ombardy, principally to escape from the cruelties of Clefis king of the
Lombards, which greatly tended to increase the numbers of the new city;
and in the conventions which were made between Pepin, king of France,
and the emperor of Greece, when the former, at the entreaty of the pope,
came to drive the Lombards out of Italy, the duke of Benevento and the
Venetians did not render obedience to either the one or the other,
but alone enjoyed their liberty. As necessity had led them to dwell
on sterile rocks, they were compelled to seek the means of subsistence
elsewhere; and voyaging with their ships to every port of the ocean,
their city became a depository for the various products of the world,
and was itself filled with men of every nation.

For many years the Venetians sought no other dominion than that which
tended to facilitate their commercial enterprises, and thus acquired
many ports in Greece and Syria; and as the French had made frequent use
of their ships in voyages to Asia, the island of Candia was assigned to
them in recompense for these services. While they lived in this manner,
their name spread terror over the seas, and was held in veneration
throughout Italy. This was so completely the case, that they were
generally chosen to arbitrate in controversies between the states, as
occurred in the difference between the Colleagues, on account of the
cities they had divided among themselves; which being referred to the
Venetians, they awarded Brescia and Bergamo to the Visconti. But when,
in the course of time, urged by their eagerness for dominion, they had
made themselves masters of Padua, Vicenza, Trevisa, and afterward
of Verona, Bergamo, and Brescia, with many cities in Romagna and the
kingdom of Naples, other nations were impressed with such an opinion of
their power, that they were a terror, not only to the princes of Italy,
but to the ultramontane kings. These states entered into an alliance
against them, and in one day wrested from them the provinces they had
obtained with so much labor and expense; and although they have in
latter times reacquired some portions, still possessing neither power
nor reputation, like all the other Italian powers, they live at the
mercy of others.

Benedict XII. having attained the pontificate and finding Italy lost,
fearing, too, that the emperor would assume the sovereignty of
the country, determined to make friends of all who had usurped the
government of those cities whi