[Sidenote: _1148. Defeat of Roger, Marco Vecellio; same ceiling._]
to repulse the attacks of the Normans of Sicily, who even succeeded in penetrating into the suburbs of Constantinople; and for some time the Greeks were obliged to bear with the official pretensions of the Republic, as well as with the insults and humiliations suffered by the Greek soldiers at the hands of their foreign allies.
Under the reign of the Emperor Manuel, however, the affairs of the Republic in the East suffered a severe check. During an expedition, of which the real object was nothing less than the conquest of Greece, an outbreak of the plague brought terror and confusion upon the Venetian fleet. The attacking force consisted largely of volunteers, who lost heart as the terrible sickness spread amongst
them. A mere remnant of what had seemed a brilliant army reached Venice with the remains of the fleet, and the arrival of these few spread mourning and desolation amongst the citizens. Outraged at the weakness and lack of wisdom displayed by the Doge during the expedition, the people united to wreak their vengeance upon him, and he was promptly assassinated. Amongst the many families whose youngest and bravest were victims of this fruitless expedition, none was more nearly exterminated than the Giustiniani. One hundred men of their name and race had sailed away to Greece; not one came back. The Venetians
felt that the city itself was bereaved by their loss. One man of marriageable age alone survived in Venice to stand between the name of Giustiniani and its extinction, and he was
a monk in the monastery of Saint Nicholas. Thither the people proceeded in a body, they claimed him from the order, they brought him
home to his ancestral palace, they besought the Pope to free him from his vows. Alexander III. readily acceded to a request so unanimous; at the same time, as if to provide him with a wife whose position should be somewhat similar to his own, the pontiff liberated also from her nunnery the daughter of the former Doge, Vital Michiel II. The former monk and the former nun were united in bonds of matrimony, and became the parents of no less than twelve children, nine of whom were sons. When the twelve were all grown up, Giustiniani founded in the island of Amiano a convent, to which his wife and their three daughters retired while he returned to his monastery of Saint Nicholas on the Lido.