017 



ZENI. 



Norway specially it would appear with Drontheim. The state of 

 Friesland towards the end of the 14th century affords an additional 

 corroboration : it was a rude country, intermediate between the Hans 

 towns and the trading towns of the Netherlands, where the ' strand- 

 recht ' (privilege of wreckers) was in full' force, and where pirates 

 found shelter and purchasers of their plunder. Zeno's account of 

 Zichmni conveys the idea of the chief of a baud of rovers who wrested 

 a small island near Friesl.ind from the king of Norway, and thence 

 made piratical excursions in every direction. Zeno's narrative would 

 lead to the inference that his band were but indifferent seamen, and 

 previously unacquainted with the countries they visited. 



This view of the scene of the Zeui's wanderings is not put forth as 

 certain : the materials do not admit of certainty. If it is not tenable, 

 where is Frislaud to be found ? Some later writers have felt so strongly 

 the impossibility of answering this question, that they have been obliged 

 to assume that Frisland has since been submerged in the sea. Their 

 difficulties appear to have arisen from the predetermination of earlier 

 writers to convey the Zeni as far west as Greenland. Walckenaer, 

 seeing the impossibility of this, has fixed the most westerly terminus 

 of their voyages on the south-east of Iceland, to which he may have 

 been led by the striking coincidence of the coast of Engroneland on 

 the map of Nicolo Zeno the younger, and the south-east coast of Ice- 

 land. Walckenaer however seeks for the Frisland of the Zeni in the 

 northern parts of Iceland. The data are too scanty to warrant any 

 'approach to dogmatism on the subject, but on the whole we incline to 

 adhere to the conclusions we have arrived at : first, because we see no 

 impossibility in the Frisland of the Zeni being the country generally 

 so called; second, because the relative positions and distances of the 

 different places and the state of society appear to correspond with that 

 assumption. 



The other members of the Zena family who appear to require notice 

 we will take in chronological order. 



CARLO ZENO, grand-admiral of Venice, brother of Nicol5 and Anto- 

 nio, was born about 1334. While yet quite a child the pope presented 

 him to a prebendal benefice at Patras. At the University of Padua, 

 some debts he contracted at play obliged him to abscond, and for five 

 years he served as a soldier in different parts of Italy. Returning 

 home, he found the republic engaged in a war with the Turks, and 

 repaired to Patras for the double purpose of taking possession of his 

 benefice and serving his country in a military capacity. In Greece he 

 got involved in a duel, and this forced him at last to resign all views 

 to an ecclesiastical career. He married a rich Greek widow, who how- 

 ever did not long survive their marriage. On his return to Venice he 

 took for his second wife a lady of the Giustiniani family. Unable to 

 remain at rest, he repaired to Constantinople in prosecution of com- 

 mercial speculations, which kept him seven years engaged. His trans- 

 actions brought him into connection with the emperor John Pala3ologus, 

 and enabled him to bring to a conclusion the negociation by which 

 that prince ceded Teuedos to the Venetians. This occurred in 1376, 

 and is the first event in the life of Zeno of which we have been able to 

 ascertain the date so nearly. This acquisition on the part of the 

 republic was the commencement of the war of Chioggia, in which the 

 Genoese, the Hungarians, and the Lord of Padua were leagued against 

 Venice. The defence of Treviso against the Hungarians was intrusted 

 to Carlo Zeno. He maintained that frontier post till 1379, when the 

 Venetian government, after the loss of the sea-fight of Pola, recalled 

 him to take the command of a fleet. With eight galleys he sailed from 

 Venice, and broke through the Genoese fleet without losing a vessel. 

 He took a number of the enemy's ships in the Sicilian waters, and 

 negociated a peace with Joan of Naples. He then sailed northward, 

 and made the victorious Genoese tremble for the security of their own 

 coasts. After scourging the north-eastern shores of Italy he set sail 

 for the Archipelago, where he received reinforcements. With his fleet 

 augmented to fourteen galleys he steered to Beirout to offer convoy to 

 the stores of Venetian merchandise which had accumulated during 

 the war. He appeared with his rich fleet at the mouth of the lagoons 

 on the 1st of January 1380. Venice was at that moment reduced to 

 the last extremity. The Genoese had taken Chioggia and penetrated 

 into the lagoons with a fleet of double the number of vessels that the 

 grand-admiral Pisani had to oppose to them. The arrival of Zeno 

 completely changed the face of affairs. He broke the Genoese block- 

 ade, provisioned Venice, and transferring his services from the sea to 

 the land force, re-took Chioggia. 



On the death of Pisani (15th August 13SO), Zeno was appointed 

 grand-admiral, and in that capacity he made head against Spinola in 

 the Archipelago till the peace of 1381. The next five years were spent 

 by Zeno in Lombardy in the service of the Viaconti. After this he 

 was employed on embassies to France and England, and advanced in 

 succession to the dignified magistracies of Avogador delle Commune 

 and Procurator of St. Mark. In 1403, while still holding the latter 

 appointment, he was, contrary to the customary policy of Venice, 

 placed in command of a fleet to oppose Boucicault, over whom he 

 obtained a victory on the 7th of October. A few mouths later he was 

 sent to command the army against Francesco Carrara, lord of Padua, 

 Upon the death of Carrara and the sack of his palace, au entry was 

 found in his registers of 400 golden ducats paid to Carlo Zeno. Zeno 

 proved satisfactorily before the Council of Ten that this was simply 

 the repayment of a debt which Carrara had contracted to him on the 



018 



occasion of his flight to Oetia ; but he was nevertheless deprived of all 

 his employments and condemned to two years' imprisonment. AH 

 soon as he was set at liberty, Zeno embarked on a pilgrimage to the 

 Holy Land. While there he entered into the service of the king of. 

 Cyprus, who was at war with the Genoese. In 1410, Carlo Zeno 

 returned to Venice, and married for the third time. His remaining 

 years were spent in literary pursuits, but tormented by the stono and 

 the gout. He died on the 8th of March 1418. Of three sons whom 

 he had by his second wife, two died before him. The family was kept 

 up by the survivor, Pietro. 



IACOPO ZENO, a grandson of Carlo, was a posthumous son of lacopo, 

 who died the year before his father. Ho was born in December 1417. 

 He studied at Padua, and, after taking his degrees, repaired to Florence 

 in 1439, during the Bitting of the Council of Florence, and was soon 

 received into the papal service. In 1441 he was apostolical referen- 

 dary; in 1456 (or 1447, according to Ughelli) he was made bishop of 

 Belluno and Feltre ; in 1459 he was promoted to the see of Padua, 

 where he died of apoplexy in 1481. lacopo Zeno was esteemed one 

 of the first orators of his age. He left a valuable library and several 

 works of his own composition in manuscript. The most important 

 were 1, 'Vita summorum Pontificum,' preserved in the Ambrosian 

 Library, of which the Bollandists have made great use; 2, ' De Vita, 

 Moribus, Rebusque gestis Caroli Zeni ' a life of his grandfather, of 

 which an indifferent Italian translation by Francesco Querini has been 

 repeatedly published. The original Latin appeared for the first time 

 in vol. xix. of Muratori's collection of Italian historians. 



CATERING ZENO, a grandson of the traveller Antonio and the son of 

 his son Pietro, surnamed ' II Dragone.' Pietro was married to Anne 

 Morosini in 1406, but the year of his son's birth is unknown : so is 

 the year of his death. In 1472 Caterino Zeuo was appointed by the 

 eenate of Venice ambassador to Uzun-Hassan-Beg, king of Persia. He 

 is said to have accepted the mission with the more readiness, that 

 having married a relative of David Comnenus, the last emperor of 

 Trebizond, he was allied by marriage to the King of Persia. At 

 Tabriz, the residence of Uzun-Hassan, Zeno was (probably on account 

 of his matrimonial alliance) received at court on a more familial- 

 footing than the generality of Europeans. This enabled him to collect 

 a mass of interesting information relative to the manners and politics 

 of Persia. The insight thus obtained into Oriental customs he subse- 

 quently increased by journeys in Persia and Arabia. After the termi- 

 nation of his mission he published at Venice a short account of his 

 travels. He subsequently returned to the east, and died at Damascus. 

 The narrative of Caterino Zeno's travels became in little more than 

 sixty years after his death so rare, that neither Ramusio nor his own 

 kinsman Nicold Zeno the younger was able to procure a copy of them. 

 The latter endeavoured to supply the deficiency by compiling an 

 account of Caterino's travels from letters written by him to friends 

 during his absence in the east. Even this work has however become 

 extremely rare. Formaleoui published at Venice, in 1783, an account 

 of Caterino Zeno's adventures, which he pretended to have taken from 

 an ancient manuscript. This work is a gross and rather clumsy 

 forgery. 



NICOLO ZENO the younger (a descendant in the direct line of Nicol6 

 Zeno the elder), to whom we are indebted for the only notices we 

 possess of the adventures of ' the Zeni,' and of Caterino Zeno, was 

 born in Venice on the 6th of June 1515, and died on the 10th of 

 August 1565. He was a member of the Council of Ten. His country- 

 man Patrizi (a contemporary), and Gaspari (in his ' Catalogo della 

 Biblioteca Veneta ') speak in the highest terms of his eloquence, and 

 of his acquirements in mathematics and cosmography. He published 

 'Dell' Origine di Venezia ed antiquissima Memoria de' Barbari." But 

 he is remembered chiefly for the little volume, published in 1558, 

 containing the adventures of Caterino Zeno, in two books, and those 

 of ' the Zeni ' in one book. This work has every internal mark of 

 being a faithful compilation from the very imperfect materials in his 

 possession. He leaves his heroes as much as possible to tell their 

 own story. 



ANTONIO ZENO the younger, a respectable Greek scholar of the 16th 

 century, also belonged to the family of the Zena. He published at 

 Venice, in 1569, a commentary on the speeches attributed to Pericles 

 in Thucydides, and Lepidus in Sallust ' Commentaria in Concionem 

 Periclis et Lepidi, ex Thucydide et Sallustio.' 



APOSTOLO ZENO was born at Venice, on the llth of December 1668. 

 He was descended from a branch of the Zena family which had been 

 settled ever since the 13th century in the island of Candia, whence 

 the parents of Zeno were obliged to emigrate and return to Venice 

 owing to the Turkish invasion, by which they lost all their property. 

 Zeno's mother was of a distinguished Greek family of Candia. Zeno 

 lost his father when a child, and his mother was thrown for support 

 on the assistance of her brother-in-law, the Bishop of Capo d'Istria, 

 who placed young Apostolo in the college of the Somaschi at Venice. 

 He displayed early a decided taste for poetry, and after having left 

 college he began to write melodramas, which were well received. One 

 of them, entitled ' Temistocle,' so pleased the Emperor Leopold I. of 

 Germany that he proposed to Zeno the situation of dramatic composer 

 at Vienna, with a salary of 4000 florins, which Zeno declined. Ho 

 received orders for melodramas from several courts of Germany and 

 Italy, and was handsomely rewarded for them. Since the time of 



