nominee, Vitale Candiano, was raised to the Dogeship, to retire after fourteen months, sick and disillusioned, to die in a monastery. Pietro Memo succeeded him in 978, a feeble prince, whose reign was dishonoured by the rise of the Caloprini and Morosini factions that in the end nearly compassed the destruction of Venetian liberties. It was the old strife renewed with increased bitterness. The Morosini being partisans of the Orseoli favoured the Byzantines: the Caloprini standing for the Candiani leaned on the western powers. For the first and last time in her history Venice saw her children traitorously inviting a foreign sovereign to enslave their fatherland. The Caloprini, having assassinated Dom. Morosini, fled to the court of Otho II., and impiously laying bare the weak places in their country’s defences, called him to conquest. The Emperor was nothing loth. Venice was a standing challenge to the Empire; the only state in Western Europe that stubbornly refused to be absorbed in the feudal system. His subjects were forbidden to trade with the Republic; her food supplies were cut off; her enemies goaded on to attack her; the Caloprini faction in Venice stirred to rebellion; ships of war collected to blockade if not to attack the islands. It was the gravest danger that had ever threatened Venice, for the foes were partly those of her own household. But the stars, which watched over her birth, seemed now in their courses to fight for her salvation. The mighty arm of the Emperor was raised to crush the little state, when the angel of death touched him and it fell impotently to his side.