INTRODUCTION

Verona under Venice

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Verona, as the vassal
of Venice, the dominant power in N. E. Italy, had for about three
generations enjoyed repose from political ambitions of her own.
When in 1405 she who in the twelfth century had headed the
league of Venetian cities against Barbarossa, handed her keys to
the Venetian Senate, she escaped the greater humiliation of be—
coming the prey of some neighboring despot of Milan or Padua.
Her own native despots, the magnificent Ghibelline family della,
Seala, had run their fiery course (1259—1387). 'They raised
Verona to the rank of a strong principality, degenerated, turned
to murdering one another, and finally lost all that they had won
by conquest.  But now Can Grande, who had sheltered Dante in
exile, and the rest of the Scaligers slept in their splendid tombs,
having left their crest, the scaling ladder, stamped forever on the
monuments and banners of Verona. 'Their beautiful fortress in
the city was to become, in later vicissitudes, the Austrian bar—
racks, has now been restored, and is a Museo Civico, a picture
gallery.  From 1405 until 1509 the city had a Venetian Governor.

'"Towards the elose of this first period of Venetian domination,
began the career of one of Verona's most famous citizens, Giro—
lamo Fracastoro' (Fracastorius), the author of the treatise Con—
tagion. / In his writings one finds no sense of servitude to Venice,
only thankfulness when he could live and work under her pro—
tection. / The first and most respectable of his numerous patrons
was a Venetian General, and the friend whom he most admired
was the poet Andrea Navagero, a patrician of Venice.  Such
men were drawn together by a common ambition, that N. E.

:'The earlier form of the name is Fragastoro; even in the 16th
cent. it appears as a variant, and it is always used by Barbarani in
his modern biography.

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