Ursus

Saint Ursus of Burano is a saint of whom little is known; the only testimony about him comes from the island of Burano in the lagoon of Venice. A very old local legend says that in the time of the barbarian invasions, when the islands of the lagoon served as a refuge from the Lombards (probably in the sixth century), a great stone sarcophagus reached Burano floating on the water. No one could drag it to the shore except a few children. The miracle was explained when the sarcophagus was opened: it held the relics of three saints, Alban, Dominic and Ursus. The event inspired a painting attributed to Alessandro Zanchi (1631-1722), The Miracle of the Children Pulling the Coffin to the Shore, kept in the sixteenth-⁠century church of San Martino at Burano.

The people of Burano attributed to the intervention of Ursus and his two friends the fact that they escaped the plague of 1630 that ravaged Venice, at whose end the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute was built. The skeletons of the three are kept in the church of San Martino, to the left of the choir, beneath the altar, near the sarcophagus, which can still be seen. He is a locally venerated saint.