This date in 1355 was the morning after the failed coup of Venetian Doge Marino Faliero. And it was the first date that vengeance began to fall upon the plotters.
Faliero, voted power by the fellow-noblemen who bossed the Serene Republic, intended to displace the patrician class with commoner support. The scheme called for Faliero’s supporters secretly to mobilize hundreds of men who on April 15 would gather at the Piazza San Marco and mount their surprise takeover. But the plot sank like a stone on the big day, with anticipated adherents turning out sparsely or flatly declining and word soon reaching aristocratic ears of trouble afoot. The would-be masters of Venice were soon rounded up without resistance by the real masters of Venice.
In this misfired drama, Faliero’s henchmen — the men upon whom fell the task of orchestrating the cells who would summon the traitor militia — were Filippo Calendario and Bertuccio Isarello. And on this, the following day, they were tried, sentenced, and by evening hung from upper windows of the Ducal Palace. Both men were gagged: one last precaution against the sort of popular exhortation that they had not managed when it counted.
“The earth was set in motion,” one chronicler recorded of the Venetian establishment’s reaction to the menace. (Source) Faliero would die the next day; in all, eleven gibbeted corpses festooned the palace as a warning against the next aspirant.
Isarello was the captain of a Venetian galley who had been appointed by Faliero — controversially bypassing the usual noble prerogatives — and had rewarded his prince by expertly harrying Genoese merchantmen.
Calendario (English Wikipedia entry | the more detailed German), Isarello’s father-in-law, was a stonemason, sculptor and architect who actually worked on the very palace he was hanged from.
Column capital of Drunken Noah dating from the period of Calendario’s work on the Venetian Ducal Palace. (cc) image from Honza Beran.
On this day..
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- 1841: Peter Robinson, Tell-Tale Heart inspiration?
- 1897: Lovett Brookins, thanks to bad women
- 1942: Vasily Klubkov, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya's betrayer
- 2011: Three in Shiraz
- 1783: Philip, a negro slave of Henry Garrett
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