See some good contemporary accounts of the ceremony quoted in Molmenti, _Venice_, I, pp.

212-15.
5.

During the fatal war of Chioggia between the two republics of Venice and Genoa, which ended in 1381, it was said that the Genoese admiral (or some say Francesco Carrara), when asked by the Doge to receive peace ambassadors, replied, 'Not before I have bitted the horses on St Mark's.'-- H.F.

Brown, _Studies in the Hist.

of Venice_, I, p.