The Bride of the Sea, seen from the distance, seems to rise like a softly coloured pearl from the misty embrace of the waters, and the effect is one of such awesome charm that, for a while, the mind can hardly carry the suggestions that crowd in upon it. What Venice contains! Is there any city in the world, save only Rome and Jerusalem—the cradle and the House—that can compare with that jewel-case?
The home, in one way or another, of Titian, Tintoretto, Giorgione, Veronese, and Barbari—the story of Venice is so illuminated with the glory of her children that its tragedy is almost lost in it, as black rocks emerge with their surroundings in the glint of the mid-day sun. From its meagre beginnings—a few slivers of land, half covered by the sea, where some hundreds of exiles took refuge and sheltered themselves in huts of mud and osier, down through the ages, she comes like an Easter “Gloria”—first a whisper, then a murmur, and then, from note to note, onwards and upwards, to the crashing splendour of her triumph.
Venice has grown old now, and she is content to doze in the sun’s warmth and to dream of the golden past. Her gates are open now to inquisitive sightseers, and one can imagine her smile of amusement when, every now and again, some impudent brat digs her in the ribs, Ruskin-like, and bellows his fortnight-formed opinions of her in her ear.
“Oh, you were beautiful!” they cry, “but what a shocking condition of ignorance and idolatry you did live in! Of course you could not be expected to be as wise as Manchester or as spiritually enlightened as Piccadilly Circus—still!”
“Still?” she answers mildly. “I once held the Crown of Thorns in my hand—did you know that? It was a very long time ago—seven hundred years and more—but I did.”
It was soon after the death of John of Brienne, when the revenues of France were so eaten up by wars—with Bulgaria among others (it seems queer to think that that state which has been fighting the battle of the Crown so gallantly should once have been the cause of the pawning of the Crown!)—that the government of the Regency was compelled to open subscriptions for a loan. The one movable thing of value which they possessed was the Crown of Thorns, and this was given in pledge to a certain Albert Nerosini, as representing the Venetian and Genoese merchants who had taken up the loan (one wonders that some of them were not struck dead for the impious sacrilege!). It was taken from its resting-place in the chapel of the Bouillons, and, after the term of the loan had run out and the payment of the note was not forthcoming, by an arrangement with a rich Venetian banker, made in order to evade a scandal (one cannot help thinking that it was a little late in the day to be talking about a “scandal”), it was transferred for the sake of safety to the Church of Pantocrates, in Constantinople, whence, in the case of the Regency failing in the performance of its agreement, the banker was at liberty to remove it to Venice and keep it there for a further term of four months; also, it was agreed that if the money was not paid by the 19th of June, 1238, the Crown should become the property of the mortgagee.