[자료] Bucentaur, Marriage of the Sea

자료: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucentaur


The bucentaur (pronounced /bjuːˈsɛntɔr/, bew-SEN-tor) (bucintoro in Venetian) was the state galley of the doges of Venice. It was used every year on Ascension Day up to 1798 to take the doge out to the Adriatic Sea to perform the ceremony of wedding Venice to the sea. (...)


(...) The bucentaur was used not only for the Marriage of the Sea ceremony, but also for other state functions such as festivals celebrating the Virgin Mary and the bearing of newly crowned dogaressas (the wives of doges) to the Doge's Palace. On 6 May 1401, a law was passed to prohibit the doge from making private use of the bucentaur.(...)

The "Marriage of the Adriatic", or more correctly "Marriage of the Sea" (in Italian, Sposalizio del Mare), was a ceremony symbolizing the maritime dominion of Venice. The ceremony, established about 1000 to commemorate the Doge Pietro II Orseolo's conquest of Dalmatia, was originally one of supplication and placation, Ascension Day being chosen as that on which the doge set out on his expedition. The form it took was a solemn procession of boats, headed by the doge's nave (ship), from 1311 the Bucentaur, out to sea by the Lido port. A prayer was offered that "for us and all who sail thereon the sea may be calm and quiet", whereupon the doge and the others were solemnly aspersed with holy water, the rest of which was thrown into the sea while the priests chanted "Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor" ("Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be clean" – Psalm 51:7).[21] To this ancient ceremony a quasi-sacramental character was given by Pope Alexander III in 1177, in return for the services rendered by Venice in the struggle against the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. The pope drew a ring from his finger and, giving it to the doge, bade him cast such a one into the sea each year on Ascension Day, and so wed the sea. Henceforth the ceremonial, instead of placatory and expiatory, became nuptial. Every year the doge dropped a consecrated ring into the sea, and with the Latin words "Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique domini" ("We wed thee, sea, in the sign of the true and everlasting Lord") declared Venice and the sea to be indissolubly one.[3][5]
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