Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Friendly Foes
Never mind that Venice sacked Constantinople, or that Constantinople sided with Genoa
against Venice: warfare wasn't enough to deter the two maritime powers from doing brisk
business with one another for centuries. When Constantinople fell to Ottoman rule in 1453,
business carried on as usual. The rival powers understood one another very well; the Vene-
tian language was widely spoken across the eastern Mediterranean.
There were some awkward moments in diplomatic relations, however. Both sides period-
ically took prisoners of war, and seldom released them. Prisoners were routinely forced into
servitude and/or religious conversion. In 1428 Venice established a special prison in Dorso-
duro to convert Muslim Turkish women prisoners to Christianity. Ottomans tended to hold
Venetians for ransom, though it wasn't always an especially profitable gambit. Though
Venice officially installed collection boxes in churches in 1586 to raise funds for POW
ransom, they remained mostly empty.
Prisoners & Princesses
After Suleiman the Magnificent took over Cyprus in 1571, Venice sensed its maritime
power slipping, and allied with the papal states, Spain and even arch-rival Genoa to keep
the Ottoman sultan at bay. The same year a huge allied fleet (much of it provided by
Venice) routed the Turks off Lepanto (Greece) and Sebastiano Venier and his Venetian fleet
sailed home with 100 Turkish women as war trophies.
Legend has it that when Turkish troops took over the island of Paros, the POWs included
Cecilia Venier-Baffo, who was apparently the illegitimate daughter of Venice's noble Veni-
er family, a niece of the doge, and possibly the cousin of Sebastiano (of Lepanto fame). Ce-
cilia became the favourite wife of Sultan Salim II in Constantinople, and when he died in
1574 she took control as Sultana Nurbani (Princess of Light). The regent of Sultan Murad
III, she was a faithful pen pal of Queen Elizabeth I of Britain and Catherine de Medici of
France. According to historian Alberto Toso Fei, the Sultana's policies were so favourable
to Venetian interests that the Venetian senate set aside special funds to fulfil her wishes for
Venetian specialities, from lapdogs to golden cushions. Genoa wasn't pleased by her fa-
vouritism, and in 1582 she was poisoned to death by what appears to have been Genoese
assassins.
