Apparently Russ Feingold (D-WI) plans to introduce a constitutional amendment to end Senate appointments, in light of the gubernatorial bungling of the past three weeks. This has me considerably excited because I really like constitutional amendments. This is partly for the stock “living document” enduring values reasons, but also partly because the particular history of the amendments we have (and haven’t) made is ridiculous.
This past week I’ve been picking through A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich. It’s a big, thick book detailing the history of the Venetian Republic, from its beginning as a refuge in “these marshy, malarial wastes” until their surrender to Napoleon. Some guy on Goodreads didn’t like the book, saying, “[V]ery little thought was given to try and make the history pop. [...] Maybe I expect more from my histories, but this was written so dryly it could have come from the Gobi.” Which is exactly the opposite of what I would say. Reading the book is like sitting down for a story with your historian friend the Viscount Norwich, maybe with some good Scotch.
A dry history might just tell you that in 565 the Byzantine general Narses was relieved of his duty, and that as a way of taking revenge on the Emperor he encouraged the Lombard king to invade Italy. But your friend the Viscount takes a sip of his Scotch and tells you why the general should never have been dismissed: “Eunuchs, as everybody knows, are dangerous people to cross.”
Further, a dry history would probably not call the 864 Patriarch of Aquileia a “rascally primate,” or describe the tenure of Pope John XII as “the nadir of the papal pornocracy.”
Probably the most famous tourist attraction in Venice is St. Mark’s Basilica. Wikipedia provides a dry history of this building’s importance: “In 828, the new city’s prestige was raised by the liberation of the relics of St. Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria, which were placed in the new basilica.” After the jump I’ll transcribe Norwich’s livelier version of the “liberation.”