Venice

Who holds it

Name

Enrico Dandolo

Title

Doge

Since

June 1192

Confidence

high

Lord in 1200

The commune under Doge Enrico Dandolo (see Venice).

Charter

No lord's charter: the commune's authority rests on the doge's oath (promissione, 1192), the councils and custom; Byzantine chrysobulls (1082, renewed November 1198) and the Pactum Lotharii (840) define its rights abroad and its bounds.

Council

Doge, Minor Council of the doge's councillors, Great Council (Maggior Consiglio), the Forty (Quarantia), and the people's assembly (concio) in San Marco; judges and the commune's attorneys (avogadori).

Communities

Merchants of the Lombard and German towns; Greeks; the Venetian quarters abroad in Constantinople, Acre and Tyre. Whether a Jewish community lived in the city itself in 1200 is not pinned.

Fairs and markets

The Ascension feast with the doge's marriage to the sea (Sensa) is already the city's great festival [fair]; the Rialto market runs all year.

Militia

Service by parish in the fleet; no carroccio.

Walls and castle

No city wall; the lagoon and the forts at the harbour mouths (lidi) defend it.

Trade and crafts

Long-distance shipping to Constantinople, the Levant, Egypt and the Adriatic; salt; shipbuilding; glass; the river trade up the Po, Adige and Brenta; money-changing at the Rialto.

Where the sources disagree

On the map: The city's own ground is the islands; the seeds stand for the Rialto islands, Murano and Burano.

Primary sources for Venice

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the bishops of Salona and Split, by Thomas the Archdeacon, Thomas of Split (about 1266). Written two generations later by a Split churchman born about 1200. Read online
• History of the doges of Venice (about 1229, with a continuation). The earliest surviving Venetian narrative close to the events. Read online
• The Conquest of Constantinople, Robert de Clari, knight of Picardy (about 1205 to 1216). A rank-and-file crusader's account that begins with the preaching of the crusade and the taking of the cross in 1199 to 1200 by the counts of Flanders, Blois and Champagne and by the Picard lords, among them Peter of Amiens, Robert's own lord, then the negotiations with Venice. Read online
• The Conquest of Constantinople (Villehardouin), Geoffrey of Villehardouin (about 1207 to 1213). Opens with the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly and the tournament at Ecry (28 November 1199) where Theobald III of Champagne and Louis of Blois took the cross, then the taking of the cross by Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of Saint-Pol, Geoffrey of Perche and others through early 1200, the assemblies at Soissons and Compiegne in 1200, and the six envoys sent to Venice in the winter of 1200 to 1201. Read online
• The Registers of Pope Innocent III for 1199 to 1201, Innocent III and the papal chancery (22 February 1199 to 21 February 1201). The pope's outgoing letters for the year, in his chancery's own copy, touching nearly every realm in the atlas. Read online
• Charters of the kingdom of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, volume 2, 1101 to 1200 (documents of 1101 to 1200, edited 1904). The Croatian and Dalmatian charters to 1200: the acts of Duke Andrew as lord of Croatia and Dalmatia (1197 to 1204), the Hungarian kings' grants, the Templars and the bishops of Zagreb, Split, Zadar and Trogir, the communal statutes of the coastal towns, and the papal letters of 1200 to Emeric about Ban Kulin of Bosnia and heresy. Read online
• Documents on the Early Commercial and Political History of Venice, including the Partitio Romaniae of 1204 (documents 814 to 1299, edited by G. L. F. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, 3 vols (Vienna, 1856 to 1857)). Volume 1 (814 to 1205) prints Venice's treaties with Byzantium, the chrysobull of 1198 to Venice with its list of imperial provinces, the Venetian treaty with the crusaders of April 1201, and the Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae of late 1204, which divides the Empire by its fiscal districts and so records the provincial structure (themes, episkepseis, estates) that was in place in 1200. Read online
• Greek Acts and Documents of the Middle Ages, Sacred and Secular (documents of the 9th to 15th centuries, edited by F. Miklosich and J. Muller, 6 vols (Vienna, 1860 to 1890)). Volume 3 (Acta et diplomata res Graecas Italasque illustrantia, 1865) prints the imperial chrysobulls to Venice, including Alexios III's of November 1198 with its list of the provinces and towns of the Empire where Venetians traded, the best single picture of the imperial provinces as they stood on 1 January 1200, together with the Pisan and Genoese privileges. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Poland, Hungary and the Adriatic.