42 THE STONES OF VENICE

but partially. The whole impression and effect of the building are irretrievably lost, but the fragments of it are still most precious.

We must first briefly state what is known of its history.

§ 8. The legends of the Romish Church, though generally more insipid and less varied than those of Paganism, deserve audience from us on this ground, if on no other, that they have once been sincerely believed by good men, and have had no ineffective agency in the formation of the existent European mind. The reader must not therefore accuse me of trifling, when I record for him the first piece of information I have been able to collect respecting the cathedral of Murano: namely, that the emperor Otho the Great, being overtaken by a storm on the Adriatic, vowed, if he were preserved, to build and dedicate a church to the Virgin, in whatever place might be most pleasing to her; that the storm thereupon abated; and the Virgin appearing to Otho in a dream, showed him, covered with red lilies, that very triangular field on which we were but now standing amidst the ragged weeds and shattered pavement. The emperor obeyed the vision; and the church was consecrated on the 15th of August, 957.

§ 9. Whatever degree of credence we may feel disposed to attach to this piece of history, there is no question that a church was built on this spot before the close of the tenth century: since in the year 999 we find the incumbent of the Basilica (note this word, it is of some importance) di Santa Maria Plebania di Murano taking an oath of obedience to the Bishop of the Altinate¹ church, and engaging at the same time to give the said bishop his dinner on the Domenica in Albis,² when the prelate held a confirmation in the Mother Church, as it was then commonly called, of Murano. From this period, for more than a century, I can find no records

¹ [i.e., of Altinum: see above, p. 18.]

² [Dominica in Albis depositis is the Sunday after Easter, so called from its being the day after the Saturday on which those who had been baptized on Easter Eve laid aside their white garments.]

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