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Devotional Confraternities in Renaissance Venice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Richard MacKenney
Richard MacKenney*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

Perhaps the most striking features of the history of Renaissance Venice are its highly commercialised economy and its precocious sense of secular state sovereignty. These characteristics owed much to the city’s independence of and isolation from rural and seigneurial influences in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the high level of business activity and the confident awareness of statehood could also be related to the weakness of ecclesiastical influence in economic and political affairs. This was the case long before the spectacular conflict of 1606 when Venice was placed under the Interdict. The location of the Cathedral had always been a telling symbol of the place of the Church in Venetian life. It stood at San Pietro di Castello in an isolated area of the city. It is easy to overlook the fact that the centre of religious life, Saint Mark’s, was the Doge’s private chapel: a constant reminder of the intimate relationship between religious and political power, a material manifestation of the divine favour attached to Venice’s wealth and authority, both of which were unmistakably worldly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 23: Voluntary Religion , 1986 , pp. 85 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1986

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References

1 Jones, P.J., ‘Economia e società nell’Italia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia’ in Storia d’Italia, Annali I: dal feudalesimo al capitalismo (Turin 1978) p. 340. On the distinctive features of Venetian history see Pullan, Bria, ‘The Significance of Venice’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 56 (1974) PP. 443–62.Google Scholar

2 Lane, F.C., Venice: a Maritime Republic (Baltimore 1975) p. 88. On the impact of the Counter-Reformation in Venice see Benzoni, Gino, Venezia nell’età della controriforma (Milan 1973) pp. 50–78; Bouwsma, W.J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter-Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1968).Google Scholar

3 On the scuole and patronage see Silvia Gramigna and Annalisa Perissa, Scuole di arti mestieri e devozione a Venezia (Venice 1981); P. Hills, ‘Piety and Patronage in Cinquecento Venice: Tintoretto and the Scuole del Sacramento’, Art History 6 (1983) pp. 30-43; Peter Humfrey and Richard Mackenney ‘The Venetian Trade Guilds as Patrons of Art in the Renaissance’ forthcoming in The Burlington Magazine.

4 Pullan, Brian, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: the Social Institutions of a Catholic State (Oxford 1971).Google Scholar

5 Lane, F.C., Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Baltimore 1934) pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

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7 Pullan, Rich and Poor p. 38; on the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro, which was closely linked with the mercers’ guild, see R. Gallo, ‘La Scuola Grande di San Teodoro di Venezia’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 120 (Classe di Scienze Morali e Lettere) (1961-2) pp. 461-95.

8 For a comprehensive survey of the various types of scuola and an analysis of their functions, see Brian Pullan, ‘Natura e carattere delle Scuole’, historical introduction to Le Scuole di Venezia a cura di T. Pignatti, saggio storico di Brian Pullan (Milan 1981) pp. 9-26. I am very grateful to Dr. Robert Bartlett of the University of Edinburgh for drawing my attention to the connection between the works of corporal mercy and the activities of the scuole.

9 For a stimulating interpretation of the class basis of charity, see Richard C. Trexler, ‘Charity and the Defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes’ in F.C. Jaher ed The Rich, the Well-Born and the Powerful: Elites and Upper Classes in History (Chicago 1973) pp. 64-105.

10 Archivio di Stato di Venezia (henceforward ASV) Index Scuole Piccole, busta 726, Santa Maria della Celestia, Mariegola 1337-1764, preamble.

11 ASV Scuole Piccole, busta 406, Santa Maria e San Cristofalo, Mariegola 1377-1545, fol 2r.

12 ASV Scuole Piccole, busta 57 bis, Santi Apostoli, Mariegola 1350-1708, fol 2r.

13 The legal status of confraternities was confused. Bartolus observed that their formation was supposed to be authorised by the pope, while in practice their statutes were subject to the approval of the civil authorities. See Anna Toulman Sheedy, Bartolus on Social Conditions of the Fourteenth Century (New York 1942) p. 176.

14 Lia Sbriziolo, ‘Per la storia delle confraternite veneziane: dalle deliberazioni miste (1310-1476) del Consiglio dei Dieci, scolae comunes, artifiane e nazionali’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 126 (Classe di Scienze Morali Lettere ed Arti) (1967-8) pp. 405-42 charts the pattern of approval. In Florence and London, the authorities were far more suspicious; see John Henderson, ‘Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence: Religious Confraternities from the Middle of the Thirteenth Century to the Late Fifteenth Century’ (University of London Ph.D. thesis 1983) p.36; Ronald F.E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, 1200-1600 (New York 1982) p. 167; Sylvia L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago 1948) p. 19.

15 Kedar, Benjamin Z., Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven 1976) p. 113.Google Scholar

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17 ASV, Scuole Piccole, busta 1 bis, Santa Maria della Carità, Mariegola 1288, fly leaf, busta 1, Sant’Agnese, Catastico da 1325 in avanti, fol 2or.

18 ASV, Scuole Piccole, busta 726, Santa Maria della Celestia, Mariegola 1337-1764, fol 3r.

19 What follows is based on Richard Mackenney, ‘Trade Guilds and Devotional Confraternities in the State and Society of Venice to 1620’ (University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis 1982) pp. 94-134.

20 Tramontin, Silvio, ‘La visita apostolica del 1581 a Venezia’, Studi Veneziani 9 (1967) pp. 500–33. See also Hills, , ‘Piety and Patronage’.Google Scholar

21 Sansovino, Francesco and Stringa, Giovanni, Venetia, città nobilissima et singolare (Venice 1663: facsimile ed West Germany 1968) p. 290.Google Scholar

22 Lane, Ships and Shipbuilders p. 73; E. Coornaert, ‘Des confréries carolingiennes aux gildes marchandes’, Mélanges d’Histoire Sociale 2 (1942) p. 16.

23 ASV, index Arti, busta 501, Sartori, Capitoli e parti, 1492-1683, fol 3r.

24 ASV, Arti, busta 152, Forneri, Atti diversi 1447-1797, petition of 1465, purchase of a site for the hospital 17 November 1471, categories of inmates, document of 1515 marked ‘mariegola 35’.

25 ASV, Arti, busta 314, Marzeri, Capitoli e parti 1508-1608, document of 13 August 1529; busta 103, Dipintori, Mariegola 1517-1682, fol 39r; busta 11, Boccaleri, Mariegola 1300-1804, Capitolo 5.

26 See above, note 24, document of 1515 marked ‘mariegola 35’.

27 ASV, Arti, busta 182, Linaroli, Ordinazioni per l’arte, 1436, Capitolo 16.

28 ASV, Arti, busta 425, Orefici, Cassa amministrazione 1541-54. For a full analysis of the figures, see Mackenney, ‘Trade Guilds and Devotional Confraternities’ pp. 154-92.

29 ASV, Arti, busta 312, Marzeri, Mariegola 1471-1787, fol 14r.

30 ASV, Arti, busta 725, Venditori di vetro, Mariegola 1436-1768, fol 7r.

31 Rapp, Richard T., Industry and Economie Decline in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Cambridge, Mass. 1976).Google Scholar

32 Cipolla, Carlo M., ‘The Economie Decline of Italy’, in Pullan, Brian ed Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London 1968) pp. 127–45; Pullan, Brian, ‘Wage-Earners and the Venetian Economy, 1550-1630’ in the same volume pp. 146–74.Google Scholar

33 On the ‘myth of Venice’, see Franco Gaeta, ‘Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 23 (1961) pp. 51-76; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton 1981).

34 Mackenney, ‘Trade Guilds and Devotional Confraternities’, pp. 213-14. Petrarch’s reaction to Venetian celebrations after victory in Crete in 1364 is recorded in Letters from Petrarch ed Maurice Bishop (Indiana 1966) p. 238; Wotton’s response to the Corpus Christi procession of 1606 is discussed in Pullan, Rich and Poor p. 59.

35 On the Eve of Saint Mark’s Day, see Sanudo, I Diarii 27, col 193; on the ‘Doge’ of the fishermen, Lane, Venice p. 12; on the Arsenalotti, Sansovino, Venetia p. 298.

36 ASV, Arti, busta 312, Marzeri, Mariegola 1471-1787, fols 79V-82V.

37 Porcacchi, Tommaso, Le attioni di Arrigo Terzo (Venice 1574) fols 32v–33v.Google Scholar

38 Quoted in Yates, Frances A., Astraea: the Imperial Theme iti the Sixteenth Century (London 1977) p. 212.Google Scholar

39 ASV, Arti, busta 312, Marzeri, Mariegola 1471-1787, fols 70r-72r.

40 The guilds’ displays are described in Sansovino, Venetia p. 422.

41 Pullan, Brian, ‘Le Scuole Grandi e la loro opera nel quadro della controriforma’, Studi Veneziani 14 (1972) pp. 83–109; idem, Rich and Poor pp. 216–422. See also Mueller, Rheinhold C, ‘Charitable Institutions, the Jewish Community and Venetian Society: a Discussion of the Recent Volume by Brian Pullan’, Studi Veneziani 14 (1972) pp. 38–78.Google Scholar

42 On the neighbourhood, see Denis Romano, ‘Charity and Community in Early Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Urban History 11 (1984) pp. 63-82.

43 On ‘mentalities’ in sixteenth-century Venice, see Ugo Tucci, ‘The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant in the Sixteenth Century’ in J.R. Hale ed Renaissance Venice (London 1974) pp. 346-78; Richard Mackenney, ‘Guilds and Guildsmen in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies 2 (1984) pp. 13-14.

44 On the impact of the Counter-Reformation, see the crucial article by John Bossy, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe’ PP 47 (1970) pp. 51-70.