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Customs and Incidents in Connection with Rings (Wedding of the Adriatic P)

Wedding of the Adriatic. P. 419.

IN Richard Lassel's 'Voyage of Italy' is an account of the performance of this ceremony at Venice, about the year 1650. 'I happened to be at Venice thrice at the great sea Triumph, or feast of the Ascension, which was performed thus: About our eight in the morning the Senators, in their scarlet robes, meet at the Doge's Pallace, and there, taking him up, they walk with him processionally unto the shoar, where the Bucentoro lyes waiting them; the Pope's Nuncio being on his right hand, and the Patriarch of Venice on his left hand. APPENDIX.

Then, ascending into the Bucentoro by a handsome bridge thrown out to the shoar, the Doge takes his place, and the Senators sit round about the galley as they can, to the number of two or three hundred. The Senate being placed, the anchor is weighed, and the slaves being warned by the Captain's whistle, and the sound of trumpets, begin to strike all at once with their oars, and to make the Bucentoro march as gravely upon the water as if she also went upon cioppini (high shoes then worn by the Venetian ladies). Thus they steer for two miles upon the Laguna, while the music plays and sings Epithalamiums all the way long, and makes Neptune jealous to hear Hymen called upon in his Dominions. Round about the Bucentoro flock a world of Piottas and Gondolas, richly covered overhead with sumptuous Canopies of silks and rich stuffs, and rowed by watermen in rich liveries as well as the Trumpeters. Thus forrain Embassadors, divers noblemen of the country and strangers of condition, wait upon the Doge's gally, all the way long both coming and going. At last the Doge, being arrived at the appointed place, throws a Ring into the sea, without any other ceremony than by saying, Desponsamus te, Mare; in signum perpetui dominii. We espouse thee, O Sea, in Testimony of our perpetual dominion over thee; and so returns to the Church of St. Nicolas, in Lio (an Island hard by), where he assists at High Mass with the Senate. This done, he returns home again in the same state, and invites those that accompanied him in his gally to dinner in his Pallace, the preparations of which dinner we saw before the Doge was got home.' By the kindness of Mr. Octavius Morgan, F.R.S., Vice- President of the Antiquarian Society, &c., I am enabled to reproduce in the present work a privately-printed tract by that eminent antiquarian, which will be found of great utility to ring-collectors generally.