28 THE STONES OF VENICE

in the portico of St. Mark’s,* the central expression in most men’s thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power;† it is true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus rendered to the Roman Church.¹

* “In that temple porch,

(The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)

Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,

And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot

Of the proud Pontiff²-thus at last consoled

For flight, disguise, and many an anguish shake

On his stone pillow.”

I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers’s Italy has, I believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else that has been written of her.³

† Most men being geese, in everything they think and say of all powers

¹ [It was after the homage of Barbarossa that the Doge received from the Pope the umbrella which henceforth was one of the insignia of his state. A picturesque account of the State procession of the Doge, from the chronicle of an eye-witness in 1278, may be read in H. F. Brown’s Venice, pp. 147-148: “Behind the canons walks Monsignor the Doge, under the umbrella which Monsignor the apostle (i.e. the Pope) gave him; the umbrella is of cloth of gold, and a lad bears it in his hands.” It was, too, after the homage of Barbarossa that “a sacramental complexion was given to the ancient ceremony of Ascension Day. Instead of a placatory or expiatory function, it became nuptial. Henceforth the Doge every year dropped a consecrated ring into the sea, and with the words Desponsamus te, mare, declared that Venice and the sea were indissolubly one” (ibid., p. 110).]

² [“Three slabs of red marble in the porch of St. Mark’s point out the spot where Frederick knelt in sudden awe, and the Pope (Alexander III.) with tears of joy raised him, and gave the kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given an undeserved currency, tells how the pontiff set his foot on the neck of the prostrate king, with the words, ‘The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.’ It needed not this exaggeration to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life had been devoted: it was the abandonment by the secular power of a contest in which it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not renew under more favourable conditions” (Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire, ed. 1889, p. 164). The reconciliation took place on July 23, 1177. A picture in the great hall of the Ducal Palace (Sala del Maggior Consiglio) by Federigo Zuccaro represents the scene. For another reference by Ruskin to “the humiliation of Barbarossa,” and to Byron’s line summing up the Fall of Venice-“An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt”-see Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 90.]

³ [Rogers’ Italy was connected, as we have seen, with Ruskin’s earliest interest in the romance of Italy (see Vol. I. p. xxix.): and he was on friendly terms with the poet. For other complimentary references to the Italy, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 3, and the letter to Rogers written from Venice in 1852, which is given in a later volume.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]