TO PARENZO

The next place along the coast, after passing the Promontory of Salvore
and turning south, is Umago. It is sheltered behind a shoal, upon which
the Chronicles say that the ship laden with the relics of S. Mark struck
during a storm on its way to Venice. It was given as a feud to the
bishop of Trieste in 929, at Pavia, by Ugo of Provence, king of Italy,
and to the bishop of Cittanova in 1029 or 1038 by the Emperor Conrad. It
had been sacked by the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia in 876, at the same
time with Cittanova, Rovigno, and Sipar (at which last place very early
wall-paintings are said to exist). It swore fealty to Venice in 1269;
but very little is known of its history, the English apparently having
burnt the archives in the piazza early in the nineteenth century. At
that period no one seems to have thought that such things could be of
any value; indeed at Portole, about 1850, the podesta actually sold all
the communal deeds to the grocer of the place, thinking them useless
rubbish, and at Cittanova the parchments were used by the citizens to
mend windows!

Cittanova lies at the mouth of the Quieto valley which, commencing at
Pinguente, passes Montona on its isolated hill (visible from the coast
like lofty Buie), and terminates in a marsh seven or eight miles long.
The mouth is known as Porto Torre, from a little place on the Parenzo
side of the river. The city was a Roman colony with the name AEmonia,
and the seat of an early Istrian bishop. A few years ago some seventy
carved slabs of the eighth or ninth century were discovered face
downwards in the pavement of the crypt of the basilica, which appear to
have belonged to the font and choir enclosure. Among them are several
archivolt pieces, very much like those of the font of Calixtus at
Cividale, which show by a mutilated inscription that they were due to
Bishop Maurizio, apparently a bishop suspected of being on the side of
the Franks, and therefore blinded by the Byzantines in 781. The slabs
are all of Istrian stone, except one, which is of marble, and the
carvings therefore may possibly to some extent be of local workmanship,
though we know that Comacines from Cividale were employed in Croatia.
They have the characteristic Lombard furrows and interweavings, and
other details met with in different parts of Italy. There are no
mouldings, but a slight bead and reel along the interior edge of the
arches. One slab shows two birds drinking from a vas