According to the chronicler John the Deacon, author of the Chronicon Venetum ("Chronicle of Venice"), written about 1000 AD, the office of the Doge was first instituted in Venice in 726, replacing tribunes that had led the cluster of early settlements in the lagoon. Whether or not the first doges were technically local representatives of the Emperor of Constantinople, the doge, like the emperor, held office for life and was similarly regarded as the ecclesiastical, the civil and the military leader, in a power structure termed caesaropapism.[2]