e devotion excited by these
relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the
account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of
the pretended miracle by which it was concealed.

"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which
the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten;
so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the
venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious
Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by
confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer
and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not
now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore
proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June,
while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent
prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as
joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where
the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth,
exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in
which the body of the Evangelist was laid."

Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished
afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance,
that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand
out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a
noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story
was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it
is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast
and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts;
and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the
north[152] transept, executed very certainly not long after the event
had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux
tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the
church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in
thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in
the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with
gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as
uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial
works of the period. T