine in 1649, again from 1798 to 1877, and then a wine-store till, in 1888, the museum was founded. In 1890-1891 the ancient entrance-door was found behind the eighteenth-century additions. It is a simple square-headed door with semicircular opening above, made of Roman uncarved material, with consecration-crosses sunk in the lintel and base of the right-hand jamb; to the right and left of the lintel a little above it are two simple brackets with crosses on them. The lintel itself is double, and treated as if it were wood. The cill was two feet below the ground level.

The museum contains Roman and pre-Roman antiquities, inscriptions, lamps, carved fragments, coins, bronze and glass vessels, pottery, &c.; mediæval fragments, carved and gilded panels, lanterns and ensigns from Venetian galleys, a crozier of Limoges work of the thirteenth century found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, arms and carvings of the Renaissance period, &c. But perhaps the most interesting things are the plans of the early churches which have either been destroyed or very much altered, and the early mediæval carvings; among these are two very curious slabs with figures under arches, one of which was found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, while the other, closely resembling it in style, came from S. Domenico. The former shows the Flight into Egypt and the Massacre of the Innocents; the latter the Nativity and Adoration of the Kings. They probably formed part of a chancel enclosure. There are also fragments of ciboria, altar frontals, or sarcophagi, while a column sawn in two has furnished decorated jambs to the door of the upper church. On a lintel of the early church of S. Lorenzo is a Christ in a mandorla, supported by angels with a sacred tree on each side and a griffin beyond; a rough astragal moulding surrounds the subject. The jambs have a rough arabesque scroll, terminating in a two-headed bird. These carvings are all of the ninth century.

The church of S. Lorenzo is in the courtyard of the military command building on the Piazza dei Signori. The sides are in courts entered from the Calle Larga and Via del Teatro Vecchio. It has a nave and aisles about 21 ft. long and about 14 ft. broad, with four pillars, springing from which are three unmoulded arches. The arches are stilted, and at the height of the real springing an impost projects in profile. The central compartment has a wagon vault, the other two quadripartite vaults. The aisles have semi-domes running north and south, resting on cross arches, with squinches in the corners. The choir has two stories, the lower with three square-ended apses, and entered by a door flanked by pillars. The walls which separate the apses ran up to a tower. The vault is a transverse wagon pierced by wagon vaults at right angles. The architecture is very simple, and shows Byzantine influence, but the construction is hidden by plastering. The nave caps are debased Corinthian, with ornamented volutes and one row of flat acanthus-leaves, the abacus being square. The front leaf in each shows a half-length of a male figure with nimbus, his arms raised as if in prayer, the body hidden by a shorter loaf. The columns are of different sizes, but the caps are all the same. The entrance door towards the Calle Larga has a simply moulded round arch; the other has been mentioned as being in S. Donato. The upper story of the choir has pillars with carved caps supporting an arch of two orders, now built up, formerly no doubt an oratory. The church is mentioned in a document of 919.

S. Domenico (which no longer exists) was of somewhat the same character; but the choir was without dividing walls, and thus became an upper church. It was only 21 ft. square and had three columns on each side, the last close to the wall. The vaults were domically quadripartite, springing from pilasters which rested on the caps. The arcade was round-arched, the central and right-hand apses were square-ended, and the left had a semicircular niche. The under church was wagon-vaulted without architectural features. The foundation of a chapel was found on the Riva Nuova with five niches of a six-niched circle and an entrance passage in the sixth, which turned at right angles to the north to reach the street. In the angle thus formed between the entrance and the main building a sarcophagus stood. This circular-niched plan occurs elsewhere in Dalmatia, as in the baptistery here, and SS. Trinita at Spalato, and the dimensions are generally so nearly the same as to suggest some common original design. S. Pietro Vecchio is considered to be the oldest church in Zara. It is now desecrated, but was used as a sacristy to the fourteenth-century church of S. Andrea, belonging to the Fishers' Confraternity, the sixteenth-century apse of which projected into the nave as far as the first pillar. It was cleared out by order of the Central Commission in 1886. It is about 38 ft. long by 19 ft. broad, and is built of ancient fragments with very little architectural character. One of the two columns bears a Roman inscription, and both have crosses cut in them. One of the caps is a damaged antique; the other is an antique base upside down; neither column has any base. The church is an irregular rectangle in plan, divided into two naves which end in apses by two pillars and a pier. The pilasters are not upright, the arches are deformed, and the two altar niches have half-cupola vaults on a rectangular plan, with arches thrown across the corners. There are two original doors, both built up. The pier between the two apses has a round-arched niche in it. The church is mentioned in 918 in the will of Prior Andrea.

There was a cathedral here in very early times, referred to in a will of 908 as S. Anastasia. It was originally S. Pietro, and the dedication was changed when the relics of S. Anastasia which S. Donato brought from Constantinople and placed in the church of the Holy Trinity were transferred to the cathedral. This church was destroyed by the Venetians in 1202, but probably portions of it were worked up in the new building which the Crusaders are said to have erected as a votive church after the pope had excommunicated them all for the sack of Zara. This seems, however, a legend, since the new building was not consecrated till May 27, 1285, the Archbishop Lorenzo Periandro officiating, assisted by the Metropolitan of Spalato and the suffragan bishops of both dioceses. On the vault of the ciborium and on the jamb of the main door are inscriptions, dated respectively 1332 and 1324, recording their erection by "Joannis de Bvtvane, archiep: Jadren." Certain portions show by their style that additions and alterations were made, still later. The length is 170 ft. and the width 65 ft.

The façade has three doors, and is divided by pilaster strips which emphasise the width of the nave; at either side of the central door is a shallow recess filling the space between it and the pilaster strips. The door itself has spiral and simple colonnettes in the jambs, with corresponding arch moulds of four orders. In the tympanum is a later relief of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with two saints, beneath a pointed trefoil arcade; and on brackets at the sides are four figures of Apostles. On the side doors the tympana have the Agnus Dei, and that to the left has the Annunciation on brackets, one figure on each side of the door. The colonnettes and arch moulds are both twisted in this door; in that to the right they are plain; the figures on brackets are similar. The lintels and jambs have elaborate arabesque scrolls, which remind one of Provençal Romanesque ornament. The lower part of the wall has courses of pinkish marble among the white, and bands of inlaid ornament decorate both the wall and the campanile. Above the string course over the doorways is a Romanesque-looking arcade with another which fills the slope of the aisle walls, with animals standing at the ends. The central portion has a restored wheel-window with radiating colonnettes and round arches, and above it in the gable is another with cusped tracery of a later date; round this an arcading ramps as at the end of the aisles, and the lower rose is flanked by arcading in two stages arched only in the upper one. Both of these arcadings have coupled colonnettes, and are manifestly much later than the lower part of the façade. The walls of the north aisle have an arcading separated into groups by pilasters, echoing the internal divisions, with a gallery above, like S. Nicola, Bari, and others of the Apulian churches. A cornice of corbelled arches crowns the nave wall. The campanile was commenced in 1449 by Archbishop Lorenzo Venier, and carried up by Archbishop Matteo Valaresso in 1460 to the height from which Mr. T.G. Jackson completed it. It has five stories and an octagonal pyramidal termination. The three upper stories have two window openings in each, the lowest being single lights, while the upper two have a central colonnette and two stilted round arches beneath a containing arch. A string with corbelled arches below divides the stories, and the square portion terminates with a balustrade in the usual manner.

The inside was altered in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The nave arcade, which continues to the apse, consists of ten round arches on each side resting alternately on columns and piers with columns attached which have cushion caps. Some of the columns are spirally fluted and have decadent antique caps. Some are cipollino, and two are apparently cut from antique columns, one having four shafts attached to the central cylindrical mass, and the corresponding one on the other side being panelled, with octagonal colonnettes attached. The pier at the choir steps has two small columns instead of one. Two bays of the aisles equal one bay of the nave, and pilasters run up from the piers, dividing the triforium arches into groups of six, on the tops of which figures stand. The triforium arcade has round arches with coupled colonnettes of red marble on the face and varied caps; the voussoirs are alternately red and grey; and a string with carved leaf pattern, much like that at Traù, runs along the triforium, between the nave arcade and the balustrade. The nave arcade terminates at each end with a single arch. The apse has a marble seat running round it, with the bishop's seat in the centre raised on several steps. It has exactly the same ornament on its sides as is on the font in the baptistery. The wall is sheeted with red marble. The ciborium has pointed arches resting upon Corinthianising caps and columns of cipollino carved in coffered patterns or spiral and zigzag channelling; a cornice of acanthus-leaves runs above the arches. It was erected by Archbishop Butuane, consecrated in 1332, and restored in 1901-1902. The presbytery pavement is of 1336. The stalls, once painted and gilt, are very fine examples of Venetian-Gothic wood carving, and were partly made for Archbishop Biagio Molin in 1420-1427, whose arms are carved on them; but those of his predecessor and successor, and those of Valaresso, under whom the work was probably completed, also appear. Between the stalls, elaborately pierced and carved scroll-work runs up to the canopy level, where little figures stand in niches. Above the canopies, which are slightly pointed fluted shells, and separated from them by curious ogee-shaped gables, are thirty-six half-length figures of prophets, emergent from scrolls and holding labels. Above one of the side altars are six small Carpaccios on panel much repainted--the one with the figure of S. Martin bears his signature; also a Palma Giovine and an Andrea Schiavone.

Beneath the step of the high-altar is the sarcophagus of Oriental marble, with porphyry cover, of the three saints, Agape, Chionia, and Irene, whose remains are interred in the crypt. The crypt is entered by two flights of stairs from the sides of the choir. It is of an irregular shape, about 70 ft. long, 23 ft. broad, and 15 ft. high. Eastwards it suddenly broadens out to a width of 33 ft. and terminates in a semicircle. In this apse there are three windows. Two rows of nine columns extend to just above the point where the change in width begins, and four more follow the external curve of the wall. These support quadripartite vaulting. The columns have heavy square caps and square bases. In one is a grated aperture as if for relics. The sarcophagus altar has a much worn representation of the Martyrdom of Sant' Anastasia, with her name inscribed in Lombardic letters between two foliage scrolls. Fragments of early work are visible here and there, pointing to the reconstruction of the crypt. It is very dark, and is now used as a store, having become too damp for ritual purposes.

The treasury contains some exceedingly interesting objects, and is rich in reliquaries. It is kept in the wall between the body of the cathedral and the baptistery in a rather evil-smelling vault, which opens into the latter building. The most ancient reliquary, once belonging to the cathedral at Grado, is that of Sant' Orontius; it contains a portion of his head, and is work of the eleventh century, material of an earlier date having been used in its construction. Upon the sides and front is an arcade with alternate twisted and fluted columns, beneath which are figures of saints robed in the Greek manner, and holding Benedictional crosses. The names of the saints, inscribed in mixed Latin and Greek letters, are Sabinianus, Felix, Vitalis, Satorus, Repositus, Septimus, Januarius, Arotatius, Onoratus, and Fortunatianus. On the back is a plate inscribed in Roman letters: "[Symbol: maltese cross] Sergivs F. Mai Nepos zallae fecit hanc capsam sco capiti Arontii Martins."[1]