fondamenta. It is suggested that in these legal documents it means the right to load and unload boats. Though no document is quoted in explicit support of this view, it is made plausible by the case of the Cà Polo itself, where there seems to have been no fondamenta (except the small piece now known as Fondamenta del Teatro), but there was a door with water-steps (ripa or gradata) opening on to each of the canals. It is not, however, clear why the word should mean the right rather than merely the power to load and unload. Beyond the instances which occur in the documents printed here (dd. 89, 9o, 92) it will be enough to quote ut quilibet possit ad ipsam ripam siue gradatam fungere, caricare, & discaricare. (Mem. Ven. Ant., I. p. 204).
jaglacio seems to be a corruption of iaculatio, and to mean an artificial canal, from which the earth has been thrown out, as distinguished from a natural stream. The regular phrase, introitus et exitus junctorium et jaglacio, is found in a document of 1094 as quoted in 1294 (ibid. p. 202). More interesting perhaps is this quotation from a document of 1159 : Multociens vidimus quod fecerunt jaglare suam piscinarn, jactare fecerunt supra suum aggerem, & supra suam terram, 6- in illorutn vineam ipsam terrain, quam jaglare fecerunt (ibid. p. 206). " Canals made entirely by hand were dug out, especially within the city, and these were called jaglatio, jaglacium ... So that jaglacium means a canal all dug by hand, and jaglacio either the same, or perhaps the obligation to dig such canals and also to keep them dredged " (ibid.). Few, if any, examples are quoted of either word simply used in the sense of " canal ", and none at all of the presumed original iaculatio ; nor any example which really demands the sense of " obligation to dig or maintain a canal" . GALLICCIOLLI, to whom I am indebted for the substance of this note and for the quotations, suggests himself that the word may have been corrupted into the modern gattolo, "drain", and, however plausible the above explanations may be, I think that he may too hastily have condemned TEMANZA who regarded jaglacio as meaning simply a drain. A document of 1321 is quoted (ibid. p. 192) which says, uncle habeo introytum et exitum junctorium et jaglactionem subterranearn. In view of this subterranean jaglacio I venture to suggest that the word may mean the right, or simply the power, to run drains into the canal. See Giambattista GALLICCIOLLI, Memorie Venete Antiche, 7 vols., 1795, vol. I, pp.191-206.
IIIF Color HighRes
