Venice – The Confined Canoness

This week a little sliver of Venice. This is from my recording of the biography of the dogaressas of Venice for Librivox. It’s the story of the daughter of a doge who was married into a rival family. When the rival family rebelled anyway she, and all of her children, and anyone who was married to the rebels, was banished. She made her way back to Venice and was punished terribly for it. I think she may be my ambassador for Hell to the Serenessima that we’re developing. I kept developing port factotems as the chief devil for Venice and somehow they kept turning up a little bit like the Ambassador in Fallen London: a little too suave, a little too demonic. Instead I’m going to have a deeply wronged woman for whom an infernal pact was an escape. My working name for her is the Confined Canoness. Like the other members of her order she will be double veiled, except one of her veils – the inner one – will be red.

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Although Doge Sorenzo’s public life was so successful and so popular, in private
his heart and that of the dogaressa were broken by anxiety and sorrow. Thus evenly our mundane affairs are balanced. The story of Donna Soranza, their dearly loved daughter is as sad as that can be.

Married to Nicolo, eldest son of Marco Quirino the leader of the Quirino-Tiepolo conspiracy, he was exiled with his wife the very day his father’s head fell to the executioner’s axe. They made their home at Zara, but Nicolo survived his expatriation but four years when he too fell, stabbed by an unknown hand. The widowed Madonna sought to return to Venice and returned to her father’s home but her appeals were all in vain. Doge Soranzo, like another Brutus, treated his daughter’s pleas with quite uncalled for severity. At last she determined to throw herself upon the mercy of the Council of 40, and making her way hopefully she presented herself dutifully to her father and mother.

That was a mournful homecoming, and mother and daughter clasped in each other’s arms resisted the austere ruling of the doge, who had informed the council of his daughter’s return.
In spite of all good Dogaressa Franciscena could say or do her unhappy child was torn from her embrace and contempt to perpetual exclusion in the convent of Santa Maria de la Virgine. Gentle women of Madonna Soranza Quirini’s position were styled canonesses and each had her own little casa, and a domestic servant who was allowed to go out washing and was
permitted to make purchases for her mistress and even to convey messages to her friends. The poor ladies were not suffered even to visit each other and they could only take exercise in the convent garden.

At rare and stated intervals every year the doge paid a ceremonial visit to the convent where he was received with great honour by the abbess and the superior canonesses, who were all arranged in magnificent white silk brigade robes, and each wore two veils, one black and one
white signifying that though, they were in the world they were not of it. The abbess handed the doge a bouquet of sweet flowers in a golden jeweled holder and he bestowed in return caskets of sweet meats upon the devout recluses.

Never once did father and daughter meet. She yearned to embrace him and her mother but he never even made inquiries about her. She was dead to the world to the family and to him a spartan father’s discipline letters and messages were all in vain. Unhappy Madonna Soranza’s only consolation was the companionship of another Quirino widow, Andreola, who remained a very short time in the convent. farasuta appeared in the person of Angelo Bembo, and he was permitted to remove his innamorata to the convent of Santa Maria de Valverde upon the island of Mazzorbo, where they were married. Alas poor Madonna saranza had no such fortune, but she pined and pined in her solitude, and after 25 years of suffering she laid her down and died, 20 years after the death of her stern father.

Certainly an edict passed in 1313 sentenced the wives of rebels and outlaws, with their children, to perpetual exile, and they were warned that unsanctioned return to Venice would be visited with perpetual confinement. Undoubtedly this proved the rule, as sententious writers have noted, the sternness of justice is superior to the tenderness of affection.