ABSTRACT
Myths of God’s direct intervention in the city appear much earlier and most likely informed discourses. The stories of Venice’s sacred origin were conveyed continually and consistently to Venetians and foreign visitors to the city in a variety of ways, notably through visual imagery. In fact, it was through grand public artistic visions that Venice’s claim to superiority was most powerfully manifested. No study of Venetian religion can ignore the Myth of Venice: the commonly held beliefs that perceived Venice as, amongst other things, divinely ordained and both blessed and protected by the heavenly guardianship of Mark the Evangelist and other saints. However, to insist that the Myth of Venice had an impact on the way Venetians expressed their religious beliefs and experienced devotion is a potentially contentious argument. As William Wurthmann writes, ‘many modern historians openly distrust the myth of Venice as too facile an interpretation of historical reality’.
