The Palazzo dei Dogi (Doge’s Palace) in Venice is undoubtedly a magnificent structure. Begun in the ninth century, its construction developed together with the Most Serene Republic until it attained its present form in the mid 1400s.
    The close bond between the Basilica of S.Mark and the Palace, both ducal buildings, saw the former as metaphor for the Holy Sepulchre and the latter for Solomon’s Temple. The Venetians, in building the seat of government of their city-state, certainly wished to assert their city as the new Jerusalem. The thirty-six pillars supporting the construction recall the tree-trunks in a forest, its chapiters representing luxuriant vegetation. The idea that this palace may be derived from that of Solomon cannot be dismissed: “He built the House of the Forest of Lebanon, a hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high, on four rows of cedar wood pillars with cedar chapiters on the pillars.” (I Kings VII.2).
    When close to the palace, creatures of all sorts can be discerned among the chapiters’ foliage. Between ‘Portico e Loggia’ (the Porch and the Lodge), one can count some 582 figures! Biblical and mythological people, planets and zodiacal signs, wise men and emperors, lords and ladies, saints and artisans, animals and monsters, vices and virtues succeed one another in what seems at first sight a fabulous, chaotic and indecipherable pattern. In fact, we see a representation of the universe and of the history of humankind since the creation of Adam.
    The chapiters’ planning and construction in the ‘Portico e Loggia’ took place between 1340 and 1355. Over this period, two architects made their mark: one Pietro Baseggio and one Henricus ‘Taiapiera’, literally ‘stone-cutter’ in the Venetian language, who, with the title of ‘protomagister’, oversaw the work of an immense number of carpenters, masons and stone-cutters from Veneto, Tuscany and Lombardy, the latter place being the homeland of the ‘Magister Comacini’.
    From a masonic point of view, the first interesting chapiter is the fifth, counting from the ‘Ponte della paglia’ (Bridge of hay), where over the centuries, travellers from all over the world stood to admire the ‘Ponte dei sospiri’ (Bridge of Sighs). This is the so-called chapiter of ‘The Emperors’: Titus, Trajan, Priamus, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Octavianus Augustus. It is interesting to note that Nebuchadnezzar in 587BC and Titus in 70AD were responsible for the destruction of the first and of the last Temples of Jerusalem.
    On the ninth chapiter are depicted the virtues: Faith, Strength, Temperance, Humility, Charity, Justice, Prudence and Hope. Solomon on his throne represents Justice. While on the seventeenth chapiter are men renowned for their wisdom, art and science: Solomon, Priscian, Aristotle, Cicero, Pythagoras, Euclid, Tubalcain and Ptolemy. We also find the liberal arts and sciences of the Trivium and Quadrivium. The inscriptions on the abacus help us to understand. After SALOMONIS SAPIENS (Wise Solomon) comes PRISCIANUS GRAMMATICUS (Grammar), ARISTOTELES DIALLECTICUS (Dialectics) and then TULLUS RETORICE (Marcus Tullius Cicero: Rhetoric). Immediately after is PYTHAGORAS who obviously represents mathematics and is naturally followed by Euclid (EUCLIDE GEOMETRICUS) with a pair of compasses in his hand. Then comes Tubalcain, described as TUBALCAIN MUSICUS, possibly because he was confused with Jubal, the biblical father of all who play the lyre and the lute (Genesis IV.21). TOLOMEUS ASTROLOGUS (Ptolemy), the famous astronomer of the 2nd century AD completes the chapiter.
    How did Tubalcain who, according to Genesis IV.22, was the first man to work iron and bronze, and the first artificer in metals in masonic tradition, become here a ‘musicus’? We ought to find him on the abacus of the twenty-first chapiter - the one depicting crafts - where it is written: FABER SUM (I am the Smith).
    The eighteenth chapiter, the most interesting and beautiful according to John Ruskin, represents the planets, sun and moon within the zodiac.
    The nineteenth chapiter shows the ‘holy sculptors’: with this chapiter the Venetian masons and stone-cutters, the ‘taiapiera’, honour their patron saints and especially the four that are crowned, the ‘Quatuor Coronati’: St Claudius, St Chastorius, St Nicostratus and St Simphorianus. There is also an uncrowned saint on the chapiter, St Simplicius. The chapiter of crafts, the twenty-first, on the first side facing the ‘Piazzetta’ (little square), shows - with hammer and chisel - LAPIDICA, or the marble-worker, as the abacus reads.
    The twenty-second chapiter represents astrology and the influence of the stars on the seven ages of man (infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, maturity and old age) and, finally, on the eighth side of the chapiter, the inevitable conclusion. An old man lies on his death-bed, hands crossed over his chest, head resting on a pillow. On the abacus is carved: ULTIMA ETAS EST MORS PENA PECCATI (the last age is death, penalty for sins).

The Birth of the Republic

We can fix the birth of the Republic of Venice in the year 726 with the election of the first of its 118 ‘Dogi’ (Dukes); it ended on 12 May 1797. Over nearly 1100 years the Republic consistently demonstrated a real cult for Justice. Very severe laws defended the state from traitors and its citizens from abuse, crime and fraud.
    Solomon, the Judge-king, inspired by God, represents better than any this high and noble concept of Justice. We find him again on pillar thirty-six, at the north-west corner of the palace, in the sculpture ensemble entitled ‘Solomon’s Judgement’, where the two mothers quarrel over the child whom the wise king, playing on maternal love, commanded to be cut in half (see picture below).
    From the year 1000, we also find in Venice signs of ‘congregationes’ or ‘scholae’, trade and religious congregations or confraternities. At about the middle of the 13th century, trade guilds were legally constituted and recognised by the public authorities, viz: they received their statutes from the relevant magistrate. The ‘capitoli’ (chapters), that is, the general assemblies, met in the hall of their ‘schola’ called ‘albergo’, with a chairman called a ‘gastaldo’, a vice chairman called a ‘vicario’ and several ‘compagni’ (companions) who made up the chapter. There was also a treasurer called a ‘cassiere’ and a secretary called a ‘scrivano’ (scribe). Companions were forbidden to turn down the office to which they had been elected (first recorded in the statute of apothecaries, April 1258).
    As early as 1271, the Venetian congregations agreed to devote part of their income to relieve the poor and the sick. Later on they provided pensions to widows and guardianship to orphans, founding special hospitals for sick companions. As well as trade or craft guilds, devotional and religious confraternities flourished, open to all. They were wholly independent and had full freedom to elect their own leaders and to draw up their own statutes as long as no state laws were broken and the honour of the Doge was upheld.
    Some of these brotherhoods, such as that of the ‘San Giovanni Evangelista’ (S.John Evangelist), were in the habit of enrolling, as brothers, illustrious people and even foreigners, including some Englishmen such as one Baron Odoardo Vindefor (sic) who died aged 41 in 1574 and who was buried within the complex of ‘San Giovanni e Paolo [Paul]’.
    By now, many and obvious points of contact can be perceived between these Venetian brotherhoods and the first speculative Freemasons’ lodges, although the peculiar characteristic of secrecy is missing, and we know nothing of rituals. Had the Venetian brotherhoods secrets to protect, they succeeded perfectly. It is also logical that rituals would not have been written down, but learnt by heart and verbally handed down in line with the best masonic tradition. It is safe to assume that many clues were lost when, at the end of 1500, the Senate passed a decree forbidding aristocrats to enrol in the ‘scholae’ and put in many prohibitions and restrictions on their relationships with foreigners.
    Modern Freemasonry, the speculative English Freemasonry of Anderson and Desaguliers, reached Italy around 1729 when an English Duke, Charles Sackeville Duke of Middlesex, founded a lodge in Florence together with some Englishmen living there, such as Horace Mann, along with the poet Tommaso Crudeli, the first ‘martyr’ of Italian Freemasonry. In that same year, Thomas Howard, eighth Duke of Norfolk and a prominent mason, spent a long time in Italy and visited Venice and Florence. Members of the lodge in Florence also included Antonio Cocchi, personal physician to Teophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, and the Abbot Antonio Niccolini, erudite patron of art and literature, renowned for his library and on friendly terms with the Prince of Wales and Horace Walpole. Then there was Antonio Conti, from Padua, (who had met Desaguliers and Newton in England), as well as the Duke of Montague and the ‘Chevalier’ Ramsay who was showing Venice to Montesquieu, then not a Freemason but surely not indifferent to Freemasonry. Francesco Algarotti and Scipione Maffei were two other prominent citizens of the Republic of Venice who were in contact with London, the Royal Society and the masonic circles of England and France; according to Montesquieu, Maffei was one of the founders of a lodge in Verona. It can be assumed then that a Venetian Freemasonry existed as early as 1730.

The Decline of the Republic

The slow decline of the Most Serene Republic of Venice began with Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492, ironically the achievement of a citizen of Genoa, for centuries the enemy of Venice. However, despite the political, military and commercial decline, Venice was unready to accept unwelcome interference from without. Therefore the anti-masonic Pontifical Bulls In Eminenti Apostolatus Specula of 1738 and Providas Romanorum Pontificum of 1751 went unheeded in the Republic.
    In 1754, one Bresson, a French physician, was denounced by his parish priest and arrested as a member of the ‘Franchi Muratori’ (Freemasons). This provoked the Senate’s intervention; by freeing the Frenchman and arresting the priest it reasserted its absolute legislative power in the Republic and brought diplomatic relations with Rome near to breaking point.
    In 1727 a theatre in Verona presented a play entitled ‘I Franchi Muratori’ (The Freemasons). In 1746 the Cavalier Alticozzi published his ‘Report on the Company of Freemasons’. If the theatre play ‘The Freemasons’ by Francesco Ghisellini had little success, ‘Le Donne Curiose’ (The Curious Women) by Carlo Goldoni - a play in which the curiosity of the women takes centre stage with regard to what their husbands get up to in their lodge - enjoyed great success during the Carnival of 1753. Giacomo Casanova, probably a Venetian more famous than Marco Polo and Antonio Vivaldi, returned to Venice in that same year after having been initiated in Lyon, where the Count Cagliostro had founded his famous lodge. Casanova was arrested on 21 August 1755, not for being a mason but for his debauched and unscrupulous behaviour.
    Sects like that of the Elect Cohens and systems like that of the Strict Observance and the Illuminati of Bavaria, also spread into the Veneto, almost in contra-position to English Freemasonry, which was philanthropic and above political or religious differences.
    In 1772, the English Grand Lodge of the ‘Moderns’ issued the warrant No 438 to a lodge in Venice called ‘Union’ and warrant No 439 to a lodge in Verona. The two ‘English’ lodges probably ceased their activities after 1777. After 1778 there were four new lodges whose names are known: ‘Amore del Prossimo’ (Love of Neighbours) in Padua, ‘I Veri Amici’ (The True Friends) in Vicenza, ‘La Vera Luce’ (The True Light) in Verona and ‘La Fedelta’ (Fidelity) in Venice.
    The ‘Union’ Lodge No 438 was founded by the Senate’s Secretary, Pietro Antonio Gratarol, and counted a Dutchman and two or three Englishmen of disparate social origin among its members. A comparison of the membership rolls of the ‘Union’ Lodge (1772) and ‘La Fedelta’ (1785) shows the disappearance of foreign and Jewish names and the preponderance of aristocrats and civil servants.
    In 1785, the government, increasingly concerned for its own survival in a rapidly changing world where the concepts of liberty, fraternity and equality were leaving the intellectual circles to become disruptive and revolutionary, ordered the closure of all lodges. The order took place, like everything else in Venice, without too much notice.
    Twelve years later, on 12 May 1797, the Most Serene Republic of Venice, tired, weak and a mere shadow of its past, surrendered to Brother Napoleon Bonaparte. Lodovico Manin, the last Doge, hastily discarded the ducal insignia and, before leaving the palace, handed to his faithful personal valet, Bernardo Trevisani, his white cotton cap worn by the Doges under the Corn Hat, saying - with typical Venetian phlegm - “Here, I won’t use this again.”
    This is how the history of the Most Serene Republic of Venice comes to an end, while that of Venetian Freemasonry continues to this day, subject to good and bad periods, but - at least for the time being - it does not interest us, because it is part of the main history of Italian Freemasonry, regular and irregular, on which subject not a lot has been written.

W Bro Alessandro Bonelli was born in Venice and lived there for many years. He is a member of Dunckerley Lodge 3878 in Poole, Dorset, of Loggia Italia 2687 in London and of Chapter of Unity 386 in Wareham, Dorset.