IV. ST. MARK’S 71

Chiese di Venezia,”* that “St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: ‘Peace be to thee, Mark;¹ here shall thy body rest.’” The angel goes on to foretell the building of “una stupenda, ne piů veduta Cittá”; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation.²

§ 3. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of the piazzetta.³ A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark’s; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it without endeavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it was a green field, cloisterlike and quiet, † divided by a small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian,⁴ as the little piazza of Torcello lies between its “palazzo” and cathedral.

* Venice, 1761, tom. i., p. 126.

† St. Mark’s Place, “partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to say, Garden.” The canal passed through it, over which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. i., cap. viii.

¹ [See Vol. IX. p. 30 n., where a fulfilment of this promise is referred to.]

² [In revising this passage for the “Travellers’ Edition” Ruskin noted here:-

“I have ceased now to look for ingenuity in fables; and look only for feeling, or meaning.”]

³ [The legend of St. Theodore is told, and his place in the early affections of the Venetians fully described in St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 1, 23, 26, 28, 41, 54, 124.]

⁴ [This early church was also dedicated to another saint, and in one MS. draft of the chapter Ruskin thus refers to the legends:-

“San Menna, to whom the church of St. Geminiano was partly dedicated, was an Egyptian saint of the third century, of whom little is recorded but that he was a soldier and a Christian; that on the publication of the edict

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