No Rest For the Wicked **of Note** After the resolution of that particular hysteria, things calmed down… until Charlemagne came onto the scene. See, at the end of the eighth century, the Lombard king Desiderius decided to stick his nose into a dynastic dispute among the Franks. All this succeeded in doing was pissing off the guy who came out on top of the dispute, Charlemagne, and convincing him to head south to kick some Lombard ass. Which he did. Charlemagne defeated the Lombards at their capital of Pavia (south of Milan) in 774. In a very generous gesture, Charlemagne divided the conquered lands with Pope Adrian in Rome, creating the Papal States. Such generosity, and probably no small amount of coercion, induced the Pope to name Charlemagne’s son Pepin King of Italy in 787. This is where Venice, and by extension the Giovanni, become involved. At the turn of the ninth century, Oberlerio degli Antinori, then Doge of Venice, foolishly committed Venice to the Frankish empire — which by then had been dubbed the Holy Roman Empire — in an effort to strengthen his very tenuous grasp on power, fearing a coup like the one he himself had engineered to put himself in charge of Venice. By that time, Charlemagne was seeking to consolidate his power in Northern Italy by chipping away at areas like, oh, let’s say Venice, that were historically subject to the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire. Then, when his position had become even less tenable, the Doge invited Charlemagne’s son, King Pepin, to send an army up from Ravenna to occupy Venice. Overthrowing the inept Doge, the communities of Venice set aside their differences and formed a common defense. At the southern end of the Venetian lagoon, the communities of Chioggia and Palestrina fell quickly to the advance of Pepin’s army in the spring of 810, followed soon after by Grado and Jesolo at the northern end of the lagoon. Then, however, Pepin was stymied by the city’s watery defenses. The Giovanni were one of the patriot families responsible for having Chapter One: A Familiar Conceit all channel markers and buoys removed, making the shallow lagoon a hazardous maze of hidden shoals and swift currents impenetrable to the Italian king’s navy. In short, it was a big “fuck you” to the dynasty that Venice had long sought to remain independent of. I think we should use that tactic again sometime — or maybe remove all the lane markers and directional dividers from the highways and thoroughfares when it becomes prudent. But that’s neither here nor there. I can’t think of too many times invading armies have threatened Boston or Venice in the past 50 years. It’s still a great idea, though. Anyway, Pepin’s army spent six months camped on the mainland, where they suffered bouts of debilitating summer fevers, harassing attacks by the Venetians and constant rumors of a Byzantine fleet on its way to support the city. In the end, Pepin and his army withdrew, with only a token agreement by Venice to pay annual tribute to show for their efforts. King Pepin died a few weeks later, and his father Charlemagne gave up his ambitions of conquering Venice. That’s what you get when you fuck with the Giovanni. More important than the military victory, though, the campaign served to forge a sense of community among the Venetians that defined them for the next thousand years. The siege was also responsible for moving the Venetian capital from its original location on the barrier island of Malamocca to a better defended group of islands near the center of the lagoon, an area known as Rivo Alto, or more commonly Rialto. Many Venetian families, including the Giovanni, moved to Rialto for the protection provided by the treacherous shallows that lay between it and the invading force. Even after the siege was broken, the capital remained at Rialto, as did the Giovanni. The area at Rialto soon became the metropolitan center of the lagoon, the city known tonight as Venice. “Rialto” even remains the name of the commercial center surrounding the oldest bridge across Venice’s Grand Canal. For the next few centuries, Venice continued to grow, becoming the dominant maritime power on the Adriatic Sea. The Giovanni took advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by their location, their position and their wraithly benefactors and reestablished themselves as the wealthy heirs to the legacy the Jovians had left behind. It was at this time that we came to the attention of the Cappadocian clan of Kindred. Many of their members were obsessed with death, and several led nihilistic heresies, fed from the dead or maintained elaborate (for the time) laboratories where they pondered the mysteries of life and death. Some also made their havens in the monasteries of Europe and Northern Africa. Their interest in death was different from that of the Giovanni, however. While the Cappadocians may have been contemplative in nature, their powers over the dead were rudimentary and not at all spiritual. It was almost the opposite of the Giovanni — while we venerated the souls of the dead, the Cappadocians could manipulate corpses and foster deadly disease. Our ability with nigrimancy intrigued these Kindred, especially their founder, if the old tales are to be believed. Although the Cappadocians were well versed in thanatology and had developed a necromantic power giving them mastery over physical death, they new little about what happened to the souls of those who die. It was their elder’s hope that the Giovanni might reveal these lost Roman secrets to them — which I guess, in a way, we did. The Birth of
