his delectation in a sight of the Doge and his obeisance to the Lion. For the furtherance of his schemes of empire Otho needed a fleet. He had, Gfrörer tells us, “an admiral already in view for it. Nothing was wanted but cables, anchors, equipments; in short there were not even ships, nor the necessary money, and above all, there were no sailors. I believe that Otho III undertook the journey to Venice precisely to procure for himself these necessary trifles. Who knows how many times already he had urged the Doge to hasten his sending of the long-promised fleet; but in place of ships nothing had yet come but letters or embassies carrying specious excuses.” If the historian’s motivisation is accurate, Otho must have found, like so many after him, Venice more capable of exercising persuasion than of submitting to it. For our uses, however, the original or the revised versions of the tale serve the same purpose. As an act of spontaneous homage or an act of practical policy, the visit of Otho, full as it is of speculative possibilities, was an imperial tribute to the position Orseolo had given to Venice, an imperial recognition of her progress towards supremacy in the Adriatic. Orseolo’s achievement and the rite which symbolised it were confirmed two centuries later when, in the spring and summer of 1177, Venice was the meeting place of Pope Alexander III and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Tradition has woven a curious romance round the fact of the Pope’s sojourn in Venice before the coming of the Emperor. By a manipulation of various episodes, he is brought as a fugitive to creep among the tortuous by-ways of the city, sleeping on the bare ground, and going forward as chance might direct till he is received as a chaplain--or, to enhance the thrill of agony, as a scullion--in the convent of Santa Maria della Carità, and after some months have elapsed is brought to the notice of the Doge, when a transformation scene of the Cinderella type is effected. It is inevitable that melodramatic touches should have been added to so important an episode, and the accounts of the manner of Alexander’s arrival and his bearing in Venice are many and varied. None the less, it is clear that splendour and not secrecy, ceremony not intimacy, are the general colouring of the event. Frederick had shown himself disposed to make peace and to accept the mediation of Venice, and in the early days of the Pope’s visit the Venetians had acted as counsellors, pending the agreement as to a meeting place. Significant terms are used by the chroniclers to account for the ultimate choice, and the note which they strike is repeated again and again in the chorus of praise that throughout the centuries was to wait upon Venice. “Pope and Emperor sent forth their mandates to divers parts of the world, that Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Ecclesiastics and secular Princes should repair to Venice; for Venice is safe for all, fertile and abounding