Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In 568 the terrible Lombards were threatening Altinum, whose inhabitants entreated the help of heaven with tears and prayers and fastings; and, lo ! they saw the doves and many other birds bearing PONTE S. G1USTINA their young in their beaks flying from their nests in the walls of the city. This was interpreted as a sign from God that they too were to expatriate themselves and seek safety in flight. They divided into three bodies, one of which turned to Istria, another to Ravenna: the third remained behind, uncertain whither to direct their steps. Three days they fasted, and at length a voice was heard saying: Saliteana torn e guardate agli astri. (Ascend the tower and look at the stars.) Their good Bishop Paul climbed the tower, and to his gaze the very stars of the firmament seemed to set themselves in a constellation that figured forth the fateful group of islands in the lagoon before him. His flock, following this warning from heaven, went forth, headed by their bishop and clergy bearing the sacred vessels and relics, and passed to an island high and fertile, which they called Torcello, from one of the twelve towers of their old city. The very hierarchy of heaven, from Our Lord and His Blessed Mother to St Peter and the Baptist, even to Giustina, the martyred little maid of Padua, appeared to Mauro, the priest, in a vision, as he paced the sea shore, and in sweet voices bade him build here a church and there a church in their honour. The immigrants therefore had come to make the lagoons their permanent home, and a new city was organised. In process of time churches were built; trade guilds were formed; painters and mosaicists enriched the buildings. The marble seat on the grass- grown piazza of Torcello, to this day called Attila’s chair, was probably the official sea…
