430 APPENDIX

the strife between the Venetians and Paduans for its possession, Narses¹ had already indicated the existence of some instinct among the islanders of the pre-eminence of Rialto, by visiting it as a sacred place, and vowing to build there two churches, to St. Theodore and St. Geminiano.*

Whether by building of higher foundations, or by some slight eminence in the sands themselves, the sense had already been attached to the name which ever afterwards became the practically effective one in the minds of the Venetians themselves, so that though the Grand Canal is the true Rialto, the island is really signified by the word in use; and the idea of its height, rather than of the stream’s depth, is vaguely (sometimes figuratively) but habitually adopted from the earliest to the latest times. Thus Sagornino writes in the fifth century: “OCTAVA QUIDEM INSULA RIVOALTUS SUBSISTIT, AD QUAM AD EXTREMUM LICET POPULI AND HABITANDUM CONFLUERENT, TAMEN DITISSIMA ET SUBLIMATA PRÆ OMNIBUS MANET”;² and Tosi in his Cronaca Veneta, 1793: “Rivalta però come lungo piu elevato e sicuro dall’ escrescenza, e nel tempo stesso di terreno piu sodo, veniva piu degli altri frequentato,” Nevertheless, up to this date of 697, and for a hundred years more, the buildings and population on Rialto gave it no claim to be the seat of Ducal Residence.

[Here the notes on the early history of Venice break off. The next appendix resumes at the date 1100.]

* Altinat Chronicle, quoted by Romanin, i. 79.

¹ [The Imperial General in succession to Belisarius; he visited the lagoons in 552.]

² [Chronicon Venetum omnium quæ circumferentur vetustissionum et Johanni Sagornino vulgo tributum e MSS. ... nunc primum collatum ... profert H. Fr. Zanetti, Venetius, 1765, p. 6.]

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