272 ST. MARK’S REST

towers of the city answering with triumph peals as they drew nearer. They brought their Doge to the Field of St. Mark, and carried him again on their shoulders to the porch of the church; there, entering barefoot, with songs of praise to God around him-“such that it seemed as if the vaults must fall,”-he prostrated himself on the earth, and gave thanks to God and St. Mark, and uttered such vow as was in his heart to offer before them. Rising, he received at the altar the Venetian sceptre, and thence entering the Ducal Palace received there the oath of fealty from the people.*

83. Benighted wretches, all of them, you think, prince and people alike, don’t you? They are pleasanter creatures to see, at any rate, than any you will see in St. Mark’s field, nowadays. If the pretty ladies, indeed, would walk in the porch like the Doge, barefoot, instead of in boots cloven in two like the devil’s hoofs, something might be

* This account of the election of the Doge Selvo is given by Sansovino (Venetia Descritta, Lib. xi. 40: Venice, 1663, p. 477)-saying at the close of it, simply, “Thus writes Domenico Rino, who was his chaplain, and who was present at what I have related.” Sansovino seems therefore to have seen Rino’s manuscript: but Romanin,1 without referring to Sansovino, gives the relation as if he had seen the MS. himself, but misprints the chronicler’s name as Domenico Tino, causing no little trouble to my kind friend Mr. Lorenzi² and me, in hunting at St. Mark’s and the Correr Museum for the unheard-of chronicle, till Mr. Lorenzi traced the passage. And since Sansovino’s time nothing has been seen, or further said of the Rino Chronicle.-See Foscarini, Della Letteratura Veneziana, Lib. II.

Romanin has also amplified and inferred somewhat beyond Sansovino’s words. The dilapidation of the palace furniture, especially, is not attributed by Sansovino to festive pillage, but to neglect after Contarini’s death. Unquestionably however the custom alluded to in the text existed from very early times.³

¹ [Vol. i. p. 309, where the reference is given to “Dominici Tini narratio de electione Dominici Silvii ducis Venetiarum, anno 1071.” The narrative thus referred to is printed in vol. vi. pp. 124, 125 of Giambattista Gallicciolli’s Delle Memorie Venete Antiche Profane ed Ecclesiastiche, Venezia, 1795. Gallicciolli discusses (p. 123) whether the true name was Rino or Tino, and decides for the latter. Marco Foscarini (Della Letteratura Veneziana, 1752, vol. i. pp. 110, 111 n.) calls him Rino.]

² [See Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 459), and Vol. XXII. p. 89 n.]

³ [“And lasted till 1328,” adds Romanin (vol. i. p. 310 n.), “as is proved by a Decree of the Great Council, dated January 4.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]