720 Verdun, Treaty of
capital and their businesses. They at least equaled the eco-
nomic success of their rivals in PISAand GENOA. In the
Fourth Crusade, with the terrible sack of CONSTANTINO-
PLEin April 1204, which they manipulated to their advan-
tage, they acquired a large section of the BYZANTINE
EMPIREin GREECEitself and around the whole Aegean Sea.
DOMINATING TRADE WITH THE EASTVenice reached the height of its prosperity in the follow-
ing centuries as its fleet and merchants dominated the
TRADEwith the East. The area around the island of the
Rialto became the core of the city as of remains, with a
population between 80,000 and 100,000 living along a
complex system of canals. By the later Middle Ages,
Venice had developed a complex electoral system that
rotated political offices among its 200 elite or oligarchic
families. This system produced a remarkably stable gov-
ernment and set of commercial policies, though this
point has been overemphasized by historians. The state
consistently participated in actual business and protected
commerce. The Venetian church was notoriously inde-
pendent of outside influences, including the PAPACY.
In the 15th century, the city turned to acquiring
towns and land on the mainland or terrafirmaof Italy.
This trend led to endless wars with the city-states of the
region such as PADUAand VERONA, and with the dukes of
MILANsuch as the VISCONTIand SFORZA. The Venetians
intended to secure foodstuffs to feed the city and to pro-
tect their overland trade route to northern Europe. With
the rise of the OTTOMANTURKSin the 15th century, they
had to protect their colonies in the Balkans and eastern
Mediterranean. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the
Turks deprived them of another market and set of trading
concessions. They then made many arrangements with
the Turks and preserved many of their colonies in Greece,
CYPRUS, and CRETEalmost until the 16th century.
WARFARE, NEW INDUSTRY, AND ARTFrom the 1450s to the 1490s, Italy benefited from a few
decades of diminished WARFARE. This changed in the
1490s, as French invasions led to major wars after 1500
that required Venice to work hard to maintain its inde-
pendence. At home the Venetians developed local indus-
tries such as glass, wool, cloth, tourism, PRINTING, and
leather making in the years leading up to 1500. The great
wealth of the city produced a distinctive art, sculpture,
and architecture. In the simplest terms they were mix-
tures of BYZANTINEand even Islamic styles, combined
with the developing ROMANESQUEand GOTHICof the rest
of Western Europe. Venetian PAINTINGbecame famous for
its use of light and color and its portrayal of space.
See alsoBARI;BELLINI FAMILY;BLACKSEA; DALMATIA;
DANDOLO, ENRICO, DOGE OFVENICE; DUBROVNIK; FOSCARI,
FRANCESCO; GLASSWARE; LATINEMPIRE OFCONSTANTINO-
PLE;LATINSTATES INGREECE;MARCO POLO; SHIPS AND
SHIPBUILDING.
Further reading:Patricia Fortini Brown, Art and Life
in Renaissance Venice(New York: H. N. Abrams, 1997);
Richard G. Goy, Venice, the City and Its Architecture(Lon-
don: Phaidon, 1997); Christopher Hibbert, Venice: The
Biography of a City(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989);
Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Edward Muir,
Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice(Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1981); Garry Wills, Venice: Lion
City, The Religion of Empire(New York: Simon & Schus-
ter, 2001); Alvise Zorzi, Venice: The Golden Age,
697–1797, trans. Nicoletta Simborowski and Simon
Mackenzie (New York: Abbeville, 1980).Verdun, Treaty of The Treaty of Verdun was drawn up
in 843 to settle a devastating dynastic civil war among the
grandsons of CHARLEMAGNE. It was written in two lan-
guages, which resembled medieval French and German. It
divided the empire into three kingdoms. CHARLESI THE
BALDwas granted the kingdom of the West FRANKS, NEUS-
TRIA,AQUITAINE, and the Spanish March. Its eastern fron-
tier was along the Schildt, Saône, and Rhone Rivers. This
region, primarily speaking languages related to Latin,
became the historic kingdom of FRANCE. Louis the Ger-
man (r. 840–855) was to rule the eastern Frankish king-
dom, which consisted of the four duchies of FRANCONIA,
SAXONY,BAVARIA, and SWABIA, the future kingdom of GER-
MANY. Lothair (r. 840–855) the eldest, inherited the impe-
rial title and the territory known as the Middle Kingdom
or Francia Media, a long, incoherent stretch of land run-
ning from the North Sea to south of Rome, which included
Lorraine, BURGUNDY,SWITZERLAND, and most of ITA LY.
Although even for the ninth century it was somewhat con-
trived, the Treaty of Verdun established a precedent for
future political patterns. It also produced a permanent
fragmentation of Europe. It did not end the dynastic wars.
See alsoCAROLINGIAN FAMILY AND DYNASTY;FONTE-
NAY, BATTLE OF; LOUISI THEPIOUS.
Further reading:Rosamond McKitterick, The Frank-
ish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751–987(London:
Longman, 1983).vernacular For the period up to 1500 and beyond, the
vernacular languages were the popular spoken languages
of the Latin West. In Western Europe up to 1300, these
languages were distinct from LATIN, subordinate to it for
literature and learning, and were mostly confined to
speech or rare documentary needs. Latin was the lan-
guage of the élite culture of CHRISTENDOM and the
church. The application of such a classification rests on
an overly neat binary opposition involving dominant and
dominated, standardized and disordered, grammatical
and without grammar, and unity and plurality.
Among the other languages of the medieval world,
there were a learned and religious language such as