[33] In the Italian city-republics, besides the head of the State, the Council of nobles, and the assembly of the people, there was also a minor or privy council of special advisers. It is very probable that there was something of the kind at Ragusa even at this time, as there was later.
[34] Afterwards the archbishop.
[35] “A wall of rubble and beams.”
[36] Const. Porgh., cap. xxx. According to tradition, Ragusa had been delivered from the Saracens in 783 by Orlando, or Roland the Paladin. The legend probably has its origin in a confusion between Charlemagne’s suzerainty over Dalmatia and the Saracen siege of Ragusa in 847. The so-called statue of Orlando at Ragusa is of the fifteenth century.
[37] Const. Porgh., cap. xxx.
[38] The Naro of the ancients.
[39] Primorije in Slavonic, Παραθαλάσσια.
[40] Gelcich, op. cit., p. 2.
[41] Serafino Razzi, in his Storia di Raugia, gives a long account of this miracle (cap. x.). The Venetian fleet designed to capture Ragusa by treachery, but the plot was revealed to a priest, who thus relates his vision: “I was in the church of St. Stephen about midnight, at prayer, when methinks I saw the whole fane filled with armed men. And in the midst I saw an old man with a long white beard holding a staff in his hand. Having called me aside, he told me that he was San Biagio, and had been sent by Heaven to defend this city. He told me further that the Venetians had come up to the walls to scale them, using the masts of their ships as ladders, but he, with a company of heavenly soldiers, had driven back the enemy; but he desired that in future the Ragusans should defend themselves, and never trust armed neighbours.” Ragnina dates the event 971.
[42] San Bacco had been patron of the Latin settlement on the rocky ridge, while the Slavonic colony had been under the protection of the Eastern Saint Serge. When the two settlements amalgamated, as neither would accept the saint of the other, they compromised by adopting San Biagio.