Venice: Pure City полностью

There was one game, however, that more than any other symbolised the stability and strength of the Venetian state. It was known as la guerra dei pugni or the war of the fists, fought between the inhabitants of the various territories and neighbourhoods. There were the Rialtini and the Cannaruoli, the Bariotti and the Gnatti. But the largest division of all lay between the Castellani—in the western parishes of Cannaregio, Castello, S. Marco and Dorsoduro—and the Nicolotti in the eastern parishes of S. Croce and S. Polo. The dominant factions were the fishermen of the Nicolotti and the shipbuilders of the Castellani. Their internecine rivalries have already been described. A team from each of these territories met for battle on a chosen bridge, while thousands of spectators lined the streets and houses beside the canal. Dumplings and chestnuts were served to the crowds by street vendors. It was a glorified fist-fight in which the object was to hurl opponents into the water and to gain possession of the bridge.

This became the sport of Venice, according to one sixteenth-century chronicler, “so beloved and esteemed by all the Venetian people, as well as by foreigners.” Visiting monarchs were invited to witness the proceedings, as the Castellani and the Nicolotti vied for mastery. When Henry of Valois visited Venice in the summer of 1574 two armies of three hundred men did battle for his amusement; it was said at the time that it was a way of displaying to the Frenchman that the people of Venice were “very fierce, indomitable, headlong and uncontrolled.” They wore helmets and carried shields. Many of them came armed with sticks of tough rattan. The fighting could last for several hours. Such violent delights often had violent ends. Many competitors were maimed or injured; they were sometimes even killed.

It was of course an occasion of ritualised violence, in which all the brute force of the populace could be expended; popular energy was being exploited for the purposes of spectacle so that it might not be harnessed for any more dangerous cause. At times of holiday, when the fights took place, there was no other subject of conversation among the people. The cause of possessing the two paving stones on the “crown” of the bridge became an obsession. The victors became heroes, and the vanquished were lost in shame. The winning parishes would light great bonfires in their campi, and arrange impromptu dances. The best fighters became famous all over the city, with their portraits hanging in the houses of their parish. They were given honorifics such as “Ditch Jumper” and “Eats the Dead” and “Destroyer of Boldness.” They considered themselves to be “soldiers,” although of course Venetians were never soldiers in a military sense. That may be one of the explanations for their pugnacity at home.

The first record of such fighting is found in 1369, but the first battle upon a bridge seems to have been staged in 1421. The roots of the contest are much older, of course, dating from the first period of exile when the groups from various cities made their homes upon separate islands in the lagoon. There were then real wars for mastery, of which the battle of the fists was a token. On the islands that eventually comprised Venice itself, it was said that there was a “landward” people looking towards the mainland and a “seaward” people looking towards the other islands. The canals were at one time real boundaries, the water between the small plots of land or parishes, which would suffer more than ritual transgression.

Many factions still clashed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice. The denizens of one parish might gather on a bridge and shout insults at the people of the rival parish; the youth of a parish might even initiate rapid “raids” on the camp of a rival, and throw sticks or stones at the natives. The experience of living in such crowded conditions fostered an intense spirit of territorial loyalty; it was said, for example, that the most partisan supporters of la guerra dei pugni were those who lived at or near the boundaries of their parish. The battles were also a way of celebrating the role of bridges themselves in Venetian communal life. They were the very axis around which the city turned. The city has always been an emblem of intense struggle, of the battle for life, and in The City in History Lewis Mumford alludes to “a bloody ritual fight with clubs between the forces of Light and Darkness held within an Egyptian temple precinct.” Civilisation always retains elements of barbarism. That is how it survives. The essence of the city itself lies in competition and aggression.