DANDOLO is the name of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Venice. But the first doge of the name, Enrico Dandolo, who ruled the republic from 1192 to 1205, occupies the largest space in history of any of the name. He is the “blind old Dandolo” of Byron, whose passing mention of the well-nigh forgotten hero, in Childe Harold, has rendered the old name familiar to a larger number of ears than it ever was, even in the day when the prowess of the octogenarian doge changed the face of Europe, Enrico Dandolo was born of a family already illustrious, which had ruled in Gallipoli, Andros, Riva, and other places in Greece; and his uncle was patriarch of Grado. The story goes that he lost his sight from having been subjected by Manuel, the emperor of Constantinople, to whom he had been sent by Venice as ambassador, to the ancient punishment of “abbasination,”—to adopt a foreign word for a thing which, happily, is nameless in our language. This torture consisted in compelling the victim to gaze into a polished metal basin, which concentrated the rays of the sun till the excess of light destroyed the eye. Some of the Venetian historians, however, deny this story, and represent his blindness as having resulted from a wound received in fight. When he was elected doge, at the age of seventy-two, Venice was involved in a war with Pisa, which he brought in two naval battles to a successful conclusion. But the events which have made his name a marked one in history occurred yet nearer to the end of his long career. In 1201 the chivalry of Christendom was about to embark in the 4th crusade,—by some historians reckoned the 5th,—and a request was made to Venice to give the crusaders passage, and furnish them with vessels for transport. Dandolo received the ...messengers who came with those demands favourably. There is reason to think that the Venetian was not moved by any great degree of crusading enthusiasm; but Zara had thrown off the yoke of Venice; and, as Venetian writers add, the old doge had not forgiven the infamous treatment he had received at the hands of the Greeks. There does not, however, seem to be any necessity for supposing that any personal considerations of such a kind were needed to impel him to a policy which was doubtless animated by far larger and wider views. The old doge made a hard bargain with the emissaries of the crusaders for the use of the galleys of the republic; and when, at the moment of departure, it turned out, as he had expected, that they had not money enough to pay the stipulated price, he insisted that, in lieu of it, the expedition should first reduce Zara. Dandolo himself, on this being with some difficulty agreed to, took the cross and assumed the command of the fleet. Zara was besieged, taken, pillaged, and restored to the domain of the republic. The expedition then proceeded to the greater enterprize of attacking Constantinople, in which, led by Dandolo, it was equally successful. But it was not till the young Emperor Alexis had been murdered in a revolt of the Greeks of Constantinople that Dandolo opened to the crusading expedition a proposal that they should seize on the city and on the Greek empire. The counsel was accepted, w^th a success due in a great measure to the conduct and valour of the blind octogenarian doge. Constantinople was pillaged, and booty to an incredible amount was divided among the Venetians and the French. Dandolo might have been crowned emperor instead of Baldwin of Flanders. Whether he declined in accordance with his own judgment, or whether Venice would not permit a citizen of hers to become an emperor, is uncertain. At all events the old doge showed himself once again as good at a bargain as at a fight. He obtained for Venice a very full share of the plunder, both of dominions and of movable property, as well as of useful privileges exacted, with a shrewd and far-seeing eye, to future advantages. Among the booty secured for Venice were the celebrated four horses, now once more, after their journey to Paris, on the west front of the church of St Mark. Enrico Dandolo, first doge of the name, died in 1205, one year after the establishment of the Latin empire at Constantinople. (See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 60).
The eldest son of this Enrico, Fantino, was patriarch of Constantinople; and the second, Rainieri, was procuratore di St Marco. He was killed in Candia in 1213. Giberto, known in Venetian history as successful in naval warfare against the Genoese in 1260, was the son of Rainieri, and his son Giovanni, elected doge in 1280, ruled the republic till 1289, and was the father of that Andrea Dandolo of whom it is related, that having been unsuccessful in a naval fight against the Genoese, and being prisoner on board one of the enemy’s galleys, he knocked his brains out by beating his head against the mast.
The Dandolo family gave two other doges to the republic. Francisco was elected in 1318, and died in 1339, and is known in history as Dandolo “Cane,” “Dog Dandolo,” not from having humiliated himself before Clement V., when imploring the pontiff to become reconciled to Venice, as Sismondi writes in the Biograpliie Universelie, but from “Cane” having been an old family name. Andrea Dandolo was elected doge in 1342 at the exceptionally youthful age of thirty-six, and ruled the republic till 1354. This Andrea was a student and a man of letters, and an intimate friend of Petrarch, some of whose letters to him are extant. He wrote two chronicles of Venice, one of which was published in the 12th volume of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores of Muratori, while the other is extant in MS. He is said to have died of a broken heart, caused by the successes of Paganino Doria and the Genoese fleet in the Adriatic.
DANDOLO, Vincenzo, Count (1758-1819), an Italian scientist, was born at Venice in 1758, of good family, though not of the same house as the doges above noticed, and commenced life as a physician in his native city. He was a prominent opponent of the oligarchical party in the revolution which took place on the approach of Napoleon; and he was one of the envoys sent to seek the protection of the French. When the request was refused, and Venice was placed under Austria, he removed to Milan, where he was made member of the great council. In 1799, on the invasion of the Russians and the overthrow of the Cisalpine republic, Dandolo retired to Paris, where, in the same year, he published his treatise Les Hommes nouveaux, ou moyen dloperer une regeneration nouvelle. But he soon after returned to the neighbourhood of Milan, to devote himself to scientific agriculture. In 1805 Napoleon made him governor of Dalmatia, with the title of provediteur general, in which position Dandolo distinguished himself by his efforts to remove the wretchedness and idleness of the people, and to improve the country by draining the pestilential marshes and introducing better methods of agriculture. When, in 1809, Dalmatia was re-annexed to the Illyrian provinces, Dandolo returned to Venice, having received as his reward from the French emperor the title of count and several other distinctions. He died in his native city on the 13th December 1819.
Dandolo published in Italian several treatises on agriculture, vine-cultivation, and the rearing of cattle and sheep; a work on silk-worms, which was translated into French by Fontanelle; a work on the discoveries in chemistry which were made in the last quarter of the 18tli century (published 1796); and translations of several of the best French works on chemistry.
[1,019 words — estimated reading time: 6 minutes]