192 THE STONES OF VENICE

the Byzantine influence repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national custom and festival; acted grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and goodhumour. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the beginning of this chapter,¹ is one instance out of multitudes. Another, more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado, and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on “Fat Thursday” sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy: and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the Doge and the Senate attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish, and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.*

§ 75. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again: it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter,² that the Venetians were

* The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.

¹ [See above, p. 141. With what is here said of Venetian grotesque, compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. Appendix 1, § 3.]

² [i.e. of the preceding volume: see § 30.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]