a stupenda, ne piu veduta
Citta"[146]; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther
relation.

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. 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 cloister-like and quiet,[147] divided by a small canal,
with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two
churches of St. Theodore and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza of
Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral.

But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to
the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one
stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,[148] gave a very different
character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the
acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal
Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that
chapel with all possible splendour. St. Theodore was deposed from his
patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the
aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and
thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."[149]

This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace
was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly
rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with
the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under
successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being
completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till
considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,[150]
according to Sansovino and the author of the _Chiesa Ducale di S.
Marco_, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and
1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I
incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the
throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead
of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the ele