It is recorded that in this year (1177) this pompous ceremony was performed for the first time. The Doge died in the following year. On Ascension Day the Venetians, headed by their Doge, celebrated the triumphant event. Galleys, sailing-vessels, and gondolas accompanied the chief of the State, who occupied a prominent position on the ‘Bucentoro,’ which held, as its name implies, two hundred persons. This vessel was decorated with columns, statues, etc., and the top was covered with crimson velvet. There were twenty-one oars on each side. Musical performers attended in another barge. The vessel left the Piazza of St. Mark under a salute of guns, and proceeded slowly to the Isle of Lido. Here the Doge, taking the ring from his finger, gave it to his betrothed wife, the Adriatic, by dropping it into her bosom, repeating these words: ‘We espouse thee, oh sea! in token of our just and perpetual dominion.’[73]
The reader will remember the well-known lines of Byron, written at Venice:
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And, annual marriage now no more renew’d,
The Bucentaur lies rotting, unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood.
It is probable that Shakspeare alluded to this custom when he says in ‘Othello:’—
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription, and confine
For the sea’s worth.
Byron, in the ‘Two Foscari,’ again alludes to the ‘marriage’ ring of the Doge. When the Council of Ten demanded of the Doge Foscari—
The resignation of the ducal ring,
Which he had worn so long and venerably,
he laid aside the ducal bonnet and robes, surrendered his ring of office, and exclaimed:
There’s the ducal ring,
And there’s the ducal diadem. And so
The Adriatic’s free to wed another.
So, Rogers: