292 APPENDIX, 11

their sons and their wives before their eyes, they would not, to save them, break their faith with the Greek emperor.” The story may or may not be true, but its relation by the Princess proves the tone of feeling which characterized the intercourse between the two nations.

Many privileges were granted by the Greek emperor to the Venetians after this victory, especially the immunity in all towns in his dominions from customs and taxes of whatever kind; so that we may date a vast increase in the extent of Venetian commerce from this victory of Faliero’s. A scarcely less important favour, and one still more gratifying to the Venetian pride, was the command that all the citizens of Amalfi,* who occupied any magazines, warehouses, or shops in any city of the Greek dominions, should pay each man three “iperperi”¹ to the church of St. Mark at Venice every year. To these and other substantial advantages the emperor added some vain Greek title of honour, to be borne by the doge and the patriarch of Grado.²

[An incomplete passage follows, giving further historical notes on the Doge’s reign.]

Both the tombs are formed [reference to intended plate] of six panels between three pillars; but in the dogaressa’s tomb (on the right of the door, looking out) the shafts have all the convex, flattish, richly-carved Byzantine capitals in white marble, carried-the two midmost ones-by circular shafts of gray marble with red bases of the profile [another similar reference] highly curious and rude.³

§ 4. Arnoldo Tentonino (A.D. 1300: Frari)⁴

We must now surrender the time necessary for the somewhat long traject to the church of the Frari. Resolutely resisting the temptations which nearly every object in that church holds out to us, we will go straight to the south transept, and into the middle chapel of the three small ones which face us, on the right of the choir.† Some twenty feet above our heads, on each side of us, a Gothic tomb is attached to the walls; set so high indeed that the hasty visitor hardly raises his head to look at either of them, and in the ordinary Venetian guide-books they are not even so much as named. They are, nevertheless, of all the tombs in the church, those which best deserve our regard.

That on our left as we enter in, on the northern wall, is the earliest, and

* For riches of Amalfi at this time, vide Filiasi, i. 381, 382.

† The entire east end of the church is formed by seven chapels, counting the choir as one. We enter the second of these, counting from right to left (or from south to north).

¹ [The hyperperum is defined in the documents as equal to “trees solidos argenteos.”]

² [The title was “Imperial Protosebastos.” Particulars of the Golden Bull of the Emperor Alexius, whereby these privileges and dignities were conferred on the Venetians, may be read in ch. iii. of F. C. Hodgson’s Early History of Venice (1901).]

³ [Some details from these tombs are given in Plate 10; see above, pp. 282, 283.]

⁴ [This is the tomb already more briefly described, as that of a nameless knight, in ch. ii. § 57: see above, p. 91.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]