The growth of Venetian trade and wealth in the Levant roused the jealousy of Genoa and hostility of the imperial court at Con stantinople, where the Venetians are said to have numbered 200,000 and to have held a large quarter of the city in terror by their brawls. The Emperor Manuel I., urged on by the Genoese and other rivals of Venice, seized the pretext. The Venetians were arrested and their goods confiscated. Popular feeling at Venice ran so high that the State was rashly swept into war with the empire. The doge Vitale Michiel II. led the expedition in person. It proved a disastrous failure, and on the return of the shattered remnants (117i) a great constitutional reform seemed necessary. The Venetians resolved to create a deliberative assembly, which should act with greater caution than the concione, which had just landed the state in a ruinous campaign. Forty members were elected in each of the six divisions of the city, giving a body of 48o members, who served for one year and on retiring named two deputies for each sestiere to nominate the council for the succeeding year. This was the germ of the great council, the Maggior Consiglio, which was rendered strictly oligarchic in 1296. As the duties of this council were to appoint all officers of State, including the doge, it is clear that by its creation the aristocracy had considerably curtailed the powers of the people, who had hitherto elected the doge in general assembly; and at the creation of Michiel's successor, Sebastiano Ziani (r172), the new doge was presented to the people merely for confirmation.
The assembly protested, but was appeased by the empty for mula, "This is your doge an it please you." Moreover, still further to limit the power of the doge, the number of ducal councillors was raised from two to six. In 1198, on the election of Enrico Dandolo, the aristocracy carried their policy one step farther, and by the promissione ducale, or coronation oath, which every doge was required to swear, they acquired a powerful weapon for the suppression of all that remained of ancient ducal author ity. The promissione ducale was binding on the doge and his family, and could be, and frequently was, altered at each new election, a commission, Inquisitori sopra it doge defunto, being appointed to scrutinize the actions of the deceased doge and to add to the new oath whatever provisions they thought necessary to reduce the dogeship to the position of a mere figurehead.
These terms were accepted. Zara was recovered, and while still at Zara the leaders of the crusade, supported by Dandolo, resolved for their own private purposes to attack Constantinople, instead of making for the Holy Land. Constantinople fell (1204), thanks
chiefly to the ability of the Venetians under Dandolo. The city was sacked, and a Latin empire, with Baldwin of Flanders as emperor, was established at Constantinople. (See ROMAN EM PIRE, LATER.) In the partition of the spoils Venice claimed and received, in her own phrase, "a half and a quarter of the Roman empire." To her fell the Cyclades, the Sporades, the islands and the east ern shores of the Adriatic, the shores of the Propontis and the Euxine, and the littoral of Thessaly, and she bought Crete from the marquis of Monferrat. The accession of territory was of the highest importance to Venetian commerce. She now commanded the Adriatic, the Ionian islands, the archipelago, the Sea of Marmora and the Black sea, the trade route between Constanti nople and western Europe, and she had already established her self in the seaports of Syria, and thus held the trade route be tween Asia Minor and Europe. She was raised at once to the position of a European power. In order to hold these possessions, she borrowed from the Franks the feudal system, and granted fiefs in the Greek islands to her more powerful families, on con dition that they held the trade route open for her. The expan sion of commerce which resulted from the fourth crusade soon made itself evident in the city by a rapid development in its architecture and by a decided strengthening of the commercial aristocracy, which eventually led to the great constitutional re form—the closing of the Maggior Consiglio in 1296, whereby Venice became a rigid oligarchy. Externally this rapid success awoke the implacable hatred of Genoa, and led to the long and exhausting Genoese wars which ended at Chioggia in 1380.
The Venetian Constitution.—The closing of the great coun cil was, no doubt, mainly due to the slowly formed resolution on the part of the great commercial families to secure a monopoly in the Levant trade which the fourth crusade had placed definitely in their hands. The theory of the Government, a theory ex pressed throughout the whole commercial career of the republic, the theory which made Venice a rigidly protective state, was that the Levant trade belonged solely to Venice and her citizens. No one but a Venetian citizen was permitted to share in the profits of that trade. But the population of Venice was growing rapidly, and citizenship was as yet undefined. To secure for themselves the command of trade the leading commercial families resolved to erect themselves into a close gild, which should have in its hands the sole direction of the business concern, the exploitation of the East. This policy took definite shape in 1297, when the Doge Pietro Gradenigo proposed and carried the following meas ure : the supreme court, the Quarantia, was called upon to ballot, one by one, the names of all who for the last four years had held a seat in the great council created in 1171. Those who received twelve favourable votes became members of the great council. A commission of three was appointed to submit further names for ballot. The three commissioners at once laid down a rule that only those who could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat in the great council should be eligible for election.