III. GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE 137

But from that which has been raised on the site of the latter, we may receive a most important lesson, introductory to our immediate subject, if first we glance back to the traditional history of the church which has been destroyed.

§ 4. No more honourable epithet than “traditional” can be attached to what is recorded concerning it, yet I should grieve to lose the legend of its first erection. The Bishop of Uderzo,* driven by the Lombards from his bishopric, as he was praying beheld in a vision the Virgin Mother, who ordered him to found a church in her honour, in the place where he should see a white cloud rest. And when he went out, the white cloud went before him; and on the place where it rested he built a church, and it was called the Church of St. Mary the Beautiful, from the loveliness of the form in which she appeared in the vision.†

This first church stood only for about two centuries. It was rebuilt in 864, and enriched with various relics some fifty years later; relics belonging principally to St. Nicodemus, and much lamented when they and the church were together destroyed by fire in 1105.

It was then rebuilt in “magnifica forma,” much resembling, according to Corner, the architecture of the chancel of St. Mark;‡ but the information which I find in various writers, as to the period at which it was reduced to its present condition, is both sparing and contradictory.

§ 5. Thus, by Corner, we are told that this church resembling St. Mark’s, “remained untouched for more than four centuries, until, in 1689, it was thrown down by an earthquake,

*Altinum. See clearer statement in St. Mark’s Rest. [1881. Ch. vi. (“Red and white clouds”).]

† Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who arranged the “Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia,” vol. iii. p. 7. Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.

‡ Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted information on the short sentence of Sansovino: “Finalmente, 1’ anno 1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco.” Sansovino, however, gives 842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]