[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. [43] Cedrenus, vol. i., § 1019, in Migne, vol. 121. [44] The name Rascia is generally used by old historians as synonymous for Servia, and is derived from the river Raška in Old Servia. [45] _Num Ragusini ab omni jure Veneto a saec. X usque ad saec. XIV immunes fuerunt_, thesis by the Abbé Paul Pisani, Paris, 1893, cap. ii. [46] According to Johannes Diaconus, the expedition started in the seventh year of Orseolo’s reign, which would be the year 998; but Monticolo, who edits that writer in his _Cronache Antichissime_ (p. 156, note 1), observes that Diaconus says that he only heard the news of the victory when the Emperor Otho III. came to Pavia in his third descent into Italy, _i.e._ July 1000. [47] The name Beograd or Belgrad, _i.e._ white city, is a very common one in Slavonic lands. [48] “Seque suosque Orseolo Venetoque nomini dedunt.” Sabellico, _Historia rerum Venetarum_, Dec. I. lib. iv. cap. 3. [49] This pseudonym is an anagram for Sebastianus Slade de Ragusa; _Slade_ is Slavonic for sweets = _dolci_. [50] MS. in the Museo Correr at Venice, quoted by Pisani, _op. cit._, introd. There is a copy at Zara and one at Ragusa. [51] _Regno degli Slavi._ [52] _Chronica Ragusina_, edit. South-Slav. Acad., p. 272. [53] _Prospetto Cronologico della Dalmazia_, p. 112. [54] This title is now borne by the Emperor of Austria.