number of persons who would have to be present. The Pope returned to Venice after discussing the question with the envoys of Milan, and called together the ambassadors of the Empire, the legates of Sicily, and the principal Lombard chiefs. All these personages presented themselves in answer to the pontifical summons, and proceeded to discuss the situation at great length. The result of the congress was that the Emperor agreed to recognise the legitimate election of Alexander III., to renounce his own Antipope, to sign a truce of six years with the Lombard League, and of fifteen years with the king of Sicily.
These preliminaries having been properly and minutely established, the Emperor was invited to meet the Pope in Venice. It was his Canossa. He arrived in Chioggia in 1177, and was met at the entrance of the lagoons by a deputation of bishops, who exhorted him to abjure his schism before entering upon Venetian territory. Barbarossa complied with good grace and was forthwith freed from the ban of excommunication. On the following day he proceeded to the capital. The Doge, the patriarch of Grado, and all the bishops of the Venetian state went out to meet him in their barges. The whole company landed at the Piazzetta amidst the acclamations of the crowd, and the Emperor was at once conducted to the Basilica. Here the Pope, in full pontificals, awaited him under the porch, surrounded by his cardinals and numerous representatives of the Venetian clergy. When he saw before him the august pontiff whom he had so long and so cruelly persecuted, the
Barbarossa kneeling before Alexander III., Federigo Zuccaro; Hall of the Great Council.
Emperor seems to have felt a sudden impulse of penitence, for he threw himself upon his knees and bowed down to kiss the Pope’s feet; but Alexander would not allow him to go so far, and raising him to his feet bestowed upon him the kiss of peace. Side by side the temporal and the spiritual sovereigns of the world went up the ancient aisle together to the steps of the high altar, and with the clergy and people intoned the ‘Te Deum Laudamus.’
On the first of August of that year the truce with the Lombard League was signed, and at the same time the Venetians obtained for themselves certain especial promises from the Emperor, one of which was that no imperial ships should navigate the waters of the Adriatic Gulf, which Venice now looked upon as her exclusive property, without the consent of the Republic. On his side the Pope accorded numerous privileges to the city which had given him such abundant proof of its fidelity.
A great part of the importance which was attached to the Doge’s annual visit to the Lido on Ascension Day had its origin in the fact that Alexander III. was present in Venice at that feast. It is true that the custom of the visit dated from the days of Pietro Orseolo II., but the ceremony of espousing the sea was first performed in 1177, when the Pope, on presenting the Doge Sebastian Ziani with a magnificent ring, accompanied the gift with the words: ‘Take this as a token of the sovereignty which you and your successors shall exercise over this sea for ever.’ In memory of this speech the Doge afterwards dropped a
CHIOGGIA
golden wedding-ring into the sea every year with imposing ceremonies.