About the time Charlemagne invaded the Laguna, and Venetians returned Frankish fire with loaves of bread, in Inventing Past Narratives Venice and the Adriatic Space (13th–15th Centuries), edited by Ilaria Molteni & Valeria Russo, “Convivium Supplementum”, 2023/4,

The myth concerning Charlemagne’s invasion of the Venetian lagoon provides insight into how Venetian historiographers manipulated the past for utilitarian purposes. After analysing and contextualising all the oldest historiographical evidence, the article identifies the legend’s success in the logic of opposition to an ‘enemy’ through which a historical Venetian identity could be symbolically defined. Legendary archetypes were part of a historiographic-literary process that aimed at constructing a ‘national’ community and, simultaneously, looked to a fantastic, glorious past for the prefiguration of a present of struggles for dominance and supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean.