period, for more than a century, I
can find no records of any alterations made in the fabric of the church,
but there exist very full details of the quarrels which arose between
its incumbents and those of San Stefano, San Cipriano, San Salvatore,
and the other churches of Murano, touching the due obedience which their
less numerous or less ancient brotherhoods owed to St. Mary's.

These differences seem to have been renewed at the election of every new
abbot by each of the fraternities, and must have been growing serious
when the patriarch of Grado, Henry Dandolo, interfered in 1102, and, in
order to seal a peace between the two principal opponents, ordered that
the abbot of St. Stephen's should be present at the service in St.
Mary's on the night of the Epiphany, and that the abbot of St. Mary's
should visit him of St. Stephen's on St. Stephen's day; and that then
the two abbots "should eat apples and drink good wine together, in peace
and charity."[10]

Sec. X. But even this kindly effort seems to have been without result: the
irritated pride of the antagonists remained unsoothed by the love-feast
of St. Stephen's day; and the breach continued to widen until the abbot
of St. Mary's obtained a timely accession to his authority in the year
1125. The Doge Domenico Michele, having in the second crusade secured
such substantial advantages for the Venetians as might well
counterbalance the loss of part of their trade with the East, crowned
his successes by obtaining possession in Cephalonia of the body of St.
Donato, bishop of Euroea; which treasure he having presented on his
return to the Murano basilica, that church was thenceforward called the
church of Sts. Mary and Donato. Nor was the body of the saint its only
acquisition: St. Donato's principal achievement had been the destruction
of a terrible dragon in Epirus; Michele brought home the bones of the
dragon as well as of the saint; the latter were put in a marble
sarcophagus, and the former hung up over the high altar.

Sec. XI. But the clergy of St. Stefano were indomitable. At the very
moment when their adversaries had received this formidable accession of
strength, they had the audacity "ad onta de' replicati giuramenti, e
dell'inveterata consuetudine,"[11] to refuse to continue in the
obedience which they had vowed to their mother church. The matter was
tried in a provincial council; the votaries of St. Stephen were
condemned, and remained quiet for about twent