International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Roberto Pesce
Baylor University, Waco TX, United States; 
[e-mail]
The First Venetians: The Chosen People
My paper examines the legendary origins of Venice as described in a XIII Century manuscript 
in 
franco-veneto
produced in the Veneto area. This text represents an uncommon account of the 
migration from mainland cities to the islands of the lagoon during barbarian invasions: with Northern 
Italy under attack by Attila the Hun and other peoples, the king and queen of Padua led the defense. 
While King Gilius beheaded Attila during a chess game, the queen, having changed her name to 
Sarah after she was baptized, guided the survivors to safety on the islands of Rialto, founding Venice. 
With its origins not connected to the classical myth, the account of Venice’s history in this manuscript 
alludes to the Old Testament. In comparing the biblical figure of Sarah to the queen of Padua, 
analyzing the similarities in the foundation of the respective new states, Israel and Venice, and 
drawing from source material and the political and religious elements of the Venetian tradition, this 
paper explores the literary and historical consequences of the reinterpretation of the biblical word, 
arguing that, as this manuscript suggests, Venetians are not just worthy and magnanimous refugees, 
but the new Chosen People.
Andrea Beretta
Università degli Studi di Siena, Siena, Italy; 
[e-mail]
The 
Life of Attila
in the Venetian Chronicles
As part of my PhD thesis 
L’
Attila Flagellum Dei 
di Nicolò da Casola. Edizione del libro primo e 
studio della tradizione testuale su Attila in Italia
, I am accomplishing a critical edition of the so-called 
Estoire d’Atile en Ytaire
(a Franco-Italian prose text, source of Nicolò da Casola’s poem) and I am 
studying its Latin and Venetian translations in a comparative perspective, thanks to the “Cronache 
veneziane e ravennati” database (http://www.cronachevenezianeravennati.it). By doing so, I will 
establish a first partition into several branches of the corpus of witnesses. In my paper I shall expose 
the results of this study, and I will specifically focus my attention on the outline of a preliminary 
stemma codicum
that could provide a genealogical interpretation of the textual tradition of the 
Estoire d’Atile
.

---

473