The legend of the martyrdom of Paolo Erizzo and the heroic death of his daughter Anna Erizzo is one of the most beloved stories in Venetian historiography. Paolo and Anna Erizzo’s heroic acts took place during the fall of Negroponte (Chalcis in Greek), when Venice suffered almost her worst loss of the entire fifteenth century, since the city had been, after Crete, her chief naval station in the Aegean.
Paolo Erizzo, born in 1411 in the old Palazzo Erizzo near San Canziano in Venice, was elected bailo (‘bailiff’) of Negroponte in 1468. Two years later, Sultan Mehmed II attempted to conquer the Venetian island. The Ottoman fleet was under the command of Mahmud Pasha while the land forces were led by Mehmed II himself. At the end of June 1470, the Ottoman cannons began battering the city walls while the Ottoman troops scoured the island, killing all Greeks and Latins over fifteen years of age and enslaving all the others. The Ottomans began their final attack on the 11th of July, entering the city the following morning. The Venetians continued fighting, culminating in a general massacre, and Mehmed II entered the devastated city on the 12th of July.
Paolo Erizzo only surrendered after the Ottomans had pledged the safety of those who had taken refuge within the castle walls. The sultan, however, reneged on his promise and ordered their execution. According to the eyewitness Giacomo Rizzardo, Mehmed II “limited himself to slaughtering Paolo Erizzo and then washed his hands and his face in his blood.” Another eyewitness, Giovanni Maria Angiolello (1451–ca. 1525) from Vicenza, who survived the fall of Negroponte and became a slave and servitor of sultan Mehmed II, and whose memoirs are referred to as “Historia Turchesca”, states that Paolo was killed during the first onslaught, that is in the defence of the part of the town named Burchio (Vourkos in Greek) on the 12th of July.
Paolo’s only daughter, Anna Erizzo, a modest maiden of exceptional beauty, was captured and dragged to the Sultan’s tent as his prize. But the Christian maiden preferred death to dishonour: refusing to enter the harem of her father’s murderer, Anna chose a martyr’s death rather than defilement. Insulted by her refusal, she was cut to pieces by the angry tyrant with his scimitar.
Although the eyewitnesses Rizzardo and Angiolello make no reference to Anna Erizzo or to this following detail, other contemporary accounts say that Paolo Erizzo was sawed in half. The first mention of Paolo Erizzo’s martyrdom by sawing in historiographic literature is most likely the one in Marcantonio Coccio Sabellico’s Historia rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita (Venice, 1487). This manner of death also appears in the Erizzo family chronicle preserved in Marciana, Tuscany.
We should mention here Francesco Sansovino’s book Gl’Annali Turcheschi overo Vite de Principi della Casa Othomana (Venice, 1573). Sansovino did not describe the sawing of Paolo Erizzo, but related that all Italian youths were killed, some by impalement and, interestingly, others by sawing in half. Sansovino also mentions Erizzo’s daughter but without using her given name. He described her as a daughter of Paolo Erizzo, young and beautiful, destined for the sultan’s harem on account of her beauty, and finally slain because she refused to submit to Mehmed’s will. According to Giuseppe Gullino, the oldest reference to Paolo’s daughter is to be found in an anonymous annex to Laonicus Chalcondyles’s book Origine et rebus gestis Turcorum libri decem..., published in Basel in 1556. In the annex with the title “De Nigroponti captione”, the daughter of “Paulus Erico” (Paolo Erizzo) appears without her given name, but the description of her is similar to the later one by Sansovino as the only daughter of the praetor, a chaste and beautiful virgin, who was brought to the sultan because of her beauty and killed because she didn’t submit to the sultan’s will.
In 1647 an extensive description of the heroic acts of Paolo Erizzo and his daughter appears in the book La Galerie des Femmes Fortes by the French Jesuit Pierre Le Moyne (Paris, 1647). Le Moyne related the stories of the martyr’s death of “Paul Erici” (Paolo Erizzo) and the virtuous decision of his chaste daughter, who appears without her given name, but with the epithet “La chaste Venitienne” (“the chaste Venetian”). Relying on an earlier, but not quoted, historiographic book, Le Moyne reported that Mehmed had fallen in love with the captured daughter of Paul Erici and had promised her wealth, offering her “sceptres and crowns”. The Jesuit fleshes out Anna’s story with her thoughts on death and finally with comparisons between her fate and those of early Christian saints, between Mehmed and Nero and between the dangers of the battlefield and those of an amphitheatre.
Giovanni Sagredo’s Memorie istoriche de’ Monarchi ottomani (Venice, 1673), which had a significant impact on the European image of the Ottomans in the 17th and 18th century, is similarly extensive in its description of the stories. Sagredo described Paolo Erizzo as the former bailo of Negroponte, who could have returned safely to Venice but decided to stay in the besieged town in order to prove his courage and seize this opportunity to distinguish himself. Erizzo roused the defenders with his speeches and his acts. After a long period of fighting, he submitted himself to the victor to save his head. But the Ottomans, cruel as usual, sawed him into two parts under the pretence that they had promised to save his head but not his bust. Before his death, Paolo Erizzo was loath to leave his beautiful daughter Anna exposed to the lust of the barbarians and asked the janissaries to kill her. They answered that they would not dishonour her but that she would be reserved for the appetites of the Sultan. Confronting him, Anna appears with the face of a victor rather than a slave. She is not prepared to submit even though the sultan has promised her own apartment, sceptres and crowns, rich clothes and gems. With a stroke of his sabre, the sultan releases her innocent soul, which rapidly rises into glory.
Sagredo’s book had a strong impact on the visual arts, and was also used as a historical source for tragedies and opera librettos. Stefano Carli from Capodistria should also be counted as part of this group; he found inspiration for his tragedy La Erizia in Sagredo’s book. This outstanding tale from Venetian history was suggested to him by his elder brother Gian Rinaldo, a noted economist, antiquarian and patriot. Stefano Carli explicitly quoted Giovanni Sagredo as his source of inspiration. A portrayal of Paolo Erizzo’s torture, found among the decorations of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace, bears further witness to the importance of Paolo Erizzo in Venetian history.
Other Venetian stories are somewhat similar the legend of Anna Erizzo. It should be pointed out that some inhabitants of Negroponte survived the massacre of July 1470 – a few women and also some young boys who had been brought up as janissaries in the Muslim religion had been able to escape by paying off their captors and began trickling back to Venice, some of them finding a home in the Venetian monasteries. Two such women were the elderly Polissena Premarin and the young and beautiful Beatrice Venier, members of the largest noble families resident in Negroponte. In the story of Beatrice Venier, who was about to hang herself by her long blond hair in order to save her virginity from the rapacious appetite of the Turkish barbarians, but was led by the miraculous intervention of the Virgin Mary to a Venetian ship, there seems to be a vague similarity to the story of Anna, the beautiful daughter of Paolo Erizzo. Polissena Premarin and Beatrice Venier had probably taken a vow that they would lead a life of chastity as nuns if they were saved from death and, with other survivors, they founded the San Sepolcro convent for the Observant Franciscan Third Order in Venice, where they performed many miracles. Their beatification was recorded by Franciscan hagiographers. Although we are certain of Beatrice’s family name (Venier), it should be stated that Giuseppe Bettinelli mistakenly referred to Beatrice as a member of the Renier family in his Dizionario storico-portatile di tutte le Venete patrizie famiglie (Venice, 1780).
As regards historical evidence for the legend of Anna Erizzo, a certain Anna Erizzo from Negroponte is to be found in the list of women in the harem of Mehmed II, albeit with no indication that she was the daughter of Paolo Erizzo. Although we cannot be absolutely certain that the Anna Erizzo mentioned in this list was Paolo’s daughter or even from the same family, since it was common for servants to take the name of the patrician of the house in which they were employed, and the list in question does not offer any specific biographical details, however based on other historiographical accounts it is safe to assume that it is indeed the same Anna Erizzo, daughter of Paolo Erizzo.
In popular Italian legend Anna Erizzo stands as a woman who chose to be a martyr and who became a heroine of Venice and of Christianity, as well as a symbol of feminine purity, religious constancy and Catholic virtue.
References:
• Giovanni Maria Angiolello (Historia Turchesca)
• Marcantonio Coccio Sabellico (Historia rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita, 1487)
• Francesco Sansovino (Gl’Annali Turcheschi overo Vite de Principi della Casa Othomana, 1573)
• Laonicus Chalcondyles (Origine et rebus gestis Turcorum libri decem, 1556)
• Pierre Le Moyne (La Galerie des Femmes Fortes, 1647)
• Giovanni Sagredo (Memorie istoriche de’ Monarchi ottomani, 1673)
• Giuseppe Bettinelli (Dizionario storico-portatile di tutte le Venete patrizie famiglie, 1780)
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