, 112 5 THE STRUGGLE AGAINST PLAGUE III LAW, ORDER AND SOCIAL POLICY should be given to the bakers of the city, who were to make it into bread and give it to the poor; but even the bakers did the same thing, by giving away the flour, and they did not make the bread. Hence it was decided to summon all the heads of the parishes, both noblemen and citizens, who had been appointed at the time of the Arsenal fire.15 They went to the Collegio, and there were instructed to attend at the bakers' shops at specified hours in the mornings and evenings, to ensure that all the bread that had been made was given to the poor in exchange for tickets, at so much per head. And this was an excellent measure. . . . . [After the death of Doge Pietro Loredan on 3 May 1570] for some time they postponed the announcement of his death to the people. For the Doge had a most evil reputation, since he was held responsible for the famine, for the many deaths, for the war, and for the dreadful fire at the Arsenal; and there was a kind of pestilence then in Venice, with many dying of the spotted fever. On the day that his death was proclaimed the gates of the palace were shut, and guards composed of men from the Arsenal were posted there in the customary fashion. After the mid-day meal on the following Sunday, 7 May, his funeral was held in the church of St Mark's and attended by all the clergy of Venice and by the Scuole Grandi. It was decreed that all the awnings that had been erected in the Piazza for the stalls for the Ascension-tide fair should be removed to allow the procession to pass through the Piazza with the torches. Note that the funeral, as I said, was held at St Mark's and not in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where the canopy had already been set up, and where the Scuole Grandi and Piccole and some of the clergy had already started to go. But, because rain was falling, the Signoria was impeded by the weather, and it was decided that the funeral should after all be held at St Mark's, where the customary ceremonies were enacted and the funeral oration was delivered by Missier Antonio Zeno, son of Missier Francesco. : Because the Doge was hated by the people, when his corpse was raised on the bier in the middle of the great doorway of St Mark's, all the people shouted at the tops of their voices, Rejoice, rejoice! The Doge is dead, Who gave us millet in our bread!' 15 The great fire in the Arsenal in 1569 was widely believed to have encouraged the Turks to attack Cyprus. By a decree issued by the Council of Ten on 22 September 1569, fire-fighting squads of seventy-five men in each parish (fifty armed men and twenty-five guastatori or demolition