. Mediæval and modern history . all may know that the sea belongsto Venice and issubject to her as abride is subject toher husband. Thisannual celebrationof the ceremony wasone of the mostbrilliant spectaclesof the Middle Ages. The sea-power andcommercial ascend-ancy of Venice wasembodied in herfamous marine Ar-senal. This consistedof a series of wharves,dockyards, and vast magazines filled with marine war-engines andmilitary stores of every kind. In the citys palmiest day sixteenthousand shipbuilders, workmen, and guards were employed Arsenal was one of the sights of Europe and is st
. Mediæval and modern history . all may know that the sea belongsto Venice and issubject to her as abride is subject toher husband. Thisannual celebrationof the ceremony wasone of the mostbrilliant spectaclesof the Middle Ages. The sea-power andcommercial ascend-ancy of Venice wasembodied in herfamous marine Ar-senal. This consistedof a series of wharves,dockyards, and vast magazines filled with marine war-engines andmilitary stores of every kind. In the citys palmiest day sixteenthousand shipbuilders, workmen, and guards were employed Arsenal was one of the sights of Europe and is still an objectof interest to the curious traveler. Dante introduced in hisInferno^ a celebrated description of the place, doubtless frompersonal knowledge of it. The decline of Venice dates from the fifteenth century. Theconquests of the Ottoman Turks during this century deprived herof much of the territory she held east of the Adriatic, and finallythe discovery of the New World by Columbus and of an unbroken 1 Canto xxi, Fig. 31. A Canal in Venice(From a photograph) i6o GROWTH OF THE TOWNS [§172 water route to India by Vasco da Gama gave a deathblow to hercommerce. From this time on the trade with the East was to beconducted from the Atlantic ports instead of from those in theMediterranean. 172. Genoa. Genoa, on the old Ligurian coast, was afterVenice the most powerful of the Italian maritime cities. She earlycrushed her near competitor Pisa,^ and then entered into a fiercecompetition with Venice for the control of the trade of the Orient. The period of Genoas greatest prosperity dates from the re-capture of Constantinople from the Latins by the Greeks in jealousj^ of the Venetians the Genoese assisted theGreeks in the recovery of the city and in return were givenvarious commercial privileges in places along the Bosphorus. Verysoon they established stations upon the shores of the Euxine andbegan to carry on a lucrative trade with eastern Asia by wayof the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubje, booksubjectmiddleages
