In memory of the attempted insurrection smothered in blood , every year the Patriarch’s successors also had to send as gifts and compensation to the incumbent Doge a bull 12 loaves and 12 well-fed swine. The bull-Patriarch with the 12 Pigs-Feudatories were put to the mockery of the public square with a ritual that included at its culmination the spectacular cutting off of the bull’s head, hence the all-Venetian saying “Tagiar la testa al toro” which means to close the matter definitively . also synonymous with a quick, dry though painful solution. The animals were subsequently slaughtered and cooked and their meat distributed at banquets among the nobles the clergy the people and the imprisoned.