Part 17

The continuation of the Canale della Morlacca, which washes the mainland, is the Canale della Montagna, on the west side of which is the island of Pago, the Gissa of the ancients. The city of the same name was founded by the Venetians, and was originally a defensive military post against the Uscocs. The bay upon which it is situated lies open to the "Bora," and therefore cannot always be entered in winter. For this reason Val Cassione, on the west side of the narrow island, is the usual port. A road over a slight hill conducts to the south end of the bay and the city, in front of which the water is so narrow that it is bridged over. On the near side are the celebrated salt-works, the richest in Dalmatia. There are a few Roman remains, including those of a camp; and near Novaglia is a tunnel 300 yards long, lighted by pierced apertures, said to have belonged to a Roman aqueduct. The scenery outside the island of Pago is uninteresting; the islands have little elevation, beauty of form or colour, nor is there sufficient vegetation to disguise the dull grey of the rocks, though, as the boat turns to the west to gain the mouth of the Canal of Zara, the Velebit Mountains behind may become imposing under certain circumstances. The first time we went to Zara the sun was setting at this part of the voyage, and the sky effect was fine, while the Velebits flushed a pinkish purple with blue-purple shadows, the silhouette only showing in places beneath heavy masses of cloud, in which some of the summits were hidden. Falling showers here and there softened and veiled the strong light and shade, relieved by the prismatic hues of a rainbow. As the sun sank lower the mountains and clouds gradually became a pallid grey, while the sky to westward passed through many gradations of colour and tone as the clouds slowly dispersed and night fell. Far away over the darkening water the electric lights of Zara flashed and glittered, reflected in chains of sparkles which grew longer as we approached.

The boat turned to the left into the old port, and thus we escaped the ordeal of the dogana to which passengers landing at the new quay are subjected, and entered the town through the Porta Marina, the entrance for all travellers arriving by water until, in 1868, the walls towards the sea were thrown down, and the Riva Nuova constructed. It is proposed to extend this fine promenade to Borgo Erizzo eventually. In making it some remains of Roman walls were found. The city was declared "open," and the cannon were transported to the arsenal. On the other side of the water is the island of Ugljan, with its conspicuous Venetian castle of S. Michele, to which the peasants make a pilgrimage on Michaelmas Day. From the height which it crowns, the second Canal of Zara may be seen, and the islands of Incoronata, Isole Grosse, and the open sea beyond. It is said that the coast of Italy can be seen with a telescope on a fine day. The remaining portions of the fortifications have been planted with trees, or turned into gardens, and form pleasant promenades both during the day, when the shade of the trees is acceptable, and at evening, when the sea breeze blows cool from off the water. Among the trees are found palms and Paulownia in flower. Outside the Porta Terra Ferma a large bastion has been made into a public park, named after General Blazekovic, who created it in 1888-1890. The fortifications, commenced by Sanmichele in 1533, were finished ten years later by his nephew Giovanni Girolamo: a drawing for the Porta Terra Ferma exists in the Uffizj at Florence, showing the whole depth to the bottom of the ditch, which much improves the proportion. It was approached diagonally across a wooden bridge; the road is now direct, and the ditch filled up. The isthmus joining the peninsula to the land had been cut through to strengthen the older fortifications, of which one tower, the pentagonal Bo d'Antona, alone remains. When the new works were carried out, as a stronger defence against the Turks, the suburbs were destroyed, and the ditch was subsequently turned into the cisterns below the Cinque Pozzi. This great reservoir, made in 1574, was provided with an elaborate system of filtering-beds, the water being collected from the roofs until the aqueduct was opened in 1838. The sand was renewed once in a hundred years.

[Illustration: THE PORTA MARINA, ZARA

_To face page 207_]

The inner portion of the other gate, the Porta Marina, was, according to local tradition, brought from Ænona. It is part of a triumphal arch erected by a Roman lady, Melia Anniana, to her husband, Læpicius Bassus, with additions of the period of the Renaissance. It bears a long Latin inscription referring to the battle of Lepanto, October 5, 1571, and on the water side has a pretty, early Renaissance upper part, with the lion of S. Mark and _amorini_ supporting a shield within an architectural framing.

Zara (anciently Jadera) is traditionally the capital of the Liburnians. It became a Roman colony in 78 B.C., and many Roman fragments have been found which attest its splendour and prosperity under the Empire. Trajan built an aqueduct, of which traces have been found through Borgo Erizzo to and beyond Makarska. Stone pipes of the same kind were found on the shore at Zara Vecchia, in the ruins of the Templars' castle on the hill Kastel; above the lake of Vrana, and in the marshes through which the road from Vrana to Benkovac passes. It is believed that the source was a spring at Biba on this hill. Salona, during the time of its prosperity, was of more importance than Zara; but after its destruction by the Avars in 639 the latter again became of first importance in Dalmatia, the Byzantine fleet being stationed there when Ravenna was taken by the Lombards in 752, and the town becoming the dwelling of the "strategos." In 804 Donatus, bishop of Zara, acted as envoy with the doge of Venice in concluding peace between Charlemagne and the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus. In the tenth century it was known as Diadora. In 991 it became Venetian for the first time, but without severing its relations with Byzantium; and Orso Orseolo fortified it in 1018. Somewhat later, the Venetians made it their principal city, putting the bishoprics of Arbe, Veglia, and Ossero under the metropolitan in 1154, and making Domenico Morosini, son of the doge, Count of Zara. The inscription on the nuns' church of S. Maria records the fact that Coloman entered Zara in 1105; from that date the Hungarian period commences, though apparently the Venetians still had rule over maritime Dalmatia. The sacking of the city by the French in 1202 appears to have been due to the greed of the Venetians, and to their desire to get even with the Hungarians also. Between 1169 and 1201 a Pisan fleet, probably allied with Hungary, took Pola from the Venetians; but it was retaken before long, and the discords between Henry or Emeric, son of Bela of Hungary, and his brother Andrew facilitated the taking of Zara. It is recorded that Andrew had most of the magnates on his side; but Emeric went alone and unarmed to the malcontents, saying: "Now I wish to see who of you will dare to raise his hand against his king"; and all quietly and in silence let him pass. He then took his brother, led him out, and imprisoned him in a certain castle. The magnates fell at his feet asking pardon. Truly in those days divinity did hedge the king!

The French Crusaders had engaged the Venetians to take them to the Holy Land, but did not assemble at Venice at the time appointed, nor had they the money ready to pay for their transport. The Venetians, being men of business, demanded cash down; and so the favourable time for reaching Syria was allowed to pass without the expedition setting forth. Provisions and ships had been prepared, and the Venetians, wishing to use them, with the consent of Doge Enrico Dandolo, proposed to the French an attack on Zara, part of the booty to be used to pay for their passage. The attack took place on November 10, 1202, and the French stayed till April 7, 1203. The Venetians took all the booty, and threw down the wall on the seaward side, but it was restored shortly after. They also sent colonists to Zara after a rebellion and a reconquest in 1243.

The Venetian counts were generally citizens of Venice, and had no defined term of rule. In 1311 the city again returned to the Hungarians, and the result was the siege of 1312-1313, which ended in the condottiere Dalmasio, who was besieging, being offered the countship by the ban of Dalmatia and Croatia. To prevent this the Venetians offered to leave the Zaratines free to choose their own count, only reserving the right of confirmation. In 1345 Zara rebelled for the seventh time, when Andrea Dandolo was doge, and in consequence a long siege commenced on August 12. The Venetians had at Nona 20,000 men, horse and foot, who devastated the fields for three days and set fire to the villages; the countrymen fled to the city, so that there were more than 20,000 within the walls, of whom 6,000 only were armed. On August 30 they closed the port with a chain made of thirteen beams, and on September 1 sent an envoy to Andrew, king of Naples, to ask for aid. On the 8th they received letters from the King of Hungary promising help, and raised the Hungarian flag. The king sent the bani of Bosnia and Croatia to help them, but the Venetian senate bought the rescuers off! In January, 1346, the Venetians took the Castle of S. Damian and broke the chain of the port. The Venetian trenches consisted of a bastion 200 yards long and 100 yards broad built of wood on three sides. On the east it had ten towers, as many on the west, and fourteen on the north, being open on the south towards the fleet. They now controlled 25,000 men. On June 2, Ladislas of Hungary came to help the besieged, and encamped at Zemonico, seven miles away, with 100,000 cavalry. On July 10 he advanced close to the city with 2,000 of his best men. The citizens welcomed him with much joy, and the next day sent legates with great solemnity to offer him the keys of the city. On the 16th he attacked the bastion. On the 20th, Bernardo, patriarch of Aquileia, entered the city; but the king held aloof. The Venetians tried in vain to make terms, and the Zaratines attacked the bastion with good heart, burning one of the towers; but the Hungarians only looked on while the Venetians repelled the assault. The king's behaviour is mysterious. On July 30 he returned to Vrana, and so to Hungary; and, although his promised envoys went to Venice, they went for other purposes. He appears to have been using Zara as a pawn in some great game. Famine obliged the Zaratines to surrender, and the Venetians entered the city on December 21, 1347, the war having lasted two years and six months, and having cost the Republic from 40,000 to 60,000 ducats a month for soldiers' pay alone, without counting the shipping. Eleven years later Zara again became Hungarian, but was finally ceded to Venice in 1413 by the peace of Trieste.

The dialect spoken in the city is pure Venetian, and the municipality is the only Italian one in Dalmatia. Zara is still the capital, and the diet meets in the city. Here, too, are the only Italian schools in the province, the Slav majority in most places exercising its power to veto everything Italian. The only flourishing industry is the manufacture of maraschino, of which 300,000 bottles are exported annually. The cherries, which are the raw material, are imported from Sebenico, Almissa, and Poljica, near Spalato. The streets are narrow and impossible for carriage traffic; merchandise is put upon long narrow carts, with long poles projecting in front and cross-pieces at the end; the cart is then pushed and pulled by several men. The population is 13,000, and is increased by many country people in the mornings, who come to market, so that the streets and piazzas are crowded with a most distracting variety of costumes. Both men and girls from the country wear little red caps. The men have great light-coloured woollen coats which they throw over their shoulders without putting their arms in, light shirts, sometimes with an embroidered jacket, trousers with embroidery round the pocket-holes (which are in front of the thigh) and a split at the lower part of the side which is buttoned up. They sometimes have a sash round the waist with a knife. The women wear leggings woven roughly in patterns like the wrong side of a tapestry curtain, and shoes somewhat the shape of gondolas, thick skirts with patterned aprons, and small waistcoat-like jackets. Their hair is plaited round the head. The dress of the townspeople is less individual; the head is covered with a white or coloured kerchief, the dress is frequently black, and the modern blouse is sometimes seen. It is interesting to watch the boatloads of country-folk arriving either by the Porta Terra Ferma, close to which are steps and a small harbour, or on the quay by the Porta Marina. Lambs and kids are brought alive and killed and skinned on the quay, the women holding pots or jugs to catch the blood, which they seem to think valuable. The wall of the quay was being rebuilt when we were there the second time, and a diver was working at it. It looked odd to see the stones and buckets of cement lowered into the water with ropes.

[Illustration: MORLACCA GIRL, ZARA]

There are two antique columns still erect: one, fluted, is in the Piazza S. Simeone, set up in 1729, and the other is in the Piazza dell' Erbe; it was used as a pillory, and the chains with the iron collars still hang to it, having, by centuries of friction, cut deep-curved grooves in the marble with swinging to and fro. This column also has sockets for the insertion of flagstaffs, and attached to it is a much-worn piece of eighth-century sculpture, with the motif of an ornamented cross beneath an arch fastened with clamps. The chroniclers of the seventeenth century record that near this place several drums of columns projected from the earth, and that two entire pillars were erect and united by a piece of the architrave. One was moved to S. Simeone, near to which Mr. T.G. Jackson saw in 1884 the base of a Roman arch excavated beneath the level of the piazza. Other similar fragments have been used in the foundations of S. Donato.

[Illustration: GOING TO MARKET, ZARA]

In the year 380 a bishop of Zara (Felix) is mentioned for the first time. S. Donatus is reckoned the fourth bishop, Andrew and Sabinianus (who are shown on a reliquary with Felix) traditionally preceding him. As his episcopate lasted into the ninth century it is evident that the list is not complete. His diplomatic mission took him either to Diedenhofen or Aachen and then to Constantinople, where he had the relics of S. Anastasia given him. It is probable that the sight of the great churches which he saw during his journeys suggested the plan of S. Donato, which was originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Porphyrogenitus compares it to S. Sophia, Constantinople, which seems strange in a Byzantine. It is circular in plan, about 60 ft. in diameter. Six gigantic piers, wider than the arches which rest upon them, placed ten feet from the wall, sustain a barrel vault, about 28 ft. high, over the ambulatory, which has strengthening arches. The piers of the upper story sustained the drum of a cupola which no longer exists. Opposite the entrance are three vaulted apses, the central one larger and deeper than the others and with four windows, the others having but one each; and these apses are repeated above, without the windows. In front of them are two smooth columns of Oriental yellow marble 7 ft. round, in place of piers, and thinner columns cut short occupy the same relative place above. The caps are antique and a good deal damaged. Three are composite like the arch of Septimius Severus, and one is Corinthian. The roof is now tiled. A Roman inscription on the fourth pilaster seems to indicate that there was a great temple to Augusta Livia, wife of Augustus, here; and when the floor level was lowered in 1888 a number of inscriptions were found, and portions of carved friezes and pillars used as foundation material and simply laid on the pavement of the Roman forum. Among these were portions of columns resembling both of the two still upright. Part of a flight of steps was also found, which may have been part of the sub-structure of the temple. Fragments of four different buildings have been recognised. Two stairs have served the upper story of the church--an early one with carved hood mould of the ninth century to the external door, now blocked up, and a second from the interior, which lands in a vestibule where some early mediæval carvings are arranged. The upper portion is a double flight, arranged, perhaps, to use when this stair was a "Scala Santa" ascended by the faithful on their knees, whereby they gained the same indulgences as were attached to the Scala Santa at Rome. The building was a military magazine in 1649, again from 1798 to 1877, and then a wine-store till, in 1888, the museum was founded. In 1890-1891 the ancient entrance-door was found behind the eighteenth-century additions. It is a simple square-headed door with semicircular opening above, made of Roman uncarved material, with consecration-crosses sunk in the lintel and base of the right-hand jamb; to the right and left of the lintel a little above it are two simple brackets with crosses on them. The lintel itself is double, and treated as if it were wood. The cill was two feet below the ground level.

[Illustration: PLANS OF S. DONATO, ZARA]

The museum contains Roman and pre-Roman antiquities, inscriptions, lamps, carved fragments, coins, bronze and glass vessels, pottery, &c.; mediæval fragments, carved and gilded panels, lanterns and ensigns from Venetian galleys, a crozier of Limoges work of the thirteenth century found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, arms and carvings of the Renaissance period, &c. But perhaps the most interesting things are the plans of the early churches which have either been destroyed or very much altered, and the early mediæval carvings; among these are two very curious slabs with figures under arches, one of which was found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, while the other, closely resembling it in style, came from S. Domenico. The former shows the Flight into Egypt and the Massacre of the Innocents; the latter the Nativity and Adoration of the Kings. They probably formed part of a chancel enclosure. There are also fragments of ciboria, altar frontals, or sarcophagi, while a column sawn in two has furnished decorated jambs to the door of the upper church. On a lintel of the early church of S. Lorenzo is a Christ in a mandorla, supported by angels with a sacred tree on each side and a griffin beyond; a rough astragal moulding surrounds the subject. The jambs have a rough arabesque scroll, terminating in a two-headed bird. These carvings are all of the ninth century.

[Illustration: SECTION OF S. LORENZO, ZARA

_To face page 217_]

The church of S. Lorenzo is in the courtyard of the military command building on the Piazza dei Signori. The sides are in courts entered from the Calle Larga and Via del Teatro Vecchio. It has a nave and aisles about 21 ft. long and about 14 ft. broad, with four pillars, springing from which are three unmoulded arches. The arches are stilted, and at the height of the real springing an impost projects in profile. The central compartment has a wagon vault, the other two quadripartite vaults. The aisles have semi-domes running north and south, resting on cross arches, with squinches in the corners. The choir has two stories, the lower with three square-ended apses, and entered by a door flanked by pillars. The walls which separate the apses ran up to a tower. The vault is a transverse wagon pierced by wagon vaults at right angles. The architecture is very simple, and shows Byzantine influence, but the construction is hidden by plastering. The nave caps are debased Corinthian, with ornamented volutes and one row of flat acanthus-leaves, the abacus being square. The front leaf in each shows a half-length of a male figure with nimbus, his arms raised as if in prayer, the body hidden by a shorter loaf. The columns are of different sizes, but the caps are all the same. The entrance door towards the Calle Larga has a simply moulded round arch; the other has been mentioned as being in S. Donato. The upper story of the choir has pillars with carved caps supporting an arch of two orders, now built up, formerly no doubt an oratory. The church is mentioned in a document of 919.

[Illustration: S. LORENZO, ZARA]

[Illustration: S. LORENZO, ZARA--TOP STORY

_Between pages 216 and 217_]

[Illustration: PLAN OF FOUNDATIONS DISCOVERED ON THE RIVA NUOVA, ZARA]