Cast into the Deep, telling them for their Comfort that the
Land could never have afforded his Boy a nobler Tomb. And then,
renewing the Fight more fiercely than ever, he achieved the Victory."
(Benvenuto of Imola, in Comment. on Dante. in Muratori, Antiq. i.
1146.)
("Yet like an English General will I die,
And all the Ocean make my spacious Grave;
Women and Cowards on the Land may lie,
The Sea's the Tomb that's proper for the Brave!"
- Annus Mirabilis.)
[20] The particulars of the battle are gathered from Ferretus
Vicentinus, in Murat. ix. 985 seqq.; And. Dandulo, in xii.
407-408; Navagiero, in xxiii. 1009-1010; and the Genoese Poem as
before.
[21] Navagiero, u.s. Dandulo says, "after a few days he died of grief";
Ferretus, that he was killed in the action and buried at Curzola.
[22] For the funeral, a MS. of Cibo Recco quoted by Jacopo Doria in La
Chiesa di San Matteo descritta, etc., Genova, 1860, p. 26. For the
date of arrival the poem so often quoted: -
"De Oitover, a zoia, a seze di
Lo nostro ostel, con gran festa
En nostro porto, a or di sesta
Domine De restitui."
[23] S. Matteo was built by Martin Doria in 1125, but pulled down and
rebuilt by the family in a slightly different position in 1278. On
this occasion is recorded a remarkable anticipation of the feats of
American engineering: "As there was an ancient and very fine picture
of Christ upon the apse of the Church, it was thought a great pity
that so fine a work should be destroyed. And so they contrived an
ingenious method by which the apse bodily was transported without
injury, picture and all, for a distance of 25 ells, and firmly set
upon the foundations where it now exists." (Jacopo de Varagine in
Muratori, vol. ix. 36.)
The inscription on S. Matteo regarding the battle is as follows: - "Ad
Honorem Dei et Beate Virginis Marie Anno MCCLXXXXVIII Die Dominico VII
Septembris iste Angelus captus fuit in Gulfo Venetiarum in Civitate
Scursole et ibidem fuit prelium Galearum LXXVI Januensium cum Galeis
LXXXXVI Veneciarum. Capte fuerunt LXXXIIII per Nobilem Virum Dominum
Lambam Aurie Capitaneum et Armiratum tunc Comunis et Populi Janue cum
omnibus existentibus in eisdem, de quibus conduxit Janue homines vivos
carceratos VII cccc et Galeas XVIII, reliquas LXVI fecit cumburi in
dicto Gulfo Veneciarum. Qui obiit Sagone I. MCCCXXIII." It is not
clear to what the Angelus refers.
[24] Rampoldi, Ann. Musulm. ix. 217.
[25] Jacopo Doria, p. 280.
[26] Murat. xxiii. 1010. I learn from a Genoese gentleman, through my
friend Professor Henry Giglioli (to whose kindness I owe the
transcript of the inscription just given), that a faint tradition
exists as to the place of our traveller's imprisonment.
