Doge's Palace in the context of "St Mark's Basilica"

The Lion of Saint Mark, representing Mark the Evangelist, pictured in the form of a winged lion, is an aspect of the Tetramorph. On the pinnacle of St Mark's Cathedral he is depicted as holding a Bible, and surmounting a golden lion which is the symbol of the city of Venice and formerly of the Venetian Republic.

It is also found in the symbol of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. It appears in both merchant and military naval flags of the Italian Republic. The Lion of Saint Mark is also the symbol of the award of the Venice Film Festival, the "Golden Lion", and of the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali.

The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (Italian: Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco), commonly known as St Mark's Basilica (Italian: Basilica di San Marco; Venetian: Baxéłega de San Marco), is the cathedral church of the Patriarchate of Venice; it became the episcopal seat of the Patriarch of Venice in 1807, replacing the earlier cathedral of San Pietro di Castello. It is dedicated to and holds the relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist, the patron saint of the city.

The church is located on the eastern end of Saint Mark's Square, the former political and religious centre of the Republic of Venice, and is attached to the Doge's Palace. Prior to the fall of the republic in 1797, it was the chapel of the Doge and was subject to his jurisdiction, with the concurrence of the procurators of Saint Mark for administrative and financial affairs.

Apotheosis (from Ancient Greek ἀποθέωσις (apothéōsis), from ἀποθεόω/ἀποθεῶ (apotheóō/apotheô) 'to deify'), also called divinization or deification (from Latin deificatio 'making divine'), is the glorification of a subject to divine levels and, commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity.

Apotheosis relates to religion and is the subject of many works of art. Figuratively, "apotheosis" may be used in almost any context for "the deification, glorification, or exaltation of a principle, practice, etc.", so normally attached to an abstraction of some sort.

Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino (2 July 1486 – 27 November 1570) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect, best known for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. These are crucial works in the history of Venetian Renaissance architecture. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity. Giorgio Vasari uniquely printed his Vita of Sansovino separately.

Denunciation (from Latin denuntiare, "to denounce") is the act of publicly assigning to a person the blame for a perceived wrongdoing, with the hope of bringing attention to it.Notably, centralized social control in authoritarian states requires some level of cooperation from the populace. The following two forms of cooperation occur: first, authorities actively use incentives to elicit denunciations from the populace, either through coercion or through the promise of rewards. Second, authorities passively gain access to political negative networks, as individuals denounce to harm others whom they dislike and to gain relative to them. Paradoxically, social control is most effective when authorities provide individuals maximum freedom to direct its coercive power. The most famous informer in western cultural history is Judas - according to the New Testament, Judas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, betrayed Jesus, making his arrest and his subsequent delivery to the Romans possible.

Commonly, denunciation is justified by proponents because it allegedly leads to a better society by reducing or discouraging crime. The punishment of the denounced person is said to be justified because the convicted criminal is morally deserving of punishment. Yet, this reasoning does not present a compelling argument for society's right to inflict punishment on a specific individual. Society may recognize a crime's impact on law-abiding society, but traditional punishment theories do not even attempt to deal with punishment's effect on law-abiding society. Just as punishment may impact potential lawbreakers, it may also impact those who abide by the law. To fully understand society's right to inflict punishment, one must recognize punishment's full impact on all segments of society, not just on potential lawbreakers.