Micheletto Steno was condemned to be imprisoned during a few days in the lower dungeon; Piero Bollani and Rizzardo Marioni got off with less than a week’s confinement.
Tradition, as corroborated by the Doge’s own words afterwards, justifies us in believing that Faliero complained of the lenity shown to the culprits; but though he might have been displeased, it would have been impossible that he should be astonished. Since the insult was directed against the Doge or his nephew as private individuals, and not against the head of the Republic, a discriminating tribunal of Venice could only treat the affair as if it had happened between any other members of the nobility. Venice never incarnated any ‘divine right’ in the person of her Doge, and Faliero must have known that though a single word of slight against the honour of the ‘Lord Duke’ might cost him who uttered it both his eyes and his tongue, as happened in the same year to a certain Niccolò Cestello and to another Micheletto of Murano, even a grave insult against the person of the Doge was never legally punished by more than two months’ imprisonment, and generally by a shorter term and a small fine. The legend built up upon the later accounts says that Micheletto Steno was the head of the Forty, _i.e._ President of the Senate, when he wrote the insult of which he was convicted; but we have clear proof that at the time he was hardly more than twenty years of age, so that he had not even the right to vote at the meetings of the Great Council; and no one could belong to the Senate who was under thirty, much less be the head of that formidable body. So far as the Dogess is concerned, chroniclers and novelists have described her as taking part in a dance at the time, whereas she was a woman already of middle age, and her name is never mentioned in any of the numerous documents regarding the famous trial. There is one more argument against the fable that the insult was directed against her. The Venetian tribunals were extremely severe in all cases where the honour of a woman was touched. The mere fact of laying a hand on the shoulder of a woman not the man’s own wife or relative might be punished with a very heavy fine and many months of imprisonment, and a libellous writing against a noble lady was punished with two months in the pozzi and a fine of one hundred ducats. It would seem to follow that if Steno’s offence had been committed against the first matron in Venice, the tribunal would not have treated the matter with that indulgence of which the Doge complained on his own account. Moreover, it should be noted that Marino Faliero was elected on the eleventh of September 1354, and that the date of the trial was the tenth of November of the same year; but the legendary account says it was on the Thursday before Lent, which cannot come earlier than February and may be as late as March, that the insulting words were written. The scandal must have taken place very early in November, and probably happened during the festival held in the ducal palace on the occasion of the marriage of Santino Faliero and Regina Dandolo, a nephew and niece of the Doge, a marriage, consequently, for which the papal dispensation would have been necessary. This hypothesis would in some measure explain the fact that the writing was directed against the Doge and one of his nephews.