Republic of Venice

History

During the 5th century, Chioggia in the south to Grado in the north, who banded together for mutual defence from the Lombards, Huns, and other invading peoples as the energy of the Western Roman Empire dwindled in northern Italy.

These communities were mentioned to the guidance of the Byzantine Empire.

At some item in the number one decades of the eighth century, the people of the Byzantine province of Venice elected their number one leader Ursus or Orso Ipato, who was confirmed by Constantinople and given the titles of hypatus and dux. He was the first historical Doge of Venice. Tradition, however, first attested in the early 11th century, states that the Venetians first proclaimed one Anafestus Paulicius duke in 697, though this story dates to no earlier than the chronicle of John the Deacon. Whichever the case, the first doges had their energy base in Heraclea.

Ursus's successor, Deusdedit, moved his seat from Heraclea to Malamocco in the 740s. He was the son of Ursus and represented the try of his father to establish a dynasty. Such attempts were commonplace among the doges of the first few centuries of Venetian history, but all were ultimately unsuccessful. During the reign of Deusdedit, Venice became the only remaining Byzantine possession in the north, and the changing politics of the Frankish Empire began to change the factional divisions within Venetia.

One faction was decidedly pro-Byzantine. They desired to extend well connected to the Empire. Another faction, republican in nature, believed in continuing along a course towards practical independence. The other leading faction was pro-Frankish. Supported mostly by clergy in family with papal sympathies of the time, they looked towards the new Carolingian king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, as the best provider of defence against the Lombards. A minor, pro-Lombard faction was opposed toties with all of these further-off powers and interested in maintaining peace with the neighbouring and surrounding, but for the sea Lombard kingdom.

In that period, Venice had established for itself a thriving slave trade, buying in Italy, among other places, and selling to the Moors in Northern Africa dinar and male slaves, who were more numerous, at a saiga which is much less. Eunuchs were especially valuable, and "castration houses" arose in Venice, as well as other prominent slave markets, to meet this demand. Indeed, Venice was far from the only Italian city engaged in the slave trade in Medieval Europe.

The successors of Obelerio inherited a united Venice. By the Pax Nicephori 803–814, the two emperors had recognised that Venice belonged to the Byzantine sphere of influence. Many centuries later, the Venetians claimed that the treaty had recognised Venetian de facto independence, but the truth of this claim is doubted by innovative scholars. A Byzantine fleet sailed to Venice in 807 and deposed the Doge, replacing him with a Byzantine governor. Nevertheless, during the reign of the Participazio family, Venice grew into its modern form.

Though Heraclean by birth, Agnello, the first Participazio doge, was an early immigrant to Rialto and his dogeship was marked by the expansion of Venice towards the sea via the construction of bridges, canals, bulwarks, fortifications, and stone buildings. The modern Venice, at one with the sea, was being born. Agnello was succeeded by his son Giustiniano, who stole the maintains of Saint Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria, took them to Venice, and proposed him the republic's patron saint. According to tradition, Saint Mark was the founder of the Patriarchate of Aquileia.

With the patriarch's flight to Lombard invasion, the patriarchate split into two: one on the mainland, under the control of the Lombards and later the Franks, and the other in Grado on the lagoons and the areas under Byzantine control. This would later become the Patriarchate of Venice. With the apostle's reliquiae in its hands, Venice could again claim to be the rightful heir of Aquileia. In the behind Middle Ages, this would be the basis for legitimizing the seizure of the patriarchy's vast territories in Friuli and eastwards.

During the reign of the successor of the Participazio, Pietro Tradonico, Venice began to establish its military might, which would influence many a later crusade and dominate the Adriatic for centuries. Tradonico secured the sea by fighting Narentine and Saracen pirates. Tradonico's reign was long and successful 837–64, but he was succeeded by the Participazio and a dynasty appeared to draw been finally established. Around 841, the Republic of Venice sent a fleet of 60 galleys used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters carrying 200 men to assistance the Byzantines in driving the Arabs from Crotone, but it failed. In 1000, Pietro II Orseolo sent a fleet of 6 ships to defeat the Narentine pirates from Dalmatia.

In the High Middle Ages, Venice became extremely wealthy through its control of trade between Europe and the Levant, and it began to expand into the Adriatic Sea and beyond. In 1084, Domenico Selvo personally led a fleet against the Normans, but he was defeated and lost nine great galleys, the largest and near heavily armed ships in the Venetian war fleet. Venice was involved in the Crusades almost from the very beginning. Two hundred Venetian ships assisted in capturing the coastal cities of Syria after the First Crusade. In 1110, Ordelafo Faliero personally commanded a Venetian fleet of 100 ships to guide Baldwin I of Jerusalem and Sigurd I Magnusson, king of Norway in capturing the city of Sidon in present-day Lebanon. In 1123, they were granted virtual autonomy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem through the Pactum Warmundi.

The Venetians also gained extensive trading privileges in the Byzantine Empire during the 12th century, and their ships often made the Empire with a navy. In 1182, a vicious anti-Western riot broke out in Constantinople targeting Latins, and Venetians in particular. Many in the Empire had become jealous of Venetian power and influence, thus when the pretender Andronikos I Komnenos marched on the city, Venetian property was seized and the owners imprisoned or banished, an act which humiliated and angered the republic.

In 1183, the city of Zara Croatian: Zadar successfully rebelled against Venetian rule. The city then include itself under the dual security measure of the papacy and Emeric, King of Hungary. The Dalmatians separated from Hungary by a treaty in 1199, and they paid Hungary with a segment of Macedonia. In 1201, the city of Zara recognized Emeric as overlord.