256 ST. MARK’S REST

One of my dates however is determined by a crisis of internal policy; and I will at least note, as the material instrumentation of the spiritual song, the metamorphoses of state-order which accompanied, in each transition, the new nativities of the state’s heart.

62. I. During the first period, which completes the binding of many tribes into one, and the softening of savage faith into intelligent Christianity, we see the gradual establishment of a more and more distinctly virtuous monarchic authority; continually disputed, and often abused, but purified by every reign into stricter duty, and obeyed by every generation with more sacred regard. At the close of this epoch, the helpful presence of God, and the leading powers of the standard-bearer Saint and sceptre-bearing King, are vitally believed; reverently, and to the death, obeyed. And, in the eleventh century, the Palace of the Duke and lawgiver of the people, and his Chapel, enshrining the body of St. Mark, stand, bright with marble and gold, side by side.

II. In the second period, that of active Christian warfare, there separates itself from the mass of the people, chiefly by pre-eminence in knightly achievement, and persistence in patriotic virtue,-but also, by the intellectual training received in the conduct of great foreign enterprise, and maintenance of legislation among strange people,-an order of aristocracy, raised both in wisdom and valour greatly above the average level of the multitude, and gradually joining to the traditions of Patrician Rome, the domestic refinements, and imaginative sanctities, of the northern and Frankish chivalry, whose chiefs were their battle comrades. At the close of the epoch, this more sternly educated class determines to assume authority in the government of the State, unswayed by the humour, and unhindered by the ignorance, of the lower classes of the people; and the year which I have assigned for the accurate close of the second period is that of the great division between nobles and plebeians, called by the Venetians the “Closing of the

[Version 0.04: March 2008]