The scandalous and destructive outrages attendant on the rule of the tribunes had become a vast constitutional evil.  They sapped the general prosperity; they obstructed trade and industries; they made havoc on public and private property; they banished safety and repose, and they impoverished and scandalized the Church.

The depredations of the Lombards, which grew in the course of time bolder and more systematic in their character, certainly indicated great weakness on the part of the government.  Yet it was equally certain that the weakness proceeded less from the want than from the division of strength.

The sacrilegious inroads were not without their beneficial result; for they afforded those who might be disposed to institute reforms an admirable ground not only for bringing the matter more closely and immediately under the public observation, but they enlisted in the cause the foremost ecclesiastics, who might recognize in this internal disunion a danger of interminable attacks and depredations from without, if not an eventual loss of political independence; and, accordingly, in the course of the spring of 697-698, the patriarch of Grado himself submitted to the arrengo at Heraclia a scheme, which had been devised by him and his friends, for changing the government.  The proposal of the metropolitan was to divest the tribunes of the sovereignty, and to have once more a magistrate (capo dei tribuni), in whom all power might be concentrated.  His title was to be duke.  His office was to be for life.  With him was to rest the whole executive machinery.  He was to preside over the synod as well as the arrengo, either of which it was competent for him to convoke or dissolve at pleasure; merely spiritual matters of a minor nature were alone, in future, to be intrusted to the clergy; and all acts of convocations, the ordination of a priest or deacon, the election of a patriarch or bishop, were to be subject to the final sanction of the ducal throne.  In fact, the latter became virtually, and in all material respects, autocrat of Venice, not merely the tribunes, but even the hierarchy, which was so directly instrumental in creating the dignity, having now no higher function than that of advisers and administrators under his direction; and it was in matters of general or momentous concern only that the republic expected her First Magistrate to seek the concurrence or advice of the national convention.

In a newly formed society, placed in the difficult situation in which the republic found herself at the close of the seventh century, and where also a superstitious reverence for the pontiff might at present exist, apart from considerations of interest, it ought to create no surprise that the patriarch and his supporters should have formed a unanimous determination, and have taken immediate steps to procure the adhesion of the Holy See, before the resolutions of the popular assembly were definitively carried into effect.