CHAPTER 2
In 810 King Pepin of Italy paused his invasion of the lagoon to have a conversation with an elderly Venetian woman. Having fought his way across the long, sandy island of Pellestrina during a sweltering Venetian summer, Pepin and his Frankish warriors had reached the unimpressive town of Malamocco on the Lido. Although it resembled a large fishing village (which it was), Malamocco was actually the capital of the Venetian lagoon. The Venetian people, scattered across islands, separated by waters, and divided by fierce rivalries, had tried to forge a unified government there, but found a capital without a common identity a shallow thing. It was Pepin who would unify them, although that was never his intention. Faced with his powerful invasion, the Venetians put aside their differences to fight the common foe. They did so valiantly and with extraordinary resolve, yet they could not save Malamocco.
The victorious king entered the rustic capital only to find that its sole remaining resident was an old woman. When the king asked where the people of Venice had gone, the woman stretched out her arm, pointing to the center of the lagoon, to the islands of Rivoalto across the waves. There, she said, the Venetians were hiding, fearful of the greatness of Pepin. To save themselves they had left behind their capital—and her—and she advised Pepin not to let them escape his might. The Franks, she insisted, should build a wooden bridge to span the short distance to the central islands, where they could trap the Venetians in their own refuge. Pepin eagerly took the woman’s advice, completing the light bridge in a short time. Yet as the Frankish cavalry rode across it, their horses were dazzled by the sunlight on the dancing waves and frightened by the rocking planks of the bridge. One after another the horses reared and leaped into the water, leading to such chaos among the rest of the army that the bridge itself began to collapse. Like Pharaoh’s army, the might of the Franks was vanquished by God and the sea. The clever woman, who watched the mayhem from the shores of the old capital, chuckled softly to herself as she looked across the water to the new capital of the Venetian people—the true city of Venice.
The story of the tricky old crone was told with pride by generations of Venetians. The woman, as might be suspected, is a fiction, but the Frankish invasion, as we shall see, certainly was not. Still, the myth captured a foundational element in Venetian history. Venice, the collection of fiercely independent refugees, had been fused together by blood and cunning into one people with one capital and one heavenly patron behind the impregnable wall of the sea.
Although the Venetian lagoon was a busy place in the seventh century, there was as yet no city of Venice. Torcello remained the largest settlement, with perhaps as many as five thousand people living on the island. There were many other towns and villages, too, linked by a few large vessels and swarms of flat-bottomed boats. More people in the lagoon meant more economic activity and, therefore, more to fight about. The Byzantine provincial government in Ravenna appointed additional tribunes for the Venetians to oversee their far-flung settlements, but that did little to stem the growing disagreements. Violence was becoming a significant problem. The Catholic Church also responded to the growing population by establishing new dioceses with new bishops. All the lagoon’s bishops remained subordinate to the patriarch of Grado, who oversaw the Venetian Church, but the fledgling Venetian state had no such unifying figure.
According to John the Deacon, a Venetian chronicler writing some four centuries later, it was Patriarch Christopher of Grado who first suggested that the scattered lagoon dwellers elect a leader to help bring peace and unity to the region. In 697, we are told, the twelve tribunes elected a dux(leader), which in the Venetian dialect is doge. Depending on the tradition one accepts, that first doge was either Paoluccio Anafesto or Orso Ipato. The last names of both men suggest Italian versions of Greek words. “Ipato” is probably a version of the Greek hypatus, a Byzantine title meaning “consul.” In other words, the doge was a Byzantine (that is, Roman) official. And so the Venetians had a leader—the first of 118 doges that would govern the city-state—but they remained citizens of the Roman Empire. Indeed, some of the subsequent doges were appointed directly from the provincial capital at Ravenna. The Venetian doge, however, was no duke (as the same title came to be known elsewhere in Europe). He presided over the tribunes, but he did not replace them. Instead, the doge’s office was evidence of the growing realization that the scattered island communities of the lagoon were slowly becoming one entity.
And that entity was increasingly independent. This was not a conscious decision, but rather the gradual result of a neglectful Byzantine government. The seventh century had not been kind to the eastern empire. Largely spared the Germanic invasions that had crushed the west, the eastern Roman Empire was now invaded by powerful Asian empires. First came the Persians, who conquered Syria, the Holy Land, and even laid siege to Constantinople itself. After more than two decades of devastating warfare, Emperor Heraclius managed to defeat the Persians and eject them from the empire. Yet no sooner had the victories been celebrated than Arab armies, professing the new religion of Islam, rose to take their place. Wielding the sword of jihad, the Muslims had conquered all of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt by 642. By 711 they had conquered North Africa, and then went on to capture Spain. The emperor in Constantinople was left with Greece, Asia Minor, and dwindling portions of Italy. In short, the Byzantines had their hands full. Although their provincial government in Italy held on by a thread, it had little time to bother with the merchants and fishermen of the Venetian lagoon.
In 742 the new Venetian capital was established at Malamocco, on the southern end of the Lido. Nevertheless, a good deal of warfare between the islands continued, making leadership an unenviable duty. Doge Orso was killed in one such battle. His son, Teodato (742, 744–56), also died violently. Upon his death, a rival doge, Galla Gaulo, was elected, but was just as quickly deposed, blinded, and sent to a monastery (in what was the Byzantine fashion at the time for toppled emperors). His successor, Domenico Monegaurio (756–65), met with much the same fate. These were lawless times, made worse by the fact that Venetian doges were not rulers in any real sense. Legally, the ruler of the lagoon was the emperor in Constantinople. The doge was, at best, a governor. Medieval kings and Byzantine emperors derived their authority from God. Venetian doges did not. Instead, their power flowed directly from the people they governed. Although they had significant powers, early doges were nonetheless beholden to the Venetian people and the tribunes. During times of crisis, the people could form a great assembly known as the arengo. No power in the lagoon, save perhaps the faraway emperor, could trump the arengo.
And so it was that within this troubled medieval lagoon a republic, founded on the authority of the “people of Venice,” was born. It was the only one left in the world—and it would last for a thousand years. It grew and thrived uniquely there because Venice itself was unique. Land was scarce in that watery world. Status and wealth, therefore, were based not on a landed aristocracy, but on entrepreneurial skill. Venetians produced little food, but they did an increasingly large amount of business in Italy and the East. Venetian merchants sailed their vessels down the Adriatic and up the Italian rivers, buying and selling in the growing markets there. Many of the commodities they purchased ended up back in the lagoon, which was becoming an emporium of considerable importance. This system, based on liquid rather than landed wealth, created shifting constituencies of power that tended to reject privilege and insist on equality. Venetians were capitalists and, as such, fiercely individualistic. They prized freedom and distrusted concentrated power. That is why their doges were elected by the people. It is also why they were allergic to the concept of a ducal dynasty, though many doges tried in vain to establish one.
Doge Maurizio Galbaio (765–87), for example, was determined that his family should retain permanent hold on the dogeship. Decisive, perceptive, and strong, he was just the sort of man who usually founds royal dynasties. He responded to the increasing settlement in and around the little lagoon island of Olivolo (probably named for an olive grove) by helping to establish a new bishop there to oversee the parishes of the central lagoon. In 775 a small wooden church on Olivolo dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus was consecrated as the new cathedral church of San Pietro. Because a fortification was subsequently built on the island, it was later renamed Castello (castle), by which it is still known today. San Pietro di Castello would remain the cathedral for the city of Venice for a millennium. Following a common Byzantine practice, Doge Maurizio used his clout to have his son, Giovanni, elected co-doge with him. Then, when Maurizio died in 787, Giovanni repeated the practice by having his own son, Maurizio II, elected co-doge. In this way the Galbaio family hoped to establish their dynasty.
But the world was changing rapidly in the late eighth century. In 751 Ravenna had finally succumbed to the warlike Lombards, leaving Pope Zachary in Rome nearly defenseless against a people who now dominated the Italian mainland. With no help to be had from distant and distracted Constantinople, the pope turned to another Germanic tribe, the Franks. Fierce in battle, the Franks had conquered and settled Gaul, or what is today France (named, of course, for them). Unlike the other barbarians who had invaded the West, the Franks were Catholic. In return for the pope’s support of his bid for the Frankish crown, Pepin the Short led his armies across the Alps and into Italy. Not only did Pepin neutralize the Lombard threat, but he gave to the popes in perpetuity the city of Rome and the lands around it. This they would henceforth rule as their own kingdom, known as the Patrimony of St. Peter or simply the Papal States. These lands, which stretched across the midsection of Italy from Rome to Ravenna, provided security and income for the papacy in an age when money and loyalty were scarce commodities. The popes would rule this state until 1870.
Pepin’s achievements were impressive, but dwarfed by those of his more famous son, Charlemagne. His fame is certainly warranted. Charlemagne oversaw a small intellectual revival in Europe, ordered the reform of the monasteries that dotted the landscape, and paid close attention to the doctrinal and liturgical uniformity of the Catholic Church in Europe. But most of all, he was a good warrior, endlessly hungry for conquest. Almost every season he mustered the troops owed to him by feudal obligation and marched on one of his neighbors. Sometimes it was the pagan Saxons in the north German forests, sometimes the Muslim powers in Spain, and sometimes the troublesome Lombards in northern Italy. The last were so thoroughly defeated that Charlemagne established a new government in the region, adding “King of the Lombards” to his growing list of titles. As a result of all this warfare, Charlemagne had cobbled together a mighty kingdom that included what is today France, Germany, and northern Italy. It almost seemed as if the days of the Roman Empire, with one ruler and some measure of peace, had been restored.
Indeed, that is just what Pope Leo III thought. On Christmas Day 800 during a visit to Rome, Charlemagne knelt before the pope to receive his blessing. Leo produced a crown, which he placed on Charlemagne’s head, proclaiming him “emperor of the Romans.” Although Charlemagne later insisted that he knew nothing of the pope’s plans, he made no attempt to reject the title. Quite the contrary—he spent the rest of his life trying to live up to it. The coronation of Charlemagne was a bold statement from a recovering West. It asserted that the Roman Empire was once again restored in Europe, only this time by means of the papacy and one very successful Germanic warlord.
Naturally, the real Roman government in Constantinople took a dim view of the ceremony in Rome. Charlemagne was a Frank, a barbarian, a descendant of those Germans who had dismembered the Roman Empire. The true emperor (or, in 800, empress) was the divinely ordained ruler in Constantinople, bedecked in jewels and holding court in the sumptuous palaces of the largest city in the known world. Roman emperors were not, in the opinion of the Romans of the East, illiterate barbarians who could not eat with a fork without prior instruction. But scoffing at the spectacle was about all that the Byzantines could do in response. For his part, Charlemagne eagerly sought their approval, even offering to marry Empress Irene, a proposal that was swiftly rejected.
Charlemagne’s rise to power and his new imperial title raised interesting questions in the Venetian lagoon, where the inhabitants still claimed to be subjects of the Roman Empire. The power of Charlemagne’s family (known today as the Carolingians) was truly impressive. Indeed, it extended across Lombardy and the Veneto, having completely displaced the old Lombard masters. The confederation of towns and villages in the Venetian lagoon could profit mightily from Carolingian friendship. It was for this reason that a powerful minority of Venetians, led by Patriarch John of Grado, urged closer ties with Charlemagne and the Franks. This, of course, would mean turning away from Venice’s traditional allegiance to Constantinople. It appears that most Venetians, including the doge and his son, opposed this course of action. They were, after all, a people set apart—in western Europe, but not of it. Why should they bow to this Frankish king? The economic, cultural, and emotional ties between Venice and Constantinople could not so easily be sundered.
The political dispute came to blows in 797 when the bishop of Olivolo died. As was the custom, the doge nominated his successor. He chose a Greek, who was probably from Constantinople. Although this was no doubt meant to score a victory against the pro-Frankish minority, the fact that the Greek in question was only sixteen years old allowed Patriarch John of Grado to refuse to ordain him. Doge Giovanni sent his son, Maurizio II, with a squadron of ships to Grado to force the issue. In the ensuing battle the patriarch himself was badly wounded. Perhaps overzealously, the doge’s men picked up the battered patriarch, carried him to the high tower of his church, and tossed him down. This shocked even the lagoon dwellers, who were not unaccustomed to a little blood in their politics, and turned many of them against the doge. News of Charlemagne’s coronation as Roman emperor in 800 may have further swayed some Venetians to the pro-Frankish side. The murdered Patriarch John was succeeded by his nephew, Fortunatus, who quickly recruited the tribune of Malamocco, Obelerio, to the pro-Frankish side. Joined by other leading Venetians, the two men traveled to nearby Frankish-controlled Treviso, where they plotted the overthrow of the doge.
In 802 their plans bore fruit. The conspirators successfully incited an uprising in the lagoon that forced Doges Maurizio and Giovanni to flee, ending the Galbaio clan’s hopes for a long-lasting dynasty. Obelerio’s subsequent elevation to the dogeship was a complete victory for the pro-Frankish party, or so it seemed. A large number of Venetians still could not bring themselves to repudiate loyalty to Constantinople. Owners of merchant vessels were especially unwilling to do anything that might jeopardize their access to the rich markets of the Byzantine Empire. In an attempt to hold the lagoon, the imperial government in Constantinople sent rich gifts and vaunted titles to the new doge, hoping to sway him from the Franks. In 808 they sent something more—a full squadron of warships that spent the winter in the lagoon. As the pendulum of public opinion began to swing back to Constantinople, Obelerio had his brother, Beato, elected co-doge. Perhaps Beato was pro-Byzantine, and if so, this may have been a compromise of sorts. In the spring, the Byzantine fleet sailed out of the lagoon to launch an attack on Frankish Comacchio, not far from Ravenna. Although a military failure, the Byzantine strike launched from the Venetian lagoon captured the attention of Charlemagne’s son, Pepin, who ruled from Ravenna as “King of the Lombards.” Pepin came to the conclusion that Doge Obelerio either had switched to the Byzantine side or was simply too weak to keep Byzantine warships out of Venetian waters. Either way, Pepin decided to end the problem of Venetian independence once and for all.
Pepin’s invasion began in 810, and it would be one of the greatest challenges Venice ever faced. The Frankish king’s resources were vast, and he was determined to use them to bring the lagoon dwellers to heel. From his perspective, the Carolingian empire included all of central Europe—no exceptions. The Venetians naturally had a different perspective. No barbarian army had ever conquered their lagoon. Their ancestors had fled the invasions that crushed the ancient empire in order to preserve their lives, faith, and culture. They were Rome unfallen. Of course, it was one thing to hold those high principles and quite another to prove them against a formidable foe. The Venetians employed every defense against the Franks that their watery fortress could offer. They rowed old vessels into the main channel entrances and sank them so as to bar the way. They removed the buoy markers, which guided large transport vessels along the deep channels and away from the sandy shoals just below the water. These actions alone made it impossible for Pepin’s forces to penetrate the interior of the lagoon. Instead, Pepin concentrated on the periphery, where most of the people and property were located. To the east his armies conquered Jesolo and Grado. From the south he captured Chioggia and then marched along the narrow lido of Pellestrina that separated the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. Here the Venetians were forced to make their stand, fighting bravely. For at the end of this lido was their capital, Malamocco. Venetian factional divisions evaporated. Obelerio and his party had no choice now but to condemn the Frankish invasion and join the common defense, although the sincerity of their conversion was much suspected. In an attempt to destroy the Venetians, Pepin had managed to fuse them into one people, determined to protect their shared home.
It was out of this determination that the city of Venice was born. As the Frankish forces pressed on toward Malamocco, Venetian women and children boarded their boats and fled to the center of the lagoon—to the marshy archipelago of islands around Rialto, not far from Castello. This was the least habitable part of the lagoon, which is the reason that it had never attracted more than a handful of residents. But it was safe, at least for the moment. As the summer of 810 dragged on, the fighting on Pellestrina bogged down in the stifling heat and humidity. Soon disease struck the Frankish army, forcing Pepin to face the realization that the Franks might actually fail in their conquest. Even the capture and destruction of Malamocco did not end the struggle, for the retreating Venetians simply boarded their vessels and crossed over to the safety of the Rialto islands. In a fit of desperate anger, Pepin demanded that the Venetians surrender at once. “You are under my hand and my providence,” he thundered, “since you belong to my land and to my dominions.” The Venetians responded cleverly, proclaiming both their loyalty to the emperor in Constantinople and their rejection of the imperial title of Pepin’s father. Their short reply read simply, “We wish to be the subjects of the Roman emperor, and not of you.”
Faced with the collapse of his campaign, Pepin was eager to salvage what victory he could. He agreed to withdraw from the lagoon in return for a Venetian promise to render an annual tribute. This settlement allowed him to maintain the fiction that the lagoon did indeed belong to him. The problem of Venice’s unique status, however, was not resolved and it would only be ironed out between Charlemagne and the Byzantines two years later. As he grew older, Charlemagne became obsessed with a desire to have Constantinople recognize him as the western Roman emperor. Rather than face more wars in Italy and Istria, the emperor in Constantinople agreed to send a delegation to the tiny Frankish capital at Aachen to hail Charlemagne as emperor. As part of the deal, Charlemagne confirmed that the Venetian lagoon was under the jurisdiction of the eastern emperor, and therefore not part of the Carolingian empire. It was, in other words, subject to the Roman emperor, and not to him.
As the Franks marched out of the ruined towns that they had invaded, the Venetian people reflected on how much damage had been done and how many lives had been lost. Doge Obelerio, who had been the face of the pro-Frankish faction, was immediately overthrown, along with his brother, Beato. The people turned instead to Agnello Partecipazio (811–27), who had distinguished himself in the war against Pepin. The Partecipazios were a family of some importance and antiquity in the lagoon. Originally from Pavia, they had settled first at Eraclea and then later moved to Rialto. Agnello’s home was built in an open marshy area, almost precisely where the Ducal Palace (or Palace of the Doges) stands today. Doge Agnello argued that the capital should be moved from Malamocco to Rialto. The Frankish invasion had demonstrated just how vulnerable the Venetians really were, and the new doge was determined to reorganize and strengthen the lagoon.
What later became the city of Venice looked nothing at all like a city in 811. It was a loose collection of largely uninhabited islands scattered around the Grand Canal and Rialto. On some of these islands families like the Partecipazios had built compounds of wooden houses, shelters, and workshops. There they tended their animals, grew some grapes, and loaded and unloaded their vessels. The Rialto area was, like much of the lagoon, a place to do business. As the commercial wealth of various families grew, they naturally expanded their compounds, sometimes by filling in channels between islands or constructing simple bridges. Essential to a compound of any size was a church and an open field known as a campo. Families of means financed their island church and developed strong loyalties to their various patron saints. They also funded monasteries, which could be found in abundance throughout the lagoon. Remnants of this early Venice can still be seen today in the more than fifty parish churches that dot the Venetian landscape, each with its own campo. Most of these churches were at one time the foundation of a small island compound.
Building a new capital at Rialto was no small task, but the Venetians had help. Their determination in resisting Pepin and their loyalty to the emperor in Constantinople did not go unnoticed in the East. Emperor Leo V sent craftsmen and artisans from Constantinople as well as significant amounts of money to help with the move. Doge Agnello appointed a commission of three men to oversee all operations. One was authorized to strengthen the lidi of the lagoon, building them up and fortifying them to better resist the battering sea and foreign invasion. Another commission member oversaw the physical improvement of the muddy islands of Rialto. Earth was piled onto and around them to raise and expand the ground level. Deeper canals were dug to allow easier communication and travel between the islands. Finally, the third member, the future doge Pietro Tradonico, took up the task of new public constructions. Among the most important of these were the wells. Because the water of the lagoon is brackish (a mixture of salt water and freshwater), it is unfit for consumption, and digging a conventional well on the sandy lagoon islands would simply provide more brackish water. Instead, the Venetians developed wells that were actually elaborate rainwater collectors. The main campo was excavated and a clay cistern placed at its lowest point. Then channels were extended up to various locations on the campo and a wellhead positioned over the whole thing. Then the cistern was covered over. When it rained, freshwater would collect on the campo, flow through the collection grates (many of which can still be seen throughout the city), and run through a layer of sand for filtration. The water would then collect in the cistern and be lifted up and out via buckets at the wellhead (pozzo). These wellheads, although capped and usually of later construction, are still found everywhere in Venice.
Emperor Leo V also sent to the Venetians the body of St. Zacharias, the father of St. John the Baptist, as well as funds to construct a new women’s monastery to house the relic. In time, San Zaccaria would become the wealthiest and most powerful religious house in Venice. The original Byzantine structure no longer survives, replaced by the Renaissance building that stands there today. But one can get the flavor of the first San Zaccaria by visiting the somber, serene, and often-flooded twelfth-century crypt of the church. Nearby, at what is today the tourist-thronged Piazza San Marco, were two grassy islands with a few orchards and a river running between them. There the Byzantines also built a new wooden church dedicated to the fourth-century Greek martyr St. Theodore of Amasea, who was famous for slaying a demon-possessed crocodile in Egypt. Theodore was to be the patron saint of Venice, signified by the construction of a new doge’s palace very close to the church. Although St. Theodore would later lose that distinction, his statue, complete with crocodile, still watches over the Piazzetta San Marco from the top of one of the two columns of the Molo. The new palace replaced the private residence of Doge Agnello. It was a stone structure, built directly on the waterfront at about the same location as the current Ducal Palace. Given the perils of the times, the first palace was a fortress. Later chronicles refer to the palace’s defensive nature, and the oldest surviving map of Venice, from the fourteenth century, depicts it as a crenellated castle.
St. Theodore enjoyed only a few years as Venice’s patron saint. The means of his replacement, though, would remain a story of supreme importance to Venetians for centuries. Its origins are found in the ongoing dispute between the patriarch of Grado, who had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Venetian lagoon, and the patriarch of Aquileia, whose jurisdiction extended to the mainland churches. Both claimed to be the true patriarch of Aquileia, and therefore each of them maintained that he alone was the legitimate successor of St. Mark. With the election of the pro-Frankish pope Eugenius II (824–27), the patriarch of Aquileia seized the opportunity to deal with the Grado problem once and for all. Eugenius called both patriarchs to a synod in Mantua in 827 so that the issue could be resolved. There the patriarch of Aquileia laid out a detailed case against Grado, arguing that it was a mere parish that had usurped apostolic authority. The successor of St. Mark, he contended, was the patriarch of Aquileia, not a minor priest on a nearby island. The patriarch of Grado had no response, largely because he declined to attend. Likely he expected nothing good from Eugenius and so hoped to put off the problem. But the synod and the pope ruled promptly against Grado, decreeing that the patriarchate of Aquileia was to be restored to its former authority. Grado and the bishops of the lagoon were placed under Aquileia’s jurisdiction.
This situation was intolerable to the Venetians. They had not spilled blood defending their homes from Pepin and the Franks only to have their Church given over to the enemy. In the Middle Ages a church was not simply a building one visited on Sundays. It was the foundation of one’s life, the hope for salvation, and the comforter along the way. It was also a major property owner. Aside from more than a hundred parish churches and monasteries in the Venetian lagoon, there were the numerous saltworks, vineyards, and farmlands that the churches and monasteries owned on the islands and terra firma. The Venetians would not allow a Frankish patriarch of Aquileia to acquire control over all of that.
But how to resist? The initial strategy, as evidenced by the patriarch’s absence at Mantua, was to ignore the whole thing. Since the pope died shortly after the synod, there was some hope that a new pope might reverse it. But there was no denying that it would be a difficult case to make. The patriarch of Grado was forced to claim succession from the ancient patriarchs of Aquileia, while the current patriarch of Aquileia vehemently denied it. St. Mark, after all, had founded the patriarchal see in Aquileia, not Grado. Venice simply had no answer to that.
But it soon would.
In 829—only two years after the decision at Mantua—two Venetian merchants, Buono, the tribune of Malamocco, and Rustico of Torcello, were conducting some illegal business in Alexandria. All business in Egypt was technically illegal, since Emperor Leo V had forbidden his subjects to conduct trade with Muslims. Much of what happened during their visit is shrouded in legend, but the essentials are probably correct. Buono and Rustico, we are told, visited the church of St. Mark in Alexandria, where they prayed and venerated the sacred body of the Evangelist. Afterward, they happened to strike up a conversation with Stauracius, a Greek monk, and Theodorus, a Greek priest, both on staff at the church. The two complained to the Venetians about recent persecutions of Christians at the hands of the Muslim authorities. They were particularly worried about a plan to rob the Christian churches in Alexandria of their marble. Buono and Rustico had a radical solution. They suggested that the two Greeks take the body of St. Mark and come back with them to Venice, where they would be joyfully welcomed. Stauracius and Theodorus were intrigued, but afraid to offend the saint by moving his body to a strange land. St. Mark, after all, had been bishop of Alexandria and had died there. The Venetians responded that Venice was not a strange land at all, for St. Mark had been to the lagoon on his way to Aquileia, where he had established the metropolitan see. That seemed reasonable enough, so it was decided that the four would steal the body and smuggle it onto a waiting Venetian ship.
To the modern mind, stealing a holy object may seem perverse, but it was not so in the Middle Ages. For medieval Christians the relic of the saint was a conduit between the holy person and the world. Saints were made manifest in their relics. They rewarded those who honored them and punished those who disgraced or abused them. Furta sacra (holy theft) was not a robbery but a rescue. A saint, it was believed, could only be moved if he or she wished it—either because proper devotion was not shown at the present location or because the new location was the home of those with greater devotion. Since this sort of rescue happened often during the Middle Ages, an entire genre of literature developed, known as translatio, to describe and validate a transfer. There is much of that literary genre in this legend.
The four men secretly went to the tomb of St. Mark and removed its stone cover. There they found the Evangelist’s body wrapped in a silk cloth with many seals affixed to the front to prevent tampering. Undeterred, they rotated the saint onto his stomach, cut the silk at the back, and carefully removed the body. Then they inserted another body, that of St. Claudian, into the silk shroud, sewed it back up, and rotated the replacement with the intact seals faceup. The perfect crime. Or almost.
In the Middle Ages, relics of great sanctity were said to give off a powerful sweet aroma, known as the holy odor in translatio texts. St. Mark, of course, gave off a great deal. As soon as the four men carried the hidden body into the main church, the worshippers and other clergy knew that something was up. Word spread quickly that the body of St. Mark had been stolen, although a subsequent less-than-thorough inspection of the seals convinced some that it was not. Buono and Rustico managed to get the saint’s body onto their vessel, but the Muslim authorities, who had been alerted to the danger, demanded to inspect the ship’s cargo. To avoid detection, the Venetian merchants cleverly hid the Evangelist in a large basket, which they filled with raw pork. When the Muslim officials opened the container and saw the unclean meat, they shut it with horror and fled the ship. And so it was that St. Mark left Alexandria and sailed to Venice.
As in all translatio stories, the authenticity of the relic was further validated by various storms at sea and other dangers from which the saint miraculously delivered the travelers after suitable supplications. At last the Venetians returned to Istria, where they sent word to the doge that if he would pardon them for trading in Alexandria, they would render to him the body of St. Mark. He readily agreed. A grand ceremony then took place with Doge Giustiniano Partecipazio (the son of the recently deceased Agnello), the patriarch of Grado, all the bishops, and many of the Venetian people in attendance to welcome the saint’s arrival. The importance of this relic for the Venetians cannot be overstated. In the near term it added a powerful argument to the patriarch of Grado’s claim to be the successor of St. Mark. After all, had not the saint himself chosen to rest in Venice, rather than Aquileia? In the long term, though, it served as a nexus around which Venetian national identity would form.
Astonishingly, the body of St. Mark was not handed over to the patriarch of Grado or even to the bishop of Castello, as would have been the case anywhere else in Europe. The island of Grado was rejected immediately, probably because it was so close to Aquileia and so distant from the fleets of Venice that could protect it. According to John the Deacon, the original plan was to transfer the body to the cathedral of San Pietro di Castello once the building was complete. Until then, it was kept at the Ducal Palace. However, at some point the saint made it clear that he much preferred the company of the doge. And so the original plan was abandoned. Doge Giustiniano ordered a small chapel to be built to permanently house the saint. This simple structure, completed in 832, was the first church of San Marco, built on the site of the current one. But it was not, strictly speaking, a church at all—just a household chapel attached (as it still is today) to the Ducal Palace. Since the members of the Partecipazio family were attempting to establish themselves as a ducal dynasty in Venice, the decision to keep the relic was probably meant to associate the saint with the family, just as other saints around Venice were associated with those families who had built churches in their honor.
But it did not work out that way. Only four years after the completion of the first chapel, Doge Giovanni Partecipazio was overthrown—a victim of the factional violence that was again disturbing the city. Members of the rival Mastalici family waylaid the doge as he was walking home from church at the cathedral of San Pietro. They shaved off his hair and beard and forced him to take clerical vows. He lived the remainder of his days as a monk on Grado. The election of a new doge, Pietro Tradonico, firmly established the principle that the palace and its chapel belonged to the people of Venice and not to any particular family. Henceforth, St. Mark was the special patron of the doge and, by extension, the Republic of Venice. St. Theodore had been replaced. Yet the building that housed St. Mark’s body, even when it was later rebuilt on a grand scale, remained a ducal chapel. It was not a cathedral. It was not even a parish church. It was part of the Ducal Palace and, therefore, the property of the people of Venice. St. Mark belonged to them all.
Of course, one might question whether Buono and Rustico had been altogether forthright with the Greeks when they persuaded them to take away the relic. After all, according to tradition St. Mark had lived in Aquileia, so it could hardly be said that his relocation to Venice was a return home. There was, after all, no Venice in St. Mark’s day. But the Venetians found a way around that problem, too. They claimed that when St. Mark traveled between Rome and Aquileia, he had docked his boat at Rialto to rest. There an angel came down from heaven and proclaimed to him, “Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus. Hic requiescat corpus tuum” (Peace be with you, Mark, my Evangelist. Here shall your body rest). Thus was it divinely ordained that St. Mark should remain forever in Venice. This point was further underscored by the new symbol of Venice. For centuries the Venetians have depicted the winged lion, the ancient iconography of St. Mark and his Gospel, with one paw resting on an open book and the words of the angel’s greeting plainly visible.
In time, the association between St. Mark and the Venetian republic would become so firm as to be inseparable. The story of his first visit to Rialto and his exciting trip from Alexandria to Venice would become a foundational element in Venetian history and identity. Even today, one can see a depiction of the bamboozled Muslim inspectors on the facade of San Marco and a full mosaic cycle of his translatio on the inside walls of the church. Then, as now, the lion of St. Mark was on every banner. Venice had become the Republic of St. Mark.