As the barbarian tribes began to threaten the cities around the northern Adriatic, the Veneti sought refuge from the paganism of the barbarians on sandbanks and islands of the coastal estuaries. Led by their bishops, they brought their priests, chalices, vestments and sometimes even the stones from their churches with them. Venice, therefore, originated with refugees who had to adapt to a new way of life living on marshy land, travelling by boat along the waterways and fishing to eat.
Summing up the origins of Venice, the English statesman Sir Henry Wotton stated: `Whereupon the best sort of the bordering people out of divers towns, agreed either suddenly, or by little and little... to convey themselves and their substance into the uttermost bosom of the Adriatick Gulf, and there possessed certain desolate islets, by tradition about seventy in number, which afterwards,... were tacked together with bridges, and so the city took a rude form, which grew civilized with time, and became a great example of what the smallest things well formented many prove.'
