My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
Here are a few more morsels of lore about Carnival back in the Old Days:
Laws: I realize that the Carnival motto is “anything goes,” which makes the idea of laws somewhat incongruous. But “anything” could — and did — lead to enough dangerous and unstable behavior over time that the adults supposedly supervising this city-wide party were forced to set some ground rules. Their significance is pretty obvious. For example:
It was forbidden in 1703 to wear the bauta in the ridotti, or gambling houses. The government was apparently the last to realize (after centuries of Carnival) that being completely disguised was a great way to hide from your creditors. So, no hiding behind masks and capes for any nefarious purpose, because they were also …
Just to make sure there was a stop to this particular bit of chicanery, on January 24, 1458 it was decreed that nobody wearing a mask would be permitted to enter a church, convent, or any other sacred place. Period.
The Carnival Calendar:
You couldn’t wear masks just any time you felt like it. It was like hunting season, with fairly specific dates:
It started in October, when everybody came back from summer vacation in their country villas, and the theatres began to open. At its height, Venice had 17 theatres, an extraordinary number for a city in those days. And Carnival continued, with a brief interruption for Christmas, until Ash Wednesday ushered in Lent.
Masks were also allowed to be worn during the two weeks of the feast of the Ascension and its phenomenal market, which filled the Piazza San Marco with vendors from all over the Mediterranean basin and beyond.
And then there was the convenient clause of “and whenever appropriate” (as I think of it). Masks could be permitted by special decree for very special occasions. For example, masks were allowed during the celebrations of the victory of the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Among the countless public festivities was a parade of allegorical floats: “Christianity” was represented in the act of crushing a chained dragon; “Victory” vaunted itself over the vanquished; and “Death” was triumphant, complete with sickle. It was all party, all the time for several weeks, and that could only mean break out the masks.
In any case, in good times or bad, one unassailable rule was that Carnival could not be interrupted. When doge Paolo Renier died on February 13, 1789, they didn’t report the death until March 2.
Party on!!
There are just too many curious things about the way Carnival was back in the Great Days, so I’m only going to tell you a few of the ones I think are interesting. Anyway, it’s not as if they have any relevance now. For all the roar of media coverage today, what goes on here is a hoarse whisper compared to the cacophony that was Carnival before 1797.
And Paris must be deserted; there are nothing but French people in town.
For many centuries, Carnival here was primarily a Venetian phenomenon, which is to say an integral part of Venetian life and culture. But when Vasco da Gama reached the Spice Islands by means of a daring new route round the Cape of Good Hope (1497), Venice’s monopoly of the spice trade collapsed virtually overnight, dragging the city’s economy down with it.
Struggling to get the city back on its feet, somebody began to put the word out that the Venice Carnival was one heck of a thing to see. Yes, Venice could discern its potential for tourism even before the invention of bullets and parachutes, and the Venetian merchants, staring into their now-empty coffers, were quick to make the most of it.
The wildly absurd and equally wildly obscene elements which so many favored (I refer to behavior as much as garb) were not simply a crucial social safety valve (keeping in mind that the patricians lived with loads of restrictions, too — it wasn’t just the salt of the earth that needed a break). It appears that people have always exploited the absurd and the obscene as a way of exorcising their dread of death and the demonic, and Carnival was the Olympics of spitting in the face of fear, as well as in the face of manners and rules and occasionally, I imagine, other people.
Sir Thomas More famously stated that “The devil, a proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked,” so the broader, sharper, and deeper the derision, the better. That went double for the rude and the lewd. So really, unless you were putting somebody life or savings in danger, there was no such thing as too wild, too crude, too raunchy– too anything. They organized races for boats rowed by dwarfs, or the blind.
The white mask often called a bauta is more correctly termed “Volto“ (face) or “Larva.” Sounds repellent, but it comes from the Latin meaning ghost, specter, minor evil spirit. Its extraordinary shape resolves several important concerns: First, it completely hides the face; second, it leaves space for the wearer to eat and drink; third, its shape alters the speaker’s voice, thereby acting as a kind of vocal, as well as visual, disguise. 
I think my favorite is the “Moretta,” or “Servetta Muta.” It’s so strange it could only have come from France (it did), and it started out, at least, as something to be worn by women when they went to visit a convent. It was usually made of black velvet, and wasn’t attached by ribbons; you kept it on your face by biting down on a small button attached to the faceward side. (Hence the term “mute.”)
I can see what the appeal would be for men, but if you couldn’t speak, why would you go visit someone in a convent in the first place? To give the nuns a chance to talk?
One of a couple of events which the organizers of Carnival have revived after rummaging around in Venetian history is a beauty pageant which is based on one of the more dramatic exploits in the city’s entire life story. And a beauty pageant.
It is called the festa delle Marie (ma-REE-eh), which is plural for Maria. There were 12, actually or temporarily named Maria, and what happened to them was not only an exciting demonstration of the fledgling republic’s developing power, but a great way to add a party to the calendar.
The story begins around the year 943, though documented accounts date from 1039. Some details remain open to scholarly debate, but the outline of the episode goes like this:
On the annual feast of the Madonna Candelora (February 2, also known as the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary), Venetians not only went to mass, they also organized an entertainment disguised as an act of municipal and Christian charity. Or vice versa. In any case, they were very good at this, I want to say without sarcasm — a skill that civic leaders today might consider acquiring.
Taking the established custom of blessing girls who were newlyweds on February 2, somebody thought it would be wonderful to choose 12 poor girls and include them in the event.
These twelve damsels had to be poor (otherwise the charitable part of the operation would be meaningless), obviously had to be engaged, and of course they had to be divinely beautiful — or at least more beautiful than any other poor engaged girl in their district.
The patrician families in their respective districts took up a collection to provide them with dowries; the doge lent them masses of jewelry of gold and precious stones from the state treasury, and they went in a procession of boats to the church of San Pietro di Castello, where they were blessed by the bishop in a sumptuous ceremony in the presence of the doge himself and all the noble families (on February 2, obviously).
The girls then resumed their procession, going to the Doge’s Palace (which it’s entirely possible they had never even seen; until recently, life here was generally limited to your own little neighborhood), where they were the centerpiece of a magnificent reception. Then everyone climbed aboard the Bucintoro, the doge’s ceremonial barge (in those early days it did not resemble the elaborate final version made famous in paintings by Canaletto, but still — the doge’s barge) and, followed by innumerable boats, went up the Grand Canal to the Rialto, then down the canal of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi to Santa Maria Formosa, where more solemn ceremonies awaited them in the church.
Things had gone along like this to general rejoicing until the year 943, when a crew of pirates — led by a certain Gaiolo, an Istrian pirate notorious for stealing Venetians and making slaves of them — burst into the church with his trusty marauders and made off with the girls. The Marias may have had a certain commercial value, but their jewelry must have been utterly amazing.
The doge — Pietro Candiani III — hastily organized a band of hardy men (I am not making this up) and they went racing off in hot pursuit, doge included. They caught up with the pirates near Caorle, slew them to a man, and carried home the brides (and their jewelry) in triumph.
If there had been a festa before, from this point it became ever more elaborate; not only to celebrate the 12 girls (as before), but now to commemorate the daring rescue of the 12 girls. Each February 2 the chosen girls were temporarily re-baptized with the name Maria, they were invited to all sorts of parties and receptions and balls and even mass in the major churches of the city. Venetians considered it good luck merely to be able to get near them. All this went on for nine days.
But it’s hard to keep anything up at that level of organization, cost, enthusiasm — whatever it is that makes festivals work. By 1272 the 12 girls had been cut back to four, then to three, because the cost had become annoying to the state as well as the noble families who were funding the event. There was also a big and expensive war going on with Genoa, the War of Chioggia. Can’t do everything. Can’t pay for everything, either.
At that point somebody conveniently decided that it was wrong for people to have become fixated on this festival as a great way to ogle some beautiful babes when they should have been focusing on the religious aspect of the day.
So they eliminated the girls altogether and substituted figures made of wood — specifically, large slabs of wood cut out along the silhouette of a beautiful poor girl. Think paper dolls.
People hated it, and threw stones and vegetables at the wooden Marias when they passed. So the government passed a law, in 1349, forbidding the throwing of stones and vegetables at the wooden Marias. But the festa was obviously destined to die, and in 1379 it was suppressed altogether.
But not everywhere. The reviled wooden stand-ins, called “Marione de tola” in Venetian (big Marys made of planks), were taken up by the French in reduced form, and before you can say zut alors, they had become known as Marionets or petits Marions, and then marionette.
Now it’s Venice, February 7, 2010, and the Marias are back. For the past few years, part of the opening festivities of Carnival has been the Festa delle Marie, a procession of costumed re-enactors accompanying 12 beautiful girls which wends on foot from San Pietro di Castello to San Marco. The girls are chosen by a jury from many, many applications, and I doubt that they have to be either poor or engaged anymore. But they do need to be beautiful.
For a few years, back in the Nineties (I seem to recall 1996), there was another element: the Regata delle Marie. Rowing races were historically part of any important Venetian festivity, and this one was intended for pairs of women rowing mascaretas. The idea was that both women (or girls) had to be amateurs, rowers who had never participated in the official city races.
I joined in either the first or second edition, with an Argentinian girl named Magdalena. We were all nobodies; it was great. The starting line was just on the other side of the church of San Pietro, in the Canale delle Navi. We raced along somewhere toward Sant’ Erasmo — I wasn’t paying too much attention to the landmarks, especially after the purple boat veered across our bow and we kind of ran into it.
But we disentangled ourselves and rowed like Istrian pirates being pursued by an angry doge, and back up into the rio di Quintavalle to the finish line in front of the church. After all that, we actually came in fourth, which meant we won a pennant, which is all that matters. I also remember that experience because the second we crossed the finish line, Magdalena said, “I’m never racing again.” I never asked her why.
The race did well enough for a couple of years, then people began bending the rules into all kinds of weird shapes till the participants were basically the same people on the official roster. So the race, like the original festival, fizzled out, at least as part of Carnival. It’s now held in June, in honor of San Pietro. Nice thought, but nothing to do with pirates and doges.
But back to Carnival. The procession of happy, heavily costumed Marias is fun, at least when the sun is shining. Where else can you dress up and be carried for a mile on a wooden platform by gondoliers while thousands of people take your picture?
And it’s fun for the onlookers too, because — some things never change — they get to look at beautiful girls in fancy clothes.
I’m not a big fan of Carnival in Venice. The only bigness I can evince where this annual demolition derby is concerned is a jumbo-size package of the old Aristotelian pity and terror.
That’s not completely true: I don’t feel pity.
But this year I decided to take a different approach. When Carnival erupted last Sunday (after several premonitory tremors) I thought I’d imagine it was something that could be fun, amusing, diverting, worth the trip. Not for me — I’ve figured out how to make it fun for me but it doesn’t involve costumes or the Piazza San Marco — but just going with the idea that it could be entertaining for the thousands upon thousands of people who come to Venice expecting to enjoy themselves, at least, if not enjoy everybody else.
By which I mean, enjoy being squashed like a grape in a winepress by your fellow humans.
So far, it’s working. I had a fine time on Sunday afternoon. But that’s because I made a point of not going to the Piazza San Marco. The Gazzettino reported that some 90,000 people were there. They certainly didn’t need me, even if there had been room.
The first years I was here I did go, at least a few times, to the Piazza San Marco, the gravitational center of the festivities. It was all so new and strange, and memory reports that there weren’t quite so many thousands. Memory may be lying but it was fine anyway. Perhaps the novelty of the situation carried me over the crush, as it may well do to people today.
Then there was a hiatus, partly because I didn’t enjoy the winepress experience and also because what was going on there seemed strangely unfestive: Loads of people in costume (95 percent of which seemed to be identical), walking around just looking at each other, striking attitudes, or taking pictures of each other with or without tourists posing next to them. The nadir is occupied by the people in costume who charge money for allowing themselves to be photographed with your cousin or your kid. And they can make a bundle.
Then we came to Castello and I discovered something of the way Carnival was, decades ago, before the event was trampled by the tourism behemoth. Kids and families and dogs, and relatively few tourists. And did I mention the kids?
Perhaps I’m going senile, or perhaps it’s because the confetti-throwing and occasional Silly String-spraying and strolling around have no evident commercial focus, but I think the downtown version of Carnival beats San Marco in straight sets. Here, if you see somebody taking a picture of a person in costume, it’s almost certainly a besotted relative.
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If you start to look around, you begin to notice how little it really takes to dress up and play Carnival. There were people who were looking great with only a hat, or a wig, or a moustache or whiskers scribbled on with a black marker– even the simplest mask imaginable just barely covering the eyes. No plumes, no sequins, no layers of painted papier-mache. It really works.
The first Sunday of Carnival (February 7 this year) was Opening Day, one of the maximum moments, as you can imagine. The others are Fat Thursday (Giovedi’ Grasso), and Fat Tuesday (Martedi’ Grasso). And the weekend between them. If the weather is beautiful — as it was on Sunday — it can feel like a party even if you don’t do anything special. If it’s really cold, overcast, windy or rainy, obviously the merriment becomes shredded and forced. This isn’t Rio.
Next chapter: I’ll be tossing out a few festive fistfuls of history, gathered from a large bag of brightly-colored bits of trivia.
Here’s a sample. “Confetti” here refers to the sugared almonds which are given to wedding guests. What speakers of English (and French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch) call confetti — brightly-colored bits of paper — here are called coriandoli (ko-ree-AN-dolee). Why?
Because back in the Olden Days, Carnival revelers would toss all sorts of things around or at or on each other — eggs full of rosewater was one hugely amusing toy to everybody except the women who were on the receiving end. People would also toss various tiny edibles, particularly coriander seeds, which were used in pastries. Then they became bits of sugar pretending to be coriander seeds. Only much later — in 1875 — did flakes of paper begin to be used instead, which is an entirely different story. People who had always called the flying fragments of food “coriandoli” merely transferred to term to the newer-fangled form.