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94 THE STONES OF VENICE II. PRIDE OF STATE
one hundred and fifty years later, a Venetian noble, a future Doge, submitted to a degradation, of which the current report among his people was, that he had crept on his hands and knees from beneath the Pontiff’s table to his feet, and had been spurned as a “dog” by the cardinals present.
§ 60. There are two principal conclusions to be drawn from this: the obvious one respecting the insolence of the Papal dominion in the thirteenth century;1 the second, that there were probably most deep piety and humility in the character of the man who could submit to this insolence for the sake of a benefit to his country. Probably no motive would have been strong enough to obtain such a sacrifice from most men, however unselfish; but it was, without doubt, made easier to Dandolo by his profound reverence for the Pontifical office; a reverence which, however we may now esteem those who claimed it, could not but have been felt by nearly all good and faithful men at the time of which we are speaking. This is the main point which I wish the reader to remember as we look at his tomb, this, and the result of it,-that, some years afterwards, when he was seated on the throne which his piety had saved, “there were sixty princes’ ambassadors in Venice at the same time, requesting the judgment of the Senate on matters of various concernment, so great was the fame of the uncorrupted justice of the Fathers.”*
Observe, there are no Virtues on this tomb. Nothing but religious history or symbols; the Death of the Virgin in front, and the types of St. Mark and St. John at the extremities.
§ 61. Of the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark’s, I have spoken before.2 It is one of the first in Venice which presents, in the canopy, the Pisan idea of angels withdrawing curtains, as of a couch, to look down upon the dead. The sarcophagus is richly decorated with flower-work: the
* Tentori, vi. 142, i. 157.
1 [Clement V. was Pope 1305-1314.]
2 [Vol.IX. pp. 319, 375; Vol. X. pp. 86, 363.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
