The former President on December 3 called for the termination of the Constitution of the United States of America. Mr. Trump posted on his social network, Truth Social, that his fraud election lie, “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” (CNN). In an instant, Trump demonstrated his disqualification that he could ever again take the oath of the President: “I…will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Instead, he means for the Constitution’s “termination.”
A little over 700 years ago in the medieval era the Doge (i.e., Duke) of Venice, then the most prosperous sea faring nation on earth, decided he too should not settle any longer for being the mere head of a Republic. Doge Marino Falier decided that he must have autocratic powers—in his case those enjoyed by all the other dukes of Italy, especially the dukes of Venice’s deadly rivals in Milan and Genoa. His reasoning was that Venice’s recent disastrous defeat at sea by Genoa created an emergency requiring arbitrary powers.
Marino Falier’s first move was to summon a mob. Trump did likewise. Trump in the 2020 Presidential Debates told The Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” Then in December 2020 after he lost the election, Trump tweeted calling for a protest in the capitol he promised would “be wild.” The Proud Boys responded, encouraging their leader Enrique Tarrio to “get radical and get real men” prepared. The Oath Keepers, whose leader Stewart Rhodes now stands convicted of seditious conspiracy, joined in the plot. The result was the January 6, 2021, assault by a Trump mob against the Congress of the United States and Trump’s own Vice President.
Alarmed by Trump’s tweet, I posted a photo in December 2020 I had taken earlier on a trip to Venice of the blacked-out portrait of Doge Marino Falier in the frieze just below the ceiling of the Grand Council chamber of the Doge’s Palace—the only portrait of a Doge to be blacked out among the hundreds represented for the thousand-year history of the Republic. I warned on December 22, 2020: “Donald Trump, as he maneuvers to overthrow the result of the 2020 election, would do well to recall the fate of Doge Marino Falier.”
Falier, like the Doges before him, had been required for his oath of office to sign pages of “promissione” pledging both allegiance to the Republic of Venice and his agreement to abide by very specific constitutional limitations on the Doge’s powers. The Venetians were intent their Doge preside ceremoniously over the elected Senate and 1200 plus member Grand Council of Venice, and not take on the powers of a King. The promissione for example prohibited the Doge from direct correspondence with foreign princes. Actual governance of Venice was in the hands of interlocking committees. To avoid a cult of personality, free-standing statues of the Doge were forbidden (by contrast in Florence the statues of the Medici are everywhere). The result of such participatory government Venice became the most successful representative (if aristocratic) based power in history. The Greek democracy had lasted a little over 500 years; the Venetian Republic ended up lasting nearly 1000 years (811 AD to Napoleon’s invasion in 1797)—testaments to the durability of representative governments. It was ancient Greece and Venice that together became important inspirations for Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, when they broke from the King of England. And their inspiration later formed the basis for their design of the American Constitution with its many checks and balances. What the founding fathers dared to do was to take the forms of republican government developed by the city states and apply them for the first time to an entire continent.
The promissone in the words of historian John Julius Norwich “rankled” Falier. Beyond Lord Norwich’s great work, the finest and most beautifully illustrated history of Venice happens to be by a former Greenville Mississippian, Dial Parrott. Parrott’s glorious tome is The Genius of Venice (Rizzoli 2013). Parrott writes that in the middle of 1355—just six months after Falier took office—“reports began to filter in to Doge Marino Falier and his attending ducal council that some sort of plot to overthrow the Venetian Republic was under way. When the councilors began an investigation, they rapidly discovered that there was, in fact, an ongoing conspiracy, and that, incredibly, it was the Doge himself who seemed to lie at its malignant heart. At this point, inquiries were turned over to the Council of Ten, which quickly uncovered the fantastic scheme. The conspirators, who counted among them a good many Venetian seamen and Arsenale workers, had agreed to put an end to the city’s existing aristocratic government and install Doge Falier as the crowned prince of Venice.”
Trump, like Falier, turned to thugs knowing full well from the Secret Service they were armed, and directed them up the hill against the Congress and his Vice President on January 6, 2021. There he would have joined them but for the Secret Service. In Falier’s case, the thugs enlisted from the state shipyard (Arsenale) workers did not actually get a chance to reach St. Mark’s Square before the plot was stopped. (By contrast, Trump’s mob made it into the Capitol and chased out the Congressmen and Vice President). Instead, the Council of Ten, acting swiftly, proved a Republic, once aroused to the danger, can act decisively and harshly to protect itself against a coup intended to install an autocracy. (If I was alarmed enough from Jackson to Instagram in December 2020, why weren’t the Capitol Police ready?). The Council of Ten had Falier dragged from his luxurious Ducale Apartments and tried him into the night. The following morning a swordsman beheaded Falier at the top of the marble staircase in the courtyard of the Doge’s palace. Sic semper tyrannis.
Even today, one can enter the magnificent Grand Council of the Doge’s palace (the Sala Maggior) to see the wall to wall and ceiling history paintings by the likes of Tinteretto, Palma and Veronese. There, as I noted, in the frieze just below the gilded and painted ceiling Falier’s name remains below one of the ducal portraits—the one completely blackened.
Donald Trump’s fate will be similar, albeit kinder than of Falier’s in the physical sense. In Trump’s case it will surely start with the multiple indictments now expected followed by painfully slow trials in the Federal courts and in the state courts of Georgia. Likely on tap are his interfering with Congress’ peaceful transfer of power as required by the free and fair election of 2020 and the certifications of the states (and confirmed by over 60 courts); inciting the riot of January 6; like Rhodes seditious conspiracy; and after leaving office, stealing among the nation’s most secret documents. And, like Falier, Donald Trump’s portrait as a matter of history, will, at least figuratively, become blackened (damnatio memoriae) for the history of this republic.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
