The Anxieties of a Citizen Class the Medieval Mediterranean

The Anxieties of a Citizen Class The Medieval Mediterranean

Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1500

Managing Editor Frances Andrews St. Andrews

Editors David Abulafia, Cambridge Benjamin Arbel, Tel Aviv Hugh Kennedy, SOAS, London Paul Magdalino, Koç University, Istanbul Olivia Remie Constable, Notre Dame Larry J. Simon, Western Michigan University

volume 99

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mmed The Anxieties of a Citizen Class

The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370–1480

By Kiril Petkov

Leiden • boston 2014 Cover illustration: Gentile Bellini’s Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo (Academia Gallery, Venice). With kind permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali: Soprintendenza Speciale per Patrimonio storico, artistico, etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Venezia e dei comuni della Gronda lagunare, Venice.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Petkov, Kiril, 1964– The anxieties of a citizen class : the miracles of the true cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370–1480 / by Kiril Petkov. pages cm. — (The medieval mediterranean ; v. 99) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25915-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25981-2 (e-book) 1. Venice (Italy)—Church history. 2. Miracles—Italy—Venice—History. 3. Holy Cross— Legends. 4. Scuola grande di San Giovanni Evangelista (Venice, Italy)—History. I. Title.

BR878.V4P48 2014 305.5’5094531109024—dc23 2013039016

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents

Acknowledgements ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

1 Setting the Stage: The Privilege of the Donation of the Cross ...... 15

2 Upward Bound: The Vendramin and the Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo ...... 27

3 Relics, Business, and Nature: The Miracle with Andrea vendramin’s Oil Ships ...... 47

4 Church, State, and Sainthood: Francesco Querini and the Miracle with the Demoniac ...... 67

5 Drawing a Line between Citizen Classes: Regimenting the popolani in the Miracle at the Bridge of San Lio ...... 89

6 Healing the Sick, Helping the Poor: Service and Identity in the Miracle of the Daughter of Nicolo di Benvegnudo ...... 105

7 The Miracle of Paolo Rabia: The Rise and Fall of Entrepreneurial Leadership ...... 123

8 The Merchant of Brescia: Incorporating the terraferma in the Miracle of the Son of Giacomo de Salis ...... 151

9 The Body Feverish and the Body Politic: Medicine, Politics, and Religion in the Healing of Piero de Lodovico ...... 177

10 Maritime Empire, Mobility, and Cross-cultural Identity: The Miracle of Antonio Rizzo ...... 205

11 The Miracle of Alvise Finetti’s Boy: Finance, the State, and the Future of the cittadini originarii ...... 235 vi contents

Conclusion Method, At Last ...... 251

Appendix Incunabulum 249bis (ex. 222), Museo Civico Correr, Venice, ca. 1490 ...... 261

Bibliography ...... 269 Index ...... 285 Acknowledgements

The bulk of the research for this study was supported by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, first with a short-term grant for study of Venice and the Veneto and then with a Research Fellowship. The University of Wisconsin-River Falls contributed three Faculty Development grants for summer work in Venice and granted me a sabbatical leave to complete the research. Mariella Annibale, Federico Bauce, Steven Bowd, Monique O’Connell, Jonathan Glixon, Eileen Korenic, Claire Judde de Larivière, Lawrence Mott, Reinhold Mueller, and Chris Schabel have been generous with sharing their expertise and supplying information. David Jacoby and Alan Stahl backed my attempts to obtain funding. I thank the staff in Venice’s Archivio di Stato for their efficiency and assistance. Special thanks are due to Ann Welniak, who performed interlibrary miracles to procure hard-to-obtain readings. Joanne Ferraro helped with finding accommo- dation and Elsa dalla Venezia has been a gentle host. Mialisa Moline and Patrick Tobin edited the text thoroughly and saved me from many stylistic blunders. Ultimately, very little would have been accomplished without the support of my good friend Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, and I would like to use the occasion to express my most sincere gratitude to her. An early version of the material now incorporated in Chapters 2 & 5 was published as “Relics and Society in Late Medieval and Renaissance Venice: The Miracles of the True Cross at the Bridges of San Lorenzo and San Lio,” Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes/Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies, 19 (2010), 267–82. The concepts informing these chapters were broached in two talks offered in 2010 and 2011 at the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Kiril Petkov

Introduction

This study examines the mental outlook of a social class, its preoccupations and anxieties, and its fears and expectations as reflected in a small but representative cross-section of its membership. The aggregate in question is the top segment of Venetian commoners, the cittadini originarii, the closest approximation to an urban upper middle class in the social fabric of the Serenissima. The timeframe includes the period of that class’ gestation, the fifteenth century, soon after the serrate of the Great Council excluded commoners from the political franchise. This era occurred just before an increasingly assertive state shaped the elite citizens into a, more or less, corporate caste. In between the serrate and the state’s assertive movement occurred an era of qualified fluidity, hopes for assimilation into the political oligarchy, anxieties about what shored up the cittadini’s identity, competition for rank within the group, and sometimes painful adjustments to the transformations of economic, social, and political life. Above all existed the expectation that the cittadini were free to shape their own identity—an identity to which their financial muscle, managerial skills, and relationship with the divine entitled them.1 A fluid and constantly enriched group, the cittadini underwent a gradual process of identity formation. This formation roughly mirrored that of

1 Two clarifications are due at the outset. First, I am using the term “class” in the loose meaning of an aggregate of individuals of roughly similar socio-economic and political standing vis-à-vis the rest of society, and sharing in a specific mode of articulating their experiences. Members of the aggregate may or may not display, through a reflective discourse, a sense of belonging that would make them a sociological group. As this inquiry hopes to demonstrate, they did share a set of expectations and cultural dispositions generated by similar conditions and pressures even before socio-political impact molded them into a clearly defined group with the consciousness of belonging. The theory of shared experiences as a class-formative principle was offered, with deep conceptual flaws, by E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Gollancz, 1963), 9. It was re-theorized on sound conceptual grounds that made it applicable to most class for- mations by William H. Sewell, Jr., “Thompson’s Theory of Working Class Formation,” in Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, eds., E.P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Philadel- phia: Temple University Press, 1990), 50–77. Second, even though the modern concept of “class” did not acquire the social meanings it signifies today before the middle decades of the eighteenth century (and then first in France and England), and to the best of my knowledge there is no Venetian term capturing the essence of the phenomenon in the fifteenth century, there are sound reasons to postulate the existence of both the specific group that embodied the category and its members’ common experiences. 2 introduction the patriciate and unfolded between 1378 and 1569.2 By 1569, the cittadini were typically identified as civil servants of the Republic. They encom- passed all the wealthy and distinguished, those citizens not involved in manual professions, yet excluded from the Great Council since 1297. In total, by the end of this period of time, the cittadini numbered roughly 5–7% of the population. The group included both native-born Venetians and citizens by privilege, with an increasing stress on the native-born. Newly created citizens and their sons could enter professional positions such as lawyers and doctors as well as lower-level civil service jobs—jobs filled by appointment rather than by election in one of the state councils. The second generation in this group could become public notaries. The third generation qualified for the status of the elite, the cittadini originarii, and could fill all top ranks of the civic and state services except the magistracies, which were reserved for the patricians.3 At the group’s economic top, these citizens earned financial fortunes of hundreds of thousands of ducats through service or gained their fortunes through entrepreneurship over the course of a lifetime.4 At the economic and social bottom of this group, little distinguished them from wealthy members of the lower class, the popolani, except the recognition of the state expressed in exclusive access to state and civil service positions.

2 Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII), (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, 1993), 34–47. 3 On the cittadini see now Matteo Casini, “La cittadinanza originaria a Venezia tra i secoli XV e XVI: una linea interpretative,” Studi Veneti offerti a Gaetano Cozzi (Venice: Il Cardo, 1992), 113–48; Anna Bellavitis, Identité, marriage, mobilité sociale: Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2001); Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Ven- ice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, 1993); Reinhold Mueller, Immigrazione e cittadinanza nella Venezia medieval (Rome: Viella, 2010); James S. Grubb, “Pietro Amadi Acts like his Betters,” in John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn, eds., A Renaissance of Conflict: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain (Toronto: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 259–78 and idem, “Elite citizens,” in Dennis Romano and John Martin, eds., Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore, MD: John’s Hopkins University Press, 2000), 339–64; and for comparison, Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del ‘400 e ‘500, 2nd ed., (Milan, 1993); Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundation of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Victor Crescenzi, “Esse de maiori consilio”: Legitimità civile e legittimazione politica nella repubblica di Venezia (secc. XIII–XVI) (Rome: Istituto Storico italiano per il medio evo, 1996). 4 Giovanni Finetti, the sixteenth century lawyer briefly discussed in the last chapter, made over 200,000 ducats from his service to the republic in the second half of the sixteenth century, see Gino Benzoni, “Giovanni Finetti: Un Ulpiano mancato,” Studi Veneziani 25 (1993), 35–71. introduction 3

Given the emphasis on the factor of state service, it comes as no surprise that, as a component of the Venetian social fabric, the elite cittadini have been exclusively approached in functional terms. Much existing scholarship has labored within the domain of Giovanni Muazzo’s seventeenth- century succinct definition of cittadini originarii as “the order of those who manage civic life and have certain offices and positions reserved exclusively for them, among which the most prestigious are the Ducal Chancellery, the notaries of the State Attorneys, and many others.”5 One astute modern observer noted that, even though they were increasingly and clearly defined as a distinct corporate body with its own identity, “. . . we know who they were and how they worked but not what they were like—what they wanted, and how they went about getting it.”6 In fairness, this limitation exists partly from lack of access to evidence. Only recently has material trickled in. Publications of cittadini diaries and memoirs are beginning to slowly fill our gap in inquiry.7 The fascination with the nobility also took its toll, always on the forefront of the political stage, well documented in its continuous and coherent (and much more legible) series of records. The issue of method is no less responsible. Unlike the largely mute majority of the popolani, the cittadini and especially the top segment of cittadini originarii have left a good track record. Apart from family memoirs, few categories of documentation concerning the elite cittadini (such as the meager traces of a cursus honorum or an extensive will) compare with the profuse paper trail and material and visual remains left by the operation of the bastions of the citizens’ involvement, the great confraternities of Venice. Even there, for the most part, evidence tends to be technical in its variety. While profitably mined for important segments of the cittadini’s corporate identity and, again, their function as social and ceremonial agents, this evidence falls short where the subject matter of this inquiry is concerned.8 Fortunately, a formidable exception allows us a peek into the murky territory of the elite cittadini’s inner world. This exception is none other than the miracle collection of the scuola grande of San Giovanni Evangelista—a record of a series

5 Giovanni Andrea Muazzo, Historia del Governo antico e presente della Repubblica di Venetia, BNM, It. VII, 966 (8406), 87. 6 Grubb, “Pietro Amadi,” 259. 7 James D. Grubb, ed. with a contribution by Anna Bellavitis, Family Memoirs from Venice (15th–17th Centuries) (Rome: Viella, 2009). 8 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catho- lic State to 1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971) and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 4 introduction of miracles performed at irregular intervals for the scuola’s brethren by their chief prop, a fragment of the True Cross, between 1370 and 1480. The miracles cycle, which has not been a subject of inquiry in spite of the renown it has acquired due to the paintings executed around the turn of the fifteenth century by the then leading Venetian artists, bears on the issue of the elite cittadini’s social mentality for two reasons. First, it was generated in a representative sample environment of the Venetian social system. Second, evidence reveals that it was exclusively produced by and for the elite citizens themselves. The scuola of San Giovanni was founded in March 1261 as a confraternity of flagellants at the church of San Apolinare. This foundation arrived in the wake of the penitential current that swept through northern Italy. In April 1301, the scuola moved to the parish of San Stin, to the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, and adopted the apostle as its patron and official designation. Later that century, it shifted its focus from austere devotion to one of social services. The scuola of San Giovanni acquired the status of a scuola grande, one of the six city-wide confraternities of Venice that harnessed the devotional and social sentiments of Venetians of all walks of life in the service of God, neighbor, and patria. If the great confraternities were the social and devotional foil of the top denizens of Venice, the scuola of San Giovanni was as representative of this phenomenon as any of the corporations. The white garbs of its brethren appeared regularly in processions. Its officials canvassed the neighborhoods as a tangible symbol of the crucial role that confraternities played in Venetian life. Dissolved with edicts of Eugene Napoleon in 1806–1807, the scuola revived in 1855 as a pious society and corporation for the restoration of its premises. In February 1929, the society reconstituted itself as a confraternity; and it still operates in its original headquarters.9 In theory, the scuola’s governance was vested in the General Chapter of all members, Venetians of all walks of life, from high nobles to humble

9 A full inventory of the scuola’s relatively well-preserved archive of 352 units is now available, see Laura Levantino, La Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia. Inventario dell’archivio antico (Venice: Marsiglio, 2011). On the confraternity’s history see G.M. Urbani de Gheltof, Guida storico-artistica della Scuola de San Giovanni Evangelista in Venezia (Venice, 1872); Chiara Vazzoler, La scuola grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice: Marsiglio, 2005); Lea Sbriziolo, “Per la storia delle confraternite veneziane: dalle deliberazioni miste (1310–1476) del Consiglio di Dieci. Le Scuole dei Battuti,” in Miscel- lanea Gilles Gerard Meerseman vol. 2 (Padua, 1970), 715–63; Pullan, Rich and Poor, 33–187; William Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi and Venetian Art, 1260–c. 1500 (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1976). introduction 5 fishermen and day laborers since its inception. In fact, decision-making gradually concentrated in the hands of the most prominent and wealthy brethren of the cittadini class. The chief executive officers, the guardian grande and his assistants, constituted the scuola’s standing executive committee, the banca. This committee held administrative and financial decision-making power and co-opted incoming officers. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the committee included both the guardian da matin, who became the chief financial officer, and the scribe. The banca grew later that century to include the office of the vicar, who took over assisting the guardian grande as the guardian da matin focused on finances. Besides the banca, the government included twelve deacons, representatives of the city’s six districts. The banca expanded by two nonzoli, replaced in the early 1440s by masarii, intendants or supervisors of the confraternity’s flagellation sessions and ceremonial processions. Finally, in 1539, the committee added three syndics for oversight of confraternal policies.10 Until the early 1520s, this permanent executive body was frequently complemented by an ad-hoc collegium of another thirty to eighty members—the Great Chapter—called to reinforce the banca when large projects requiring significant financial expenditures were discussed.11 The Chapter’s members, like those on the banca, had to be well-off, since they were first called upon for personal contributions to limit stress on the confraternity’s operational capital, to preserve services, and to avoid liquidating investments. In 1522, decision of the Council of Ten decreed that the collegium become a standing committee of twelve men elected annually.12 As a matter of official state policy, since 1410 all executives must be cittadini originarii.13 By the time the relic was acquired, these men were already in charge of the scuola, rotating in and out of office term after term. The General Chapter was relegated to the position of a rubber- stamping body. Also in 1410, the Council of Ten, the confraternity’s

10 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 73, no page, first appearance under 1539, at date. 11 As for example in 1391, see Gian Andrea Simeone, ed., La Mariegola della Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista a Venezia (1261–1457) (Venice: Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, 2003), 82, Chap. LII, February 25, 1391. Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 197, mentions that on one occasion in January 1468, the general chapter had eighty-four members, see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 38, fol. 114. 12 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 73, no page, under 1522. 13 With two laws of the Council of Ten, respectively of 1410 and 1438, ASV Inquisitori e Revisori sopra le Scuole Grandi, b. 1, Capitolare 1, fols. 3r, 5v–6r. See also Giuseppe Trebbi, “La cancelleria veneta nei secoli XVI e XVII,” Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 14 (1980), 67. 6 introduction supervising magistracy, ruled that all important decisions must be made by the scuola’s boni homini. This group roughly coincided with the confraternity’s core membership of cittadini originarii and the Great Chapter. No more than sixty in number (the scuola occasionally exceeded that limit, but in general kept within it), this group included non-nobles of no less than fifty years of age who must pay a special fee of twenty ducats.14 These men managed the scuola, its liquid cash, its real estate and rents, its state bonds and other revenues, and through them, the social services of the republic. The membership selected and syndicated their successors. They held primary responsibility for the scuola’s ceremonial life, its social and charitable programs, and its financial subventions to the government. They allocated means and men for the government’s war efforts as well. All that prompted their subjection to the Council of Ten’s supervision, but the tight control was offset by the prestige accrued to the leadership of the confraternities and the awareness of the vast financial means entrusted to their management by the authorities with all of the powers that management entailed.15 They constituted the first order of the scuola’s membership, the fratelli da Capitolo, a leadership exempt from flagellation, as opposed to the second order of rank and file, the fratelli alla disciplina. The third order consisted of patricians, honorary members neither on the banca nor disciplining themselves, but rather deriving the spiritual and honorary benefits of membership and contributing regularly to the confraternal treasury. For all intents and purposes, therefore, the outset of the fifteenth century revealed a confraternity of managerial domain of the elite cittadini, a vehicle for their self-expression in deed, word, art, and architecture. Not surprisingly, although occasional utterances suggest that the Cross wrought “innumerable” miracles, the record now extant is limited to exactly ten occurrences. A brief glance of the confraternal constitution suggests that state of the evidence is not accidental. Unlike other miracle collections in Venice and elsewhere, the feats of the Cross are remarkably socially homogenous in terms of their beneficiaries. They occurred exclusively to the benefit of the elite cittadini membership. That is to be expected, since

14 ASV Consilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 9, f. 48; see William Wurthmann, “The Council of Ten and the Scuole Grandi in Early Renaissance Venice,” Studi Veneziani, 18 (1989), 31. 15 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor, 100–105, and William Wurthmann, The Scuole Grande and Venetian Art, 78–9, concur that governmental policies were instrumental in trans- forming the scuola into a special preserve of the cittadini as a way to compensate this economically and socially powerful class for its exclusion from the political franchise—on the cheap, since the prestigious offices did not cost anything to the government. introduction 7 it was the cittadini officials who made the record. In recording the miracle narratives in this way, the elite citizens appropriated the beneficence of numinous agents acting through the intermediary of the relic just as they had appropriated everything else pertaining to the internal governance of the scuola. Hence, the record of the miracles exclusively articulates their social and spiritual world, a paper trail with striking visual covers of their aspirations, angsts, and expectations, overlapping in time with the formative period of their social and legal constitution as an elite citizen group. The differentiation of the elite cittadini from the nobility, on the one hand, and the lower classes, or the popolani, on the other, shows a gradual process stretching over two centuries. Their social ceiling was legally defined with the serrata of 1297–1323, but that momentous shift in Venetian history left much room both on the margins with their social “others” and in the content of their identity. In broad strokes, the coagulation of the elite cittadini unfolded in three major steps. The first step included a time of gestation and covered the better part of the fourteenth century. It came to a somewhat abrupt end in 1410–1414, when the state drew, fixed technically, and began enforcing a rigid line around the hereditary-ruling oligarchy and elite citizens alike. This period saw some fluidity in defining who was an “original” citizen as compared to a newcomer from the expanding mainland and the sea domains of the republic—a social horizon still perceived as partially open on top. The second period held a truly formative time for the elite commoners, when their emerging identity found adequate expression in the formula cittadini originarii. This period was marked by active state legislation, which restricted all state service of consequence outside the political realm to a group of wealthy, connected, and educated citizens of either native origin or long-term resi- dency in the city. Beginning in 1410 with reserving the leadership of the city-wide confraternities to that group (repeated in 1438), the legislation added service to magistrates in the territorial or sea domains in 1419. It added staff in the Ducal Chancellery in 1443, providing for the training of Venetian- born boys and instituting terms of service and the principle of merit to guarantee access to most or all of that economic class in 1444, specifying that public offices of the magistrates were different in kind from those staffed by the cittadini in 1455. It excluded ecclesiastical personnel in 1475, and it concluded in 1481–82 with technical prescriptions governing the appointment and rotation in and out of office. By 1482 the formation of the class of elite commoners under the name cittadini originarii was completed when the Grand Chancellor Febo Capella, by definition of his 8 introduction office a cittadino originario, was afforded a state funeral. For all practical purposes, the cittadini originarii had become a class, a sociological group with a defined identity, self-consciousness, and reserved professional domain. From that point on, the state proceeded with legislation trans- forming the group into a closed corporate caste very much like the ruling oligarchy. That period was capped in 1569, when the principles of hereditary residence, legitimacy of birth, and demeanor and comportment that excluded manual occupations and unseemly conduct, became the law.16 The miracles performed by San Giovanni’s relic coincide with the central, truly formative period in the development of the cittadini originarii as a separate social group. As extant accounts show, the Cross began working miracles almost immediately after its acquisition by the confraternity in December 1369. Its first manifestation occurred in March 1370, likely the first time it appeared in procession, enshrined in its crystal case. When carried over the bridge of San Lorenzo the Cross tumbled over the parapet but did not sink. It hovered over the waters until retrieved by the guardian grande, Andrea Vendramin. A week later, it assisted two ships carrying olive oil for Vendramin’s soap-making business in escaping disaster in a sea storm. A few years later, Patriarch Francesco Querini exor- cized a demoniac through the Cross’ help. Then occurred a pause of a few decades. A new manifestation, likely in 1409, shamed a dissolute man who had refused to follow the Cross in procession by refusing to follow him to his grave. Four years later, in 1414, the Cross healed the bed-ridden, blind, and mute daughter of Nicolo di Benvegnudo, then residing in San Polo. In 1421, another miracle delivered a ship carrying Paolo Rabia, a prominent merchant. Two decades later, in the 1440s, the Cross healed Piero di Lodovico who suffered from quartan fever, and made whole the son of Giacomo de Salis, a Brescian merchant, after the youth fell and broke his skull. In December 1461, yet another ship-saving miracle occurred for a Candia-bound vessel caught in a storm off the coast of Dalmatia—this miracle recorded in a personal letter by one of the beneficiaries, Antonio Rizzo, chancellor of the Aegean Duchy of the Archipelago. Finally, in 1480 the Cross made one final manifestation by restoring to health the little son of Alvise Finetti, a scribe in the State Loans Office. At that point, interventions ceased. Although references for the continuous activity of the Cross exist, the record broke off. The physical carrier of the miraculous

16 This paragraph is summing up the findings of Mueller, Immigranti, Bellavitis, Identite, Zannini, Burocrazia, Cassini, “Simboli,” and Trebbi, “La cancelleria veneta,” passim. introduction 9 interventions, the fragment of the Cross, is still displayed in its original crystal- and silver-gilded casing in the headquarters of the scuola at San Giovanni’s, where it has been kept for centuries; but the numinous agent residing in it has quieted. Except for the act of the donation of the relic, lost are the original scripted account(s) of the miracles. At least two had been personal com- munications of the beneficiaries. Two printed versions of the disappeared prototype(s) are now extant. The first, an incunabulum printed sometime in the last decade of the fifteenth century, is known in only one copy, although there must have been more.17 The second is a print from 1590. Several discrepancies between the two accounts indicate that the printed versions are independent though perhaps coordinated derivatives from the same scripted prototype(s). Each miracle account blends the social and the spiritual aspects in a similar mode; and the sequence as a whole conforms to the same pattern, suggesting strongly that some editing in the prototype(s) has already been in place. The incunabulum might have strayed from the late fourteenth-century records, just like the reprint of 1590 introduced slight but visible alterations in what became the main- stream text in the Baroque tradition. Giacomo de Mezzi, guardian grande when the print of 1590 was made, stated in his preface to the text that “books” containing the earliest recording of the miracles had been pilfered.18 Even accounting for the precedent of extremely limited dissemi- nation of information offered by the incunabulum text, Mezzi’s reference almost certainly suggests a scripted record in the confraternity’s private books. The most likely document to contain the original accounts of the miracles, the scuola’s Notatorio, lack the first 52 folios. The Registro di donazioni, now available in a late copy, is also missing its 24 beginning folios and opens with the miracle at San Lorenzo.19 The pilfered “books” might well have been within these bundles of ripped-off pages.20

17 Museo Civico Correr, Inc. H 249bis (old 222); see also Patricia Fortini Brown, “An Incunabulum of the Miracles of the True Cross of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista,” Bollettino dei Civici Musei Veneziani d’arte e di storia, new series, 27: 1–4 (1982), 5–8, still citing the old call number; Brown dates the incunabulum to 1494–1501, but a date before 1492 is just as plausible. 18 Miracoli della Croce santissima, Privilegio, no page. 19 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 74 Registro di donazione della santa croce e i suoi miracoli con aggre- gazioni di religiosi, 1414–1690, begins with page 25 with the account of the San Lorenzo miracle; the previous 24 pages are missing. The privilege of the donation had been there together with other material from the cycle. 20 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 34 Catastico 1323–1494 (compiled 1550), fol. 361v–362v; see also Brown, “Incunabulum,” 8. 10 introduction

Something was available for consultation in 1590, however, since the edition of that year was based upon it. Containing more technical information, it is more detailed than the incunabulum and in general appears to have been closer to the prototype(s). It also shows the hand of a cen- sor concerned with doctrinal correctness foreign to the earlier account and only becoming the norm in the sixteenth century. The circulation of the incunabulum appears to have been very small, but the accounts were known to sixteenth-century prints prior to the edition of 1590.21 Several editions of the miracles were published in the seventeenth century, both separately and as parts of larger compilations. Reprints continued during the eighteenth century.22 Apart from the texts, the cycle has the rare distinction of being represented visually. In the late 1490s and the early 1500s, the confraternity commissioned large paintings of the miracles, executed by Lazzaro Bastiani, Gentile Bellini, Giovanni Mansueti, Vettore Carpaccio, and Benedetto Diana. Eight of the paintings are extant, now in the galleries of the Academia in Venice, mainstay specimens of the Venetian artistic life of the late 1400s.23 Recovering the preoccupations of a social class through inquiry into a relatively short miracle collection stretching over a century and lacking

21 A copy of Jacopo de Voragine’s Legendario de santi, printed by Nicolo and Domenico dal Jesu in December 1505, a reprint of an earlier edition of 1492, includes on page 80 a reproduction of a full-size depiction of the crucifix of San Giovanni Evangelista with the fragment of the Cross, see Prince d’Essling, ed., Les livres a figures vénetiens de la fin du XVe siècle et du commencement du XVIe siècle. Part I. Vol. 2. 1491–1500 (Florence – Paris, 1908), 141. 22 Caterina Griffante ed., with Alessia Giachery and Sabrina Minuzzi, Le edizioni veneziane del seicento. Vol. 2. Censimento, M-Z. Indici (Regione del Veneto Editrice Bibliografica, 2006), 67, lists five Venetian editions of the miracles spanning the century: Rampazetto, 1604 and 1607, Pinelli, 1617 and 1654, and Bosio, 1682. Bartolli made a reprint in 1771, and another reprint had already appeared in 1752, the Vita del glorioso S. Giovanni apostolo ed evangelista con alcuni miracoli della santissima croce che conservasi nella scuola di detto santo, avuto in dono sino dall’anno 1370; see also Emilio Cicogna, Saggio di bibliographia Veneziana (reprint: Bologna: Forini, 1980), Nr 496, 497. A somewhat truncated version of the cycle, with seven of the miracles, was included in Astolfi’s popular compendium, Giovanni Felice Astolfi, Miracoli della croce santissima operati da quell’hora che Giesu Christo Signor nostro pati in essa, fino à question tempo, divisi in cinque libri, (Venice: Giunti, 1609), 53–65. The standard eighteenth-century edition is in Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae (Venice, 1749), Decas Septima e Octava, vol. 6, 338–68. The 1590 pamphlet is digitized by Google Books and available at http://books.google.com/books?id=0XFMAAAAcAAJ&printsec=front cover&dq=Croce+Santissima&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FFD2TpaKO4bZgQf4g5W1Ag&ved=0CDQ Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=false. 23 Sandra Moschini-Marconi, Galleria dell’Academia di Venezia (Venice: Academia, 1955), 56–58, 61–63, 96–97, 127–128; and, for a detailed discussion, Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian narrative painting in the age of Carpaccio (New Haven and London: Yale Univer- sity Press, 1988). introduction 11 a prototype seems a dicey business for several reasons. The primary material is of anecdotal nature. Theoretically, that makes any conclusions derived from what follows a work of induction and conjecture. The remedy, a micro-historical approach to the extent that it is warranted by the subject matter of each miracle, allows for the extrication of meaning by immersing the occurrences in clusters of their meaningful interconnec- tions with respective environments. Furthermore, the extant evidence on the specific representatives of the cittadini involved in the miracles must be pieced together from discontinuous and disparate sources of wildly dif- fering kinds. That approach makes the reconstruction of an integrated life story particularly challenging. Fortunately, connecting the little that can be gleaned from the scarce and scattered archival traces of a man’s or a family’s life to the chief developments of the period is easier. Background is not lacking. Generations of Venetian scholars have piled up a substantial amount of lore to make the endeavor viable. What the inquiry seeks, then, are historically specific trends and developments traceable at the intersection of reconstructed individual destinies and collective representations—the gently protruding singular and idiosyncratic tips of larger, underlying, longer-term phenomena. The nature of the principal record of the elite citizens’ experiences, the miracle cycle, provides a more important impediment, perhaps, for it is of such delicate variety that many a modern observer straddles the boundary between fact and fiction. It often forces modern minds to take sides, applying methodologies and preset notions belonging to typologically opposite conceptualizations of reality even before attempting to scrutinize the material’s substance. Two remarks should allay concerns and make the often unfortunate choice between natural and supernatural, abundant presence and scientific law, unnecessary. First, only one of the miracles—that of the hovering Cross at the bridge of San Lorenzo—bears signs of what may be considered a true breaking of the supernatural into everyday life. The categorization of all other occurrences is a matter of cultural perception. Even in the case of San Lorenzo’s, and to an extent, that of San Lio’s, one must submit that cultural rationalization was crucial since the formation of visual perception in the period was a combination of retinal experience and “socially agreed descriptions of the intelligible world.”24 Second, in all cases involved, the record we are dealing with is in the nature of recollection.

24 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” in Hal Foster, ed., Vision and Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988), 91, quoted after Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1. 12 introduction

Advances in the brain’s neurophysiology and neuropsychology have con- vincingly demonstrated that in the field of memory, recollection is creation. The same part of the brain responsible for memorizing also creates. Every time a recollection occurs, it is, in lesser or greater part, a creation as well, infusing into the original stamp components derived from experiences that have taken place after the occurrence, on the one hand, and from outside the immediate environment of the event, on the other. Furthermore, the brain has a tendency to substitute subsequent mental experiences created by a variety of factors, some for example generated by the visual, motion-related, sound-carrying, emotionally-charged, and repeated performances of the original miraculous occurrences in processions, for the memory experience of events that have actually occurred in the past.25 What matters for this study, therefore, is how and why the occurrences happened to be perceived, remembered, and recorded as miracles in the shorter or longer period before they were committed to writing. Ultimately, this inquiry thus seeks to identify, isolate, and explain the emergence of the fundamental and shared mental experiences of the elite citizens against the background of case-specific categories and realities determining the need of a miracle. In that aspect, two levels of conceptualization may be detected in the accounts. The domain of participatory realities, spiritual and aesthetic, reveals the first. The cycle is a mirror of Christ’s ministry in a spiritual sense, since the divine personality had been sedimented on the Cross. It roughly follows the sequence of miracles enacted by Christ, beginning with His manifestation, walking on the water, saving men from the wrath of sea storms, healing, and restoring to wholeness after illness or (near) deadly accidents. Recording, recollecting, and relieving the miracles through commemoration, retelling, or beholding allowed the brethren to reconnect to the participatory world of the divine. The accounts proved the parallel existence of the latter’s reality and its continuing intervention in their world of the here and now. The cycle cancelled time. It allowed the brethren to cross over into the wondrous life of Christ and retrace it for their benefit. For its part, the aesthetization of the events in the

25 Good recent surveys are the essays in Daniel Schacter and Elaine Scarry, eds., Mem- ory, Brain, and Belief (Harvard, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001); E.F. Loftus, “Planting Misinformation in the Human Brain: A 30-year Investigation in the Malleability of Memory,” Learning and Memory 12 (2005), 361–6; Robert F. Belli, ed., True and False Recovered Memories. Toward a Reconciliation of the Debate (New York: Springer, 2012), especially Marcia K. Johnson, Carol L. Raye, Karen J. Mitchell, and Elizabeth Andukowich, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of True and False Memories,” ibid., 15–52. introduction 13 paintings confirmed the truth of the continuing involvement of the numinous in mundane affairs, in its own way, thus strengthening faith and eliciting piety.26 This much the accounts state themselves. The guardian grande Giacomo de Mezzi made explicit this truth in his letter to the reader in the edition of 1590. The narratives do not intimate a second level of meaning inherent in both textual and visual renditions of the miracles, the causal realities of social life. On that level of conceptualization, two other domains register themselves. The first, quite transparent, is corporate, civic, and pecuniary. In terms of corporate and civic life, the miracles enhanced the honor of the confraternity and its ceremonial service to the state. They aided in the competition with identical civic bodies: developments that have been elegantly explicated in modern scholarship.27 In pecuniary terms, a scrutiny of the confraternal projects shows overlap between the occurrence of a miracle and the undertaking of an artistic project for which funding was necessary. Every time the scuola contemplated a major investment and found itself short of money, a miracle stirred the faithful into contributing and financing the endeavor. These, however, were contingencies, factors of form rather than substance. Ultimately, the deepest meaning of the miracles lay in another dimension of the causal reality, the one composed of the compressed expectations, anxieties, and preoccupations of the miracles’ beneficiaries. If, as the accounts insist, more miracles occurred but only ten were recorded, there ought to have been a selection. Two criteria determined which miracles would make it into the dossier. The beneficiary had to be an elite citizen, and the miracle had to resonate with his main preoccupations in the causally operating world in order to be perceived as such. While on the one hand, the spiritual plane offered a general roadmap to the type of supernatural intervention in order for the general scheme of the cycle—manifestation, exorcism, rebuke, healing, etc.,—to function as a mirror of the participatory reality of the divine, on the other hand, the corporate, civic, and pecuniary dimensions established the approxi- mate time bracket for its occurrence. The content of the miracles was

26 As Patricia Brown has demonstrated, the paintings were “proofs” for the occurrence of the miracles, a participatory manner of validation inherent in the thought patterns of quattrocento Venetians, see her Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio. 27 Patricia Brown, “Honor and necessity: the dynamics of patronage in the confraternities of Renaissance Venice,” Studi veneziani 14 (1988), 179–212 and Edward Muir, Civic ritual, passim. 14 introduction determined by the preoccupations and aspirations of the elite cittadini in that time segment. From among the wide variety of occurrences that everyday life offered to individual confraternity members of elite citizen background and to the confraternal leadership, a choice had to be made as to which event, exactly, should be recognized as a miracle. The con- tention of what follows involves their picking up that which was most relevant as an expression of their main preoccupations at the moment, and referred to their most nagging angsts. In that sense, the miracles were responses, bringing to the surface the deep-running layer of conscious and unconscious tensions plaguing the elite cittadini beneficiaries, a coagulated mix of expectations and anxieties that informed their social identities in the process of becoming a quasi-corporate unit, to address, articulate, and perhaps alleviate them. This account hence turns to the recovery of that deep-seated, evolving layer of mental patterns and the impact of the social realities that induced them within the elite citizen’s self-identity. chapter one

Setting the Stage: The Privilege of the Donation of the Cross

On December 23, 1369, a solemn ceremony took part in Venice at the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in the sestiere of San Polo. The church, an establishment of the Badoer clan, had long been affiliated with the great confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista. On the Sunday before Christmas, meeting day of the scuola’s General Chapter, a multitude of brothers thronged in the church and its adjoining courtyard. Gates thrown wide open, this event was deemed worthy of being witnessed by the entire brotherhood. After mass, Philippe de Mézières, former chancellor of the kingdom of Cyprus, donated to the confraternity a fragment of the True Cross, a precious relic, the most powerful in the roster of supernatural artifacts that the scuola already possessed and would accumulate over time.1 Most importantly, this relic would become the only piece pres- ently manifesting itself by working miracles on behalf of the confraternity, enhancing its honor and status in the city. In December 1369, no one could anticipate the future of the relic. However, as with all cases when substantial items changed hands, proper procedure was in order. Officials, notaries, and witnesses were present. A formal inspection and authentication accompanied the transferral of the Cross, presided over by the papal inquisitor and professor of theology,

1 By the early fifteenth century the confraternity kept a yearly inspected list of its relics and belongings. The fragment of the Cross heads the list, see for example ASV SG SGE, Reg. 71, Libro Stella I, Registro banche, elenchi fratelli morti, parti del Capitolo,riceveri, 1394–1417. Folios 1–2 are missing and as they cover 1397–1399 the register actually begins with 1400. Folio 4r lists the relics on a whole folio page, beginning with “1 Croce di cristalo varnida d’argento,” then parts of the crown of thorns, arms, feet, fingers of saints etc. See also Reg. 72, Registro banche, instrumenti, elencho fratelli morti, riceveri, 1417–1465, lists on f. 1v, f. 2r, and f. 3r, etc., “Croxie di cristalo varnida argento.” Importantly, it is only in 1441 that the list attaches “del mirachulo” to the relic, see ibid., f. 8v. Patricia Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” Studi veneziani 13 (1987), 185 states that “the relic was placed immediately in a reliquary of gilded silver and crystal,” and cites G. Fogolari, “La teca del Bessarione e la Croce di San Teodoro di Venezia,” in Dedalo, 2 (1922), 155–60 and idem, “Processione veneziane,” Dedalo 5 (1924–1925), 775–80, but the citations are incorrect and Fogolari’s text has no power of proof anyway. The privilege states that the Syrian Christian who gave it to Peter Thomas “sicut unam crucem auream preciose ornate de sub cucula extrahes,” while Mézières’s will is explicit that the Cross had already been encased in a crystal case, see notes below. 16 chapter one

Lodovico Donà, a Venetian citizen and Franciscan residing in the nearby Franciscan complex at Santa Maria. His chancellor and notary, Beltrame, drew up the privilege of the donation. The draft was transferred on clean parchment about two months later, sometime in February 1370. Written in Latin, in an elegant hand, the privilege named the inquisitor in formal documentation. It addressed the scuola’s officials and brothers, summed up the importance of the relic for the faithful, explained the manner of its acquisition and the reason for its donation, and asserted its authenticity. Made official through the personal statements of six witnesses, priests- notaries from churches across Venice’s districts, it was handed over to the confraternity.2 The cause for delay in its formal documentation is not clear. At any rate, the ratification of February 1370 explains the time lag between the transferal of the Cross and its first manifestation as a relic officially residing with the confraternity of San Giovanni’s. At an unspecified date, the privilege was translated into the Venetian vernacular. A mid-sixteenth century cadaster of San Giovanni’s later sum- marized that translation.3 It likely refers to the version of the prototype from which the two early prints of the miracle cycle, the incunabulum and the edition of 1590, drew for their accounts of the donation. The narrative in the incunabulum took more freedom with the original text. This version is a summary variant in a concise, third-person voice. It skips the technicalities of the legal document as well as most of the details about the acquisition of the Cross by Meziérès. It also dates the donation incorrectly in 1368. The author took pains, however, to stress the figure of the guardian grande, Andrea Vendramin, at the expense of the confraternity as a whole. The 1590 edition text is very detailed, truer

2 The privilege is preserved in one of the original versions (although more than one original copy must have been made) in ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 496, on a single loose unnumbered piece or parchment, c. 42 × 46 cm, 26 lines of slightly faded brown ink. The inquisitor states that he affixed his seal on it, but the seal is missing. It might have been on another copy although the extant one has holes that may have held it. The document is dated according to the Roman calendar, on an unspecified day of February 1370, with the space for the day empty, in the eight year of the pontificate of Urban V (28 September 1362–19 December 1370), a detail that the incunabulum omits. The witnesses entered their testimonies in their own hands, squeezing them in progressively miniscule letters at the bottom of Beltrame’s carefully written text. The last several lines have been worn out by handling the parchment and are barely legible. 3 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 34, Catastico 1323–1494 (copy compiled in 1550), ff. 361v–362v. The note does not give the year of the donation but is dated in 1370, which confirms the correctness of the date of the donation in the edition of 1590, December 23, 1369 rather than 1368 as stated by the account in the incunabulum. the privilege of donation 17 to the original, and reads like a verbatim translation in the vein of the text in the cadaster, with few omissions, including the year of Urban V’s pontificate. As noted, the privilege is the only text on record preserved in the original. For the renditions of all miracles, a reader would need recourse to one of the printed editions. It is worth noting at this point, however, that the latters’ takes on the prototypical text of the privilege and the social implications inherent therein are replicated in their accounts of the miracles. Throughout, the 1590 version more closely renders the scripted versions it has drawn upon. The incunabulum tends to offer shorter accounts and yet, at times, add elements that the later print eschews. In the matter of the privilege, the incunabulum’s text displays a clear bias toward the Vendramin clan, generations of whom were active donors to the confraternity. That tendency was rectified by the complete translation of the privilege completed for the 1590 print, where other censorial interventions took place as well. The divergence between the prints held another implication, resulting from their approach to the prototype and indicative of the social outlook of their makers. The texts differ in the cast of characters whose presence authenticated the donation. The incunabulum lists the original owner, Peter Thomas, papal legate, Latin patriarch of Constantinople, and Cypriote functionary, then the benefactor, the French knight and chancellor of Cyprus, Philippe de Mézières, then the inquisitor, the Venetian Franciscan Lodovico Donà, and finally three Venetian noblemen of the Morosini and Giustinian clans. On the receiving side, the incunabulum mentions Andrea Vendramin, whose clansmen were patricians in the 1490s. The markedly upper-class orientation, with its exclusive stress on Vendramin, lumps the remainder of the spectators into a “great multitude of people,” omitting the witnesses from the narration. The 1590 edition offers a different gist. Listing the same personages, it emphasizes the voice of the inquisitor and the manner of acquisition of the relic. The technical section, with the names and testimonies that guaranteed the legality of its transferal to the confraternity, makes for a less exalted cast of characters and circumstances, even though no less authoritative. The voices of the edition of 1590 rung true to the voices of the men benefitting from the interventions of the Cross. In all versions, the privilege is the only part of the cycle where the social weight of the nobility is in evidence. The scuola’s pious patron, Philippe de Mézières, leads the list. He first arrived in Venice in December 1362, accompanying his master, Peter I Lusignan (1359–1369), who sought support for the crusade. Doge Lorenzo Celsi and the Senate entertained them 18 chapter one lavishly but did not commit.4 Peter I then continued, via Milan and Genoa, to Avignon, where he left Mézières and Peter Thomas. Peter Thomas shortly returned to Italy on a delicate mission to Bernabo Visconti. In mid-spring of 1364, Mézières and Thomas could be found in Venice negotiating the transport of crusading troops. This visit was longer due to the unsettled situation of the Cretan revolt of that year. They had to wait for a resolution of the problem. In the meantime, Peter I returned and sent them on a mission to Genoa; so in the spring of 1365 Mézières was back in Venice. The long stay allowed him to forge important connections with leading patrician families. A Senate intercession on June 22, 1365 granted him citizenship.5 A year later, in July 1366, with Mézières’ crusading credentials proven by the capture and sack of Alexandria, Peter I sent him to Venice again, this time to persuade the government to take concrete steps in supporting a general crusade and to cut off trade with the Mamluks. The assignment offered little chance of success. Philippe quickly realized that fact and removed himself to Avignon to seek Urban V support. The pope felt equally unenthusiastic, as did the European princes whom Philippe visited afterwards. Empty-handed, Philippe returned to Venice. In September 1367, he boarded a Cyprus-bound ship to report the failure. His indomitable master, however, did not despair. In January of the following year, he sailed out on a new grand tour of the Italian and European powers, Philippe in entourage. In August 1368 Philippe and Peter could again be found in Venice, where they were promised arms and horses but little less. Peter I left for Cyprus shortly thereafter, where on January 18, 1369, he fell to an assassin. Philippe, left behind to lobby for the crusade, committed to the task with passion until word from Cyprus reached Venice of his master’s demise. The shock of Peter’s death struck Philippe hard. He sought to withdraw from the world. Tomaso Falieri and Marco Morosini provided lodgings, and the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista offered much-needed companionship and solace. Philippe spent the next two years nourishing his wounded soul and reminiscing in an atmosphere of piety and devotion. He continued to devise crusading designs as well, corresponding with the new Cypriote leaders, and drafting rules for his brainchild, a new crusading order. During the course of 1369, Philippe put his affairs in order

4 Nicolae Jorga, Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405) et la croisade au XIVe siècle (Paris: Bouil- lon, 1896), 144–59. 5 See www.civesveneciarum.net, “Mézières.” the privilege of donation 19 and drafted a will. Among other bequests, the will lists the fragment of the True Cross, “encased in a gilded crystal,” received from his beloved mentor, Peter Thomas, that he intended to donate to the church where his mortal remains would eventually be laid to rest. Philippe deposited the draft of his will with the republic’s chancellor, Raffaino Caresini. It was registered in January 1370, likely several months after its composition.6 By that time, Philippe had changed his mind. He had apparently healed, considered acquiring property in the Trevisano, and contemplated leaving Venice.7 In preparation for this relocation, and in expression of his gratitude for the spiritual companionship that sustained him, he handed over the Cross to the confraternity in December 1369. Lanzago was to serve as his retreat from all the turbulence of worldly affairs, while the scuola, he determined, would care for the precious relic. In Venice’s notarial culture, only legal actions accomplished such piv- otal moments. The relic’s efficacy required legal authenticity; but the very act of legalizing the transferal, and the accompanying implications to certain personages, extended the significance of the legal act beyond the purely technical recognition of both Meziérès’ claim and the scuola’s need to register the pious donation. In his will, Philippe clearly stated that he had received the fragment from Peter Thomas. His word may certainly be trusted—after all, he served as chancellor. The manner in which Peter Thomas obtained the relic, however, is a different matter. The privilege delves into great detail in that respect, reconstructing acts, speech, and circumstances from a decade earlier with striking precision. Peter Thomas met up with the elders of a Syrian Christian community while on the road to the Holy Land in 1360, as the story goes. The elders had heard of his rep- utable piety and handed a fragment of the True Cross over to him, lest it fall into the hands of the Muslims and be destroyed. This account, seared

6 The will is extant in its original version, see ASV, Archivio Notarile, Testamenti, b. 483, # 33, dated January 20, 1369 more veneto, or January 20, 1370, amended by the testator in September 1371. The first date cannot be reconciled with the donation during the term of service of Andrea Vendramin. It is either not in more veneto, which is unlikely, or has been recorded much later. The testament has been partially edited and discussed by Nicolae Jorga, “Le testament de Philippe de Mézières,” Bulletin de l’Institut pour l’étude de l’Europe sud-orientale, 10–12 (1921), 119–140. It was a normal practice to register and notarize testaments several months after they had been first drafted by a testator or notary. Apart from his service as a notary and a chancellor, Raffaino Caresini wrote a chronicle, now in the Marciana, BMV, It. Cl. VII, 770, edited by Ester Pastorello, Raffaino Caresini, Chronica (1343–1388), RIS 12:2 (Bologna, 1923). 7 Luigi Pesce “Filippo di Mézières e la certosa di Montello,” Archivio veneto, ser. 5, 168 [vol. 134] (1990), 5–44, at 21 and n. 47. 20 chapter one into Philippe’s memory, is conspicuously missing from the lengthy Life he composed for Peter Thomas, even though the account would certainly have enhanced the latter’s reputation as a charismatic figure.8 Notably, the difference between the Life and the privilege may not be accidental. Thomas’ whereabouts in Syria in 1360, when he supposedly acquired the relic, remain undocumented. In any case, the journey must be dated to 1358, a time when he actually made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, according to both the chronological sequence of his Life and the official documents that refer to his mission to Constantinople.9 The gist of the accounts suggests that, while the relic may have been authentic, Thomas may have acquired it in an irregular way. Indeed, Peter Thomas held both motive and opportunity in obtaining the relic in an altogether different manner. Personal devotion aside, the Carmelite’s motivations are not difficult to divine. In Cyprus, Peter Thomas must have become acquainted with relics of the True Cross, artifacts with which the island was well endowed. One legend recorded continuously throughout the Middle Ages relays the tale of St Helena, Emperor Constantine’s pious mother, who had deposited fragments of the True Cross in various locations in Cyprus to scare off demons. During the time of Peter Thomas, the Armenian community still possessed one of those relics, famed for its capacity to bring much-needed rain. The monastery of Stavro Vouni, about fifteen miles from Larnaka, held another piece, originally thought to be that of the cross of the penitent thief, but by the fourteenth century was thought to contain other splinters of the True Cross. The middle of this relic, venerated in its own right, contained a smaller piece allegedly crafted from two fragments of the True Cross. According to eyewitnesses, the large piece, hosted in a special chapel, hovered in the air without support. Overzealous pilgrims attempted to purloin slivers of it, and sometime between 1393 and 1395, on royal order, the chapel was secured by an iron grill. The church of Lefkara held two fragments, either particles of the True Cross or of the

8 Joachim Smet, Life of Peter Thomas by Philippe de Mézières (Rome: Institutum Car- melitanum, 1954). The principal study of Peter Thomas is still that of Frederick J. Boehlke, Pierre de Thomas. Scholar, Diplomat, and Crusader (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva- nia Press, 1966), 141–85 on Thomas’s travels in the Eastern Mediterranean around the year 1360; 174 and 281 for references to the Cross. See also now Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Philippe de Mézières Life of Saint Pierre de Thomas at the Crossroads of Late Medieval Hagiography and Crusading Ideology,” Viator, 40: 1 (2009), 223–48. 9 Smet, Life of Peter Thomas, 79–82; Boehlke, Pierre de Thomas, 165–6. the privilege of donation 21 penitent thief ’s.10 These fragments had been working miracles and constituted rallying points for the local Greeks’ piety. Thomas found other opportunities to come across pieces of the True Cross, but the Cypriot connection cannot be disregarded. The Cross of San Giovanni proved its authenticity precisely in proper manner for the Stavro Vuoni Cross, by hovering in the air. The badges sold by the Cypriot relic’s keepers worked miracles on the high seas, calming storms or calling them—yet another prominent feature of the Cross of San Giovanni’s. Such abundance of grace residing in Cyprus may have seemed inappropriate to the highly devout Peter, who deemed the Orthodox Greeks unwor- thy Christians. Opposed to these deeply entrenched traditions, Peter saw a relic that worked for the Catholic cause as a means to absorb Orthodox devotion by re-channeling and incorporating it into the Latin-allied relic wielded by the prelate. Peter Thomas’s zeal for suppressing “schismatic” Christian beliefs fits that pattern perfectly. It highlights a political and cultural agenda vested in the relic—an agenda he persistently displayed. And yet, even as his zeal burned hot in Cyprus, it was kindled earlier. On December 15, 1357, years before his alleged encounter with the Syrian Christians, Peter Thomas wrote from Constantinople that he had seen, and touched “with his own hands,” a fragment of the True Cross during an inspection of relics. These relics were purchased from the imperial government by one Pietro Torrigiani, a Sienese by origin and Venetian resident.11 As apostolic legate, Thomas chaired a committee comprised of Latin bishops, including Tana, Erzerum, and Varna. The committee exam- ined these relics in the house of the Venetian bailo, likely Maffeo Venier. After inspecting the relics, Peter sent two of the bishops and the resident

10 Several late medieval pilgrims describe the Stavro Vuoni relic, see excerpts in Claude Deleval Cobham, Excerpta Cipria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908). Accord- ing to Ogier, lord of Anglure, who visited the church in December 1395, there was an attempt to purloin a sliver of the Cross that occurred in 1393, and the iron grill was added after that. The sliver was returned after the Cross called a storm that forced the ship with the thieving pilgrim back to port. As a special favor, Ogier was permitted to touch it, and it “swings heavily,” he wrote, see Roland A. Browne, trans., The Holy Jerusalem Voyage of Ogier VIII, Seigneur d’Anglure (Gainsville: The University of Florida Press, 1975), 68–70. See also John Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus: From the Coming of the Apos- tles Paul and Barnabas to the Commencement of the British Occupation (London: Methuen & Co., 1901), 433sq and 454, with references to various authorities, among them Steffano Lusignan, Chorograffia et Breve Historia universal dell’ isola de Cipro (Bologna, 1573), 28a. 11 Pietro Torrigiani was granted citizenship per privilege in July 1359, with a note that at that time he resided in Constantinople. He had, therefore, been Venetian resident before that, in the parish of San Severin as Peter Thomas’ letter mentions. See www.civesveneciarum.net, “Torrigiani.” 22 chapter one

Dominican inquisitor, Philip de Contis, to Empress Irene, who confirmed their authenticity. Satisfied with his purchase, sometime before April 1359, Torrigiani sold the relics to the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena.12 He may have acquired quite a bit less than what he paid for. The practice of furta sacra was too well known and widespread to ignore the tempta- tion that the relic must have presented to an intensely pious Carmelite. It is no less plausible to assume that a sliver might have changed hands to ensure a positive verdict. Thomas could have come into possession of the Cross either way. Both ways, however, were illicit. The manner of procurement was certain to cast a shadow of illegitimacy over the relic. The story of the encounter with the Syrian Christian clergy might actually have been designed to dispel any doubt about how Thomas acquired the Cross. In light of the perceptions of the plight of Christianity in the Levant, this approach made sense—and could not be verified. Mendacia sacra may have stepped in where furta sacra fell short in the eyes of the law. The letter suggests that Thomas must have had a weak spot for the Cross, since he wrote with awe about his coming into contact with “the most precious” object in the world. Furthermore, the letter lists two fragments of the Cross, but when the relics changed hands in Siena, the act of “donation” only listed one gilded reliquary with pieces of the Cross encased in it.13 The care Meziérès took to ensure that the relic’s provenance was beyond doubt makes such a supposition quite feasible. His transferral of the Cross should be viewed as more than just a legal act with a ceremonial bent. The procedure was, strictly speaking, an inquisitorial trial of the recent history of the relic—a trial designed to assuage any possible suspicion of its authenticity. The inquiry may have been a normal course of affairs in the notarial culture of Venice had the relic come to light just then. But given the Cross’ career since first displayed by Peter Thomas and carried on his ceremonial cross, the inquiry is somewhat unusual.

12 Giovanna Derenzini, “Le reliquie da Constantinopoli a Siena,” in Luciano Bellosi, ed., L’Oro di Siena. Il Tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala (Milan: 1996), 67–78, here 72 for Thomas’ letter, and 72–3 for the “donation” contract between Torrigiani and the hospital. The relics were appraised at 3,000 gold florins. See also Peter Hetherington, “A purchase of Byzantine relics and reliquaries in fourteenth-century Venice,” Arte Veneta 37 (1983), 9–30. 13 Derenzini, “Le relique da Constantinopoli,” 73–5; Thomas writes “. . . et de ipsa vera Cruce in qua ipse pependit quae in mundo non possunt esse pretiosora . . .” and the Sie- nese contract specifies “. . . .unam crucem auri incassatam antocam plenam de lingo vere cruces fuit Sancti Constantini. . . .” The missing piece was a chess-board-like reliquary, one or more of whose squares contained fragments of the True Cross. the privilege of donation 23

A specifically authorized figure authenticating the relic was thus crucial. Lodovico (Alvise) Donà (or Donato) (ca. 1305–1386), the man in whose name the privilege was drawn, had the impeccable credentials to do just that. Born in Venice in the parish of San Martino, he was most likely a cittadino rather than an offshoot of the patrician clan of the same name, despite the noble cognomen. Alvise joined the Franciscans early, studied eagerly, and eventually became the Order’s principal lecturer in the University of Pisa. In 1363, he achieved confirmation as Master in Theology. In 1364, he helped found the Chair of Theology in the University of Bologna. The privilege’s original and the two printed texts proudly display his credentials alongside his official position. In 1366, Lodovico was appointed inquisitor for Venice and the March of Treviso, with his seat, as had been the tradition, at the Frari church. He served in that position until at least 1376. Apparently, he was on very good terms with the government and the Roman curia. In March 1367, the Senate advanced his candidacy for the see of San Pietro in Castello, and in 1368 requested the bishopric of Crete for him. In 1378, the Senate repeated the request for the see of Ceneda for Lodovico. None of these requests were honored. By 1378, schism had split the Franciscans. Lodovico’s acknowledgement of Urban IV brought him the titles of papal Vicar General of the Order for the Roman see, and later General Minister for a three-year term in 1379–1381. Diligent servant to Urban, Lodovico worked tirelessly in favor of the return of Spain into the Roman fold. Seizing the opportunity, the Serenissima, which in the meantime had employed Lodovico as diplomatic agent to Louis of Hungary, requested a cardinal’s dignity for him. In 1381, Urban VI acquiesced. This was the first time that a Venetian obtained the red hat with the intervention of secular authorities—and a commoner, a cittadino, received it. The pope continued to entrust Lodovico with sensitive mis- sions, but his failure to obtain from Charles III of Naples a domain for the pontiff’s nephew cooled Urban’s affection. In a rash decision, Lodovico was arrested in 1385 and put to death on charges of conspiracy one year later. He may have been fully innocent.14 This sad ending to such an illustrious career still a distant, unforeseen future, Lodovico Donà was the most appropriate figure in Venice to offer a verdict on the relic of the True Cross in 1369. Amid bitter conflict over tithes between the city’s principal cleric, Bishop Foscari, on the one hand

14 For Lodovico’s life and career see Remigio Ritzler, “I cardinali e i papi dei Frati Minori Conventuali,” Miscellanea Francescana 71 (1971), 40–43, with bibliography. 24 chapter one and the government on the other, Donà was the crucial personage to patch potential fissures between papal Rome and the Venetian government. Moreover, by virtue of his position as inquisitor, Donà was obliged to do just that. The office of the Inquisition was established with difficulty in Venice. Pope Innocent IV had requested, back in 1254, that the office be allowed to hold tribunals in the city. Authorities resisted. Only three decades later, August 1289, the Grand Council allowed Franciscan inquisitors into the city. Franciscans continued presiding over the institution until 1560. As a compromise, however, the inquisitors must be assisted by three probi viri, appointed by the doge. For trials in Venice, these laymen, typically Venetian senators, were attached to the inquisitorial court as full-fledged members of the tribunal. The wide scope of this office covered a roster of areas linked to enforcing Catholic orthodoxy during its first centuries.15 The inspection of purported relics, especially of those holding the rank of the True Cross, was clearly within the inquisition’s domain as a standard procedure. It guaranteed the authenticity of the object. As with any other procedure in Venice, the presence of the three secular patricians on the court, two Giustiniani and a Morosini, afforded the government’s official sanction. This presence also ensured that some of the fragment’s charisma rubbed off onto the lay authorities as much as it accrued upon the inquisitor, his court, the confraternity of San Giovanni, and the nobles’ personal éclat. The patricians were personal friends of Mézières; years-long associates and members of the oldest of noble houses. Both houses also long stood as brothers of San Giovanni’s.16 Marco Morosini of San Silvestro built a prominent career by the time of the donation. Philippe, who had lodged in Morosini’s house, addressed Morosini as “dear friend and patron” in his will. Morosini had been a squadron commander in 1350 under the leadership of Ruzzini, served as podestà and Procurator of San Marco, and was member of at least two committees electing new doges.17 Francesco and Elia Giustinian were cousins

15 The agreement was ratified by a Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, with the bull Acce- dentes of August 28, 1289, see Bull. Franc., IV (Rome, 1768), coll. 100b–102a. See also the summary in Isidoro Gatti, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari: Storia di una prezeusa Francescana a Venezia (Venice: Edizione delle Grafiche Veneziane, 1992), 84, 89. 16 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 7, f. 28v, lists Marco Morosini of Santo Apostolo on a roster from before 1327. 17 See the chronicle of Caroldo, Giovanni Giacomo Caroldo, Istorii Veneţiene. Vol. III. De la alegerea dogelui Andrea Dandolo la moartea dogelui Giovanni Delfino (1343–1361). Ediţie îngrijitǎ de Şerban V. Marin (Bucareşti: Arhivele naţionale ale României, 2008–2010), index: Marco Morosini. the privilege of donation 25 once removed of the parish of San Moise branch of the clan.18 Philippe referred to Francesco as “most faithful friend,” and to Elia Giustinian as “spiritual brother.” All three were named as executors of Philippe’s estate and received bequests in his will.19 Their attendance at the transferal of the relic likely stemmed from official business, but no doubt as personal favor to Philippe as well. The patricians held pride of place in the privilege. They added luster and the whiff of governmental authority to the transmittal of the relic. But the legality of the act was actually ensured by the roster of commoners in official ecclesiastical and lay positions—commoners who witnessed the donation. The inquisitor’s personal chancellor and notary, Beltrame, drew up the privilege. Beltrame was most likely not a Venetian.20 Giovanni Campo, priest of San Tomà (San Polo) and later of San Canciano (Cannaregio), held the position of long-time notary public and witnessed acts and wills between 1362 and 1417, including acts at Rialto.21 Nicolo Sajabianca, piovan of Santa Margerita (Dorsoduro), also worked as notary public and recorded wills in the period 1360–1388.22 Giovanni Foscarini, piovan of San Leonardo (Cannaregio), is honored in a prayer list for Santa Maria Formosa/San Canciano (Castello/Canaregio).23 The group of reputa- ble witnesses to the act of donation is rounded out by Giovanni Nani from Ravenna, chaplain of the church of San Giovanni (San Polo), Franceschin, priest of Santa Maria Mater Domini (Santa Croce), and Simon, piovan of San Stefano Confessore (San Marco). Each confirmed and corroborated his testimony listing all other witnesses. The original rendition of the privilege therefore vested the legality of the act, the authenticity of the relic and, by extension, the validity of the miracles it was about to perform, as much in patrician presence as in the collective recognition of

18 Marco Barbaro, Arbori de’ patritii veneti, “Zustinian,” ASV, Miscellanea codici, I. Storia veneta. VII: 35, f. 458. Elia Giustinian was also executor of the will of his brother Andrea, see a reference in CIN, b. 18, notary Nicolo de Boaterio, f. 17v, dated September 6, 1364. 19 Jorga, “Le Testament,” 132. Marco Morosini witnessed land purchases in the Trevi- sano for Philippe in 1377, and later, when he sought to divest himself of the properties, and received the right to use the house where Philippe planned to live as a landlord, see Pesce, “Filippo di Mézières e la certosa di Montello,” 26 and 42–44. 20 Beltrame is not on any list of notaries who worked in Venice in the period that I am aware of. 21 Bianca Betto, Le nove congregazioni del clero di Venezia (sec. XI–XV). Ricerche storiche, matricoli, e documenti vari (Padua: Antenore, 1984), 58, note; see AVS, CIN, b. 36, act of August 17, 1396, Rialto. 22 ASV ANT, b. 920–921. 23 Mentioned in Betto, Le nove congregazioni, 209. 26 chapter one authorized cittadini. The patricians, however, only attended, conforming to the law but passively. Active presidency, examination, decision, and in short, management, happened through the hands of commoners. Since the inception of its career, the numinous agent acting through the Cross highlighted a division of labor, status, and prerogatives in late fourteenth- century Venice. These characteristic traits emphasized the cittadini’s point of view about who did what in society. During the next month, the relic would begin its manifestations on behalf of the cittadini group, helping them articulate precisely that vision. chapter two

Upward Bound: The Vendramin and the Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of san lorenzo

On March 3, 1370, the Venetian confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista took their fragment of the True Cross out into one of its festive processions around the city, having treasured it for more than two months. The brothers were eager to display their devotion and enhance the honor of the scuola and the Serenissima with this powerful artifact. This day occurred early in the beginning of Lenten events (stretching from the first Sunday of Lent to Good Friday), during which all the scuole grande proceeded to San Pietro di Castello and back to San Marco, stopping along the way to honor several of the city’s saintly patrons and their churches. One of the last stops on San Giovanni Evangelista’s route was San Lorenzo.1 At a narrow bridge just before the church, a dense crowd pressed the cross-bearer too hard. He lost his balance, and the precious relic tumbled over the parapet. The Cross did not sink into the canal, however. It hovered over the murky waters, sustained by the invisible powers of the divine. The astonished brothers, lay onlookers, and a priest of San Lorenzo’s attempted to retrieve the relic, but the Cross defied them. Only when the scuola’s guardian grande, Andrea Vendramin, threw himself into the canal did the Cross graciously move toward him and allow itself to be rescued. A great number of people witnessed this clear miracle with their own eyes.2

1 For the route and the ceremonial calendar of San Giovanni Evangelista see Jonathan Glixon, Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260–1807 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 59 and 265. The incunabulum dates the miraculous event in 1369, which would put it before March 1, 1370. However, the incunabulum started its account a year behind, stating that the donation of the relic was in 1368, which would have lasted till March 1, 1369 at the latest. The procession must have been on the first Sunday of Lent, which in 1370 fell on March 3, while Andea Vendramin was still guardian grande and before Giordano Coffanero took over after the elections held by the General Chapter on the third Sunday of Lent, which fell on March 17 in 1370. There were no authorized processions scheduled for the year in January and February that would entail a visit to San Lorenzo and would have had the added advantage of drawing a crowd to witness the scuola’s new acquisition. 2 Incunabulum in Museo Civico Correr, Inc. H 249 (ex 222bis), no title, incipit Miracoli della croce nella benedetta scola de misier san Zuane evangelista. The second text is Miracoli della Croce Santissima Della Scuola de San Giovanni Euangelista, (Venice: Ventura Galuano, 1590). Vendramin was guardian grande in 1369 which, according to the Venetian calendar, 28 chapter two

This event led the miracle-working career of the relic of the True Cross hosted by the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista. In the course of the following century, the relic performed no less than nine additional miracles, perhaps more, all to the awe and wonder of participants and audience alike. The record of these miracles appears in the confraternity’s books, ratified by communal authorities. By 1414, a large enough number had occurred for the scuola to consider decorating their meeting hall with representations of the Cross’s miraculous actions.3 Half a century later, the project seemed outdated. A new pictorial program was launched in 1494, adorning the albergo with the relic with the monumental canvasses still extant today. Bellini’s painting of the event at San Lorenzo’s, completed in 1500, is prominent among them.4 During the same decade, the incunabulum with the miracle cycle was printed.5 The relic of the Cross certainly contributed to the confraternity’s continuing appeal and position vis-à-vis the other scuole in the city; it might well have earned the brotherhood the status of a scuola grande.6 The majority of the known miracles worked by the Cross deal with healings. Such feats were (and still are) the bread-and-butter of the intervention of supernatural artifacts of all kinds. The miracle described above, however, belongs to a different category. Its stated, putative goal was for

ran from March 1, 1369 to February 28, 1370. Since the miracle must have happened during Vendramin’s tenure, it roughly coincided with the calendar year but could not have taken place after March 17, 1370; see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 5 compiled ca. 1387, now published in Gian Andrea Simeone, ed., La Mariegola della Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista a Venezia (1261–1457) (Venice: Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, 2003), 128. 3 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 140, f. 70v, November 4, 1414. 4 For a most thorough recent discussion of the pictorial cycle against the background of the age along with copious references to earlier works see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1988). The dates for the completion of the canvasses are after John Bernasconi, “The Dating of the Cycle of the Miracles of the Cross from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista,” Arte Veneta 35 (1981), 198–202, and the notes in the edition of 1590. 5 The incunabulum was brought to light and first discussed by Patricia Brown, “An Incunabulum of the Miracles of the True Cross of the Scuola Grande de San Giovanni Evangelista,” Bollettino dei Civici Musei Veneziani d’arte e di storia, new series, 27: 1–4 (1982), 5–8. Brown cites the incunabulum under the old call number of 222bis. 6 The magisterial study of the social policies of the Venetian confraternities remains Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State to 1620 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1971). For a succinct recent survey see Patricia Brown, “Le Scuole,” in Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 5. Il Rinascimento. Societa ed economia, ed. by Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1986), 307–54. For the art-related activities of the confraternities see William B. Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi and Venetian Art, 1260–c. 1500 (unpublished PhD Diss., The University of Chicago at Illinois, Chicago, 1975). the miracle of san lorenzo 29

God to simply manifest himself. In this age of desire for supernatural artifacts, the relic proved its authenticity in order to reinforce faith in the efficacious powers of the divine. And yet, the narrative logic of textual accounts conveying this miracle, and the construction of the pictorial istoria painted by Bellini more than a century later, relay a somewhat different message. The action of the Cross at San Lorenzo depicts a very specific social context accounting for all the conventions of contemporary miracle stories and the Venetian style of narrative painting around the turn of the cinquecento. Through text and image, the renditions express and affirm the status and duties of the scene’s chief protagonist, the guardian grande Andrea Vendramin. Through this protagonist, the place and aspirations of elite citizens in the social arrangements of late medieval Venice are clearly evident. Stable but nonetheless evolving, that social class underwent noticeable changes between the early 1370s, when the Cross worked its first miracles, and 1500, when Gentile Bellini completed The miracle at the bridge of San Lorenzo. The social logic of the miracle’s renditions held relevant throughout the period, although for different reasons. The slices of social reality in which the miracle occurred, the conceptualization and execution of the new pictorial program, and the completion of Gentile Bellini’s canvas constitute three consecutive points on a trajectory by which considerations originating in the elite cittadini’s social experiences intersected with narrative logic and cognitive aesthetics. The principles of upward mobility, openness, and reward for individual achievement underlie this trajectory, even though the social addressees vary. It is no coincidence that at the starting point of the miracle- working career of San Giovanni’s Cross in 1370 stood the figure of Andrea Vendramin, a leading cittadino. The privilege for the donation of the Cross to the scuola in the incunabulum states that the donation arrived due to the brothers’ devotion, but above all due to Vendramin’s reputation. Thus, Philippe de Mézières, the former Chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and royal envoy to Venice, decided to donate the fragment.7 The incunabulum reflects a later reality, when Vendramin was already a noble and its author found reason to separate Andrea from the group of his fellow- citizens. Besides being a pious man, the guardian grande Vendramin

7 The reference to Vendramin’s reputation is only present in the incunabulum. The edition of 1590 eschews it. The difference provides, on the one hand, one more clue to the Vendramin clan’s involvement in the printing of the incunabulum and the pictorial program of the scuola in the 1490s and, on the other, it is evidence to the authorities’ determination to suppress individual distinction of its citizens in any public venue. 30 chapter two certainly must have been one of the most prominent cittadini in Venice at the time. A businessman, wealthy oil merchant, and wholesale supplier for the soap manufacturing business his family owned and operated, his mercantile and industrial background as well as his real estate property became the subject of the second intervention of the Cross. The delivery of two of his ships laden with soap oils from a sea storm in the Adriatic constituted this intervention. Unfortunately, not much is known about Vendramin’s early years. He must have joined the scuola before mid-century, since a list of members compiled around that time mentions his membership. He took three turns as guardian grande, which suggests social clout in addition to piety, and he is on record for accepting, in his capacity of guardian, several bequests from the estates of confraternal members.8 In 1351, as he served for the first time, Vendramin was vested in the trade of woolen cloth, among other commodities, in Apulia. Due to political disturbances, he took a heavy loss. The Senate allowed him to make up for this loss through a concession with which he received permission to re-export fifty milliaria of olive oil previously purchased in the city.9 At least part of that oil was for the Vendramin’s chief industrial activity, the production of quality soaps, we may safely assume. Andrea made a fortune in the business, and the quality of the soaps produced by his family became proverbial. In 1458, Benedetto Cotrugli, a merchant of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) well-versed in the Venetian and international trade, stated in his Libro dell’arte di mercatura that the Vendramin soaps were so good you could buy them sight unseen.10 A vague reference exists that the Vendramin originated on the mainland in Friuli and operated in the oils and soap-making business during the thirteenth century, so he had inherited into this tradition.11 But Andrea’s wide-ranging business also reached out to the Levant for markets and supplies. In 1376, he held merchandise and interests in Candia, for example, and gave one of his sons-in-law, Nicolo Polo, the power of attorney to

8 ASV CIN, b. 5, Giovanni Argoiosi, parchment register, f. 13r, May 8, 1369, and f. 13v, October 3, 1369. 9 For the Senate concessions ASV, Senato, Misti, Reg. 26, f. 53r, March 10, 1351; now in Francesco Girardi, ed., Venezia-Senato. Deliberazioni miste. Registro XXVI (1350–1354) (Ven- ice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ad Arti, 2008), 217–18, # 415. 10 For Cotrugli see Ugo Tucci, ed., Benedetto Cotrugli Raguseo Il libro dell’arte di mercatura (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1990), Book I, Ch. 17, 178. 11 Marco Barbaro, Arbori de’ patricii veneti, f. 193; there is a reference in the so-called Codice dal Ponte that I was not able to verify independently. the miracle of san lorenzo 31 represent him in Crete.12 Whatever his background may have been, due to his own efforts around the middle of the fourteenth century, he rose to the top cittadini ranks. Before 1376, he must have owned two residences, one in San Cassian and one in Santa Fosca, and is alternatively mentioned in both.13 His sons remained in Santa Fosca. Vendramin’s family history offers clues to his ascent. Andrea married a fellow cittadino’s daughter, Gianetta di Mafio Inzegneri of the parish of San Giovanni in Bragora, but their own daughters went to patrician houses. Marina married Nicolo Grioni, Lucia wedded Giacomello Venier, and Ima became the spouse of Nicolo Polo.14 Their younger son, Zaccaria, took a spouse from the Muazzo clan; and the older Bartolomeo married twice. His first marriage to Diana, daughter of Nicolo Quartari of San Julian, took place in 1383. The marriage might have been negotiated during Andrea’s lifetime and possibly before the Vendramins were ennobled. The notable Quartari were a citizen family, and Diana brought the Vendramin a handsome sum of 3,600 ducats dowry, making up for family expenditures on the daughters’ marriages to nobles.15 The amount the Vendramin extracted indicates the status they enjoyed. This alliance held the added bonus of linking the Vendramin indirectly to the Morosini, for one of Diana’s sisters, Lucia, married a Morosini.16 Diana must have passed away not long after the marriage, for Bartolomeo soon took another wife, this time from the noble Michiel clan. He clearly felt comfortable enough with his noble relatives to appoint his mother-in-law Betha Michiel as one of his will’s executors.17 Andrea Vendramin’s funerary inscription informs us that he was the son of Luca, died on August 25, 1382, and was buried in the grounds of Santa Maria dei Servi. These grounds also held

12 ASV CIN, b. 5, Giovanni Argoiosi, parchment register, f. 33r, dated July 28, 1376. At the time Andrea was residing in Santa Fosca. 13 The decision of the Senate notes him as a resident of San Cassian in 1351; he was in Santa Fosca in 1376; and is listed again in San Cassian in the estimo of 1379, which means that he had two residences and could decide which one was his primary one as he saw fit. 14 Andrea’s wife Gianetta recorded a will on November 22, 1398, updated it on May 4, 1399, and then it was published in January 1401. In the last version she bequeathed one- third of her possessions to the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista, see ASV CIN, b. 208, notary Pietro Tibertini, # 5 and ASV ANT, Pietro Tibertini, b. 1112, loose parchment leaf. The will contains the earliest reference to her daughter’s marriages. Ima Polo is mentioned in Bartolomeo Vendramin’s will, ASV ANT, b. 364, f. 56r. 15 Zaccaria married Maria Muazzo, her will is in ASV ANT, b. 670, # 13, dated 1414. I infer the size of Diana Quartari’s dowry from Bartolomeo’s promise for 1,200 ducats as counter- gift, ASV CIN, b. 5, Giovanni Argoiosi, parchment register, f. 50r, dated February 17, 1383. 16 Lucia left a will with Benedetto di Arcangeli, ASV ANT, b. 55, # 60, June 8, 1397. 17 ASV ANT, b. 364, f. 56r–57v, published December 22, 1402, notary Basilio Darvasio. 32 chapter two his sons and his grandson, Doge Andrea Vendramin, who later had their own funerary monuments.18 He must have had a brother, for the latter’s son and grandson, respectively Michele and Giacomo, are mentioned in Zaccaria Vendramin’s will.19 That branch of the family was not ennobled and does not seem to have shared in the prosperity of the guardian’s line. Andrea Vendramin, however, enjoyed an upward-bound social status. His wealth and reputation ensured him the position of guardian grande of one of the major confraternities, endowing him with considerable social and economic muscle in the finely structured Venetian power hierarchy. That position was certainly not the end of his achievements. A decade after the miracle, as a leader of his family, he broke through the political glass ceiling of Venetian society. In 1379, Vendramin offered to pay the expenses of 30 fighting men for two months, send his son Bartolomeo with two companions and an infantry man taking his own place, and support a galley and two boats with the interest from his bonds in the State Loans Office “for as long as the war lasted,” all to support his city in the war with Genoa. He could well afford it. The tax assessment for that year reveals his earning the highest income in his parish, San Cassian, and one of the highest across the city, on a par with the most powerful noble families.20 For this patriotic commitment, in 1381 he and his descendants received admittance to the Grand Council and became members of Venice’s exclusive ruling caste of patricians in one of the extremely rare cases of group enlargement of the patriciate following the closing of the political class by the serrata in 1297.21 At the time, both Andrea and his elder son Bartolomeo held membership in San Giovanni’s; Zaccaria,

18 Vendramin’s funerary inscription is in Emilio Cigogna, Delle inscrizioni Veneziane, (Venice, 1824), 46–7. 19 ASV ANT, b. 575, # 722, notary Giorgio Gibellin, published on August 31, 1405. Zac- caria mentioned his nephew Giacomo son of Michele among the executors of his will and left him 50 ducats. 20 Gino Luzzatto, I prestiti della Repubblica di Venezia (sec. XIII–XV). Introduzione storica e documenti (Padua: Draghi, 1929), 193. 21 For Vendramin’s guardianships, ASV SG SGE, Reg. 5, and Simeone, La Mariegola, 127–8. The year 1369 is also confirmed by the best list of members dating from 1489–1490, see ASV, SG SGE Reg. 6, no foliation; ASV, SG SGE Reg. 3, no foliation. A later hand adds that he served as a guardian grande in 1351. For his patriotic contribution see Vittorio Laz- zarini, “Le offerte per la guerra di Chioggia e un falsario del Quattrocento,” Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 4 (1902) 207. Zorzi Dolfin locates him in San Leonardo, “where he resided with his son Bartolomio,” see his Cronica, in BNM, Ms. It. VII. 794 (8503), f. 18r. The archive of the Vendramin family in Archivio di Stato is preserved but has not been organized, it is not known whether it contains any material for the period before 1381, and is not available for consultation due to unclear rights over its contents. the miracle of san lorenzo 33 his younger son, joined them shortly thereafter. Bartolomeo and Zaccaria died in 1402 and 1405, respectively. They were both buried with confraternal honors alongside their father in Santa Maria dei Servi, which served as the family’s burial grounds.22 The renditions of the miracle at San Lorenzo duly convey a sense of individual social mobility enveloping Vendramin’s figure and career. The intrusion of the supernatural occurred at a bridge—a convenient physical trope for the social threshold the guardian grande was about to cross. The incunabulum account describing the retrieval of the Cross delineates neatly the fundamentals of Venetian social hierarchy in a dense, long sentence. This sentence places Vendramin, not yet a patrician at the time, at its fore. As the Cross tumbled over the edge, representatives of different Venetian social classes launched themselves into the water in three consecutive waves: first, lay onlookers from the banks of the canal; next, brothers from the confraternity; then finally, a priest of the church of San Lorenzo, all in wane. Finally, Vendramin himself entered the water. A double hierarchy transpires here, interweaving both piety and social arrangement. The escalation of effort to rescue the relic stresses the political arrangements of Venetian society, determining status through a series of criteria weaving together both secular standing and proximity, literal and mystical, to the sources of supernatural power. The onlookers, no matter the rank, lacked the status of spiritual affiliation with the collective conduit of grace represented by the confraternity. The lay brothers of San Giovanni’s, for their part, stood above the general public by virtue of their proximity to the Cross and its power; but they lacked the official spiritual credentials of a priest who was empowered by the sacrament of ordination and entitled to handle numinous objects. The priest of San Lorenzo possessed a higher level of spiritual quality but was nonetheless a representative of the clerical estate. Thus, by definition, this priest was subordinated politically to the ruling lay patrician class. Combinations of the spiritual and the profane, both lay and ecclesiastical, and the social and the political, naturally positioned Andrea Vendramin at the pinna- cle of the established social and political order. As accounts have it, this divine revelation was as much a manifestation of the miraculous powers of the supernatural as it was the seal and ratification of that order.

22 Bartolomeo Vendramin of Santa Fosca is listed as having passed away and buried on December 16, 1402, in Santa Maria dei Servi, ASV SG SGE, Reg. 71, Libro Stela I, f. 104v. The same document records the death of Zaccaria Vendramin in 1405 and his burial in the same church alongside his father and brother, ibid., f. 105v. 34 chapter two

It sanctioned a proper hierarchy on principle, and it pinpointed Vendramin as the authorized typological equivalent of the numinous agent. This choice clearly identified him socially with the noble class in the frame of the Venetian political theology of governance. More underlying messages may be revealed through the rendering of this miracle than the validation of the status of the Vendramin and assertion of the Venetian social hierarchy. Besides affirming the existing order, the text carries subtle but detectable signs of contestation and resistance. The incunabulum’s stress on Vendramin’s bona fama in its summative privilege of the donation of the Cross had already set this tone by ensuring that the guardian’s figure not be lost within the collective image of the brotherhood. That issue should not have been controversial; and yet, in the edition of 1590 that sentence is omitted. Interpretation of this editorial intervention within the context of a sociopolitical trajectory reveals more. On the one hand, in 1370 Andrea Vendramin was still a commoner. Undue stress on the exceptionality of a cittadino, which was not seen as a problem in the 1490s, apparently did not appear seemly to the censors of a century later. On the other hand, since 1297, the government had engaged in a continuous process of social engineering, defining and redefining the status of the ruling class along a two-pronged approach. The opening decades of the fifteenth century found implementation of that strategy as state policy. Noble identity, on the one hand, progressively tied to the state, which meant a shift in the definition of status from history to procedure, and on the other, steadily suppressed individual exceptionality.23 As a whole, the ruling class acquiesced to the new dynamic. Individual identities, however, were constructed through a myriad of circumstances. This construction determined whether or not the articulation of individual identity through the state-enforced criteria was considered sufficient as status-defining factor. Stanley Chojnacki has argued that, since the early decades of the fifteenth century, when the new policies of the “second serrata,” as he called it, gathered speed, state norms became a hegemonic benchmark as a reference point of identification. Individual patricians and their clans would, through assent and dissent expressed in variety of responses, fine-tune positions within a range of choices within that state- defined norm. They would not contest its validity, however, by subscribing

23 Stanley Chojnacki, “Social Identity in Renaissance Venice: the Second Serrata,” Renais- sance Studies 8:4 (1994), 341–58; Reinhold Mueller, “Espressioni di status soziale a Vene- zia dopo la serrata del Maggior Consiglio,” Studi Veneti offerti a Gaetano Cozzi (Venice: Il Cardo, 1992), 53–61. the miracle of san lorenzo 35 to alternative standards of social identification. Introducing some fine- tuning into this blanket assertion seems warranted. Viewed against such a background, the miracle of San Lorenzo either refers to a social reality in which the state-defined criteria had not yet taken root—which was still the case even in the decades around the turn of the fourteenth century— or contended outright their hegemonic validity. The emphasis on Andrea Vendramin’s exclusive position vis-à-vis the divinity, and the prefe‑ rence afforded him by Mézières and the Cross itself, are not fully com- patible with the principles of the second serrata. The numinous might have favored the city, but its choices were not subject to the authorities’ policies. By stressing that specific form of exceptionality, the Vendramin enhanced and justified the characteristics confirming their membership in the progressively exclusive ruling class. The exceptionality that this affiliation with the divine conferred was, by virtue of its independence from human political action, an alternative validation of identity, one that floated the hegemonic status of governmental norms and standards. The Vendramin were searching for new identity-asserting factors in the last quarter of the fourteenth and the opening decades of the fifteenth century. They clearly were not prepared to accept the social standards devised by the patrician leadership as the only ones to which to conform. Some decades later, their rejection of these norms finds expression in the visual rendering of the miracle, providing us with further evidence that the government’s hegemony in matters of constructing noble social identity were actively contested throughout the fifteenth century. How much of these accounts were part of the textual rendition of the miracle that had been recorded in 1370, with its exaltation of upper-class individual social mobility, is difficult to say. Still, no clear reason exists to doubt that the main direction of the account in the incunabulum, with its focus on supernatural action, emphasized Vendramin’s individual status. If the incunabulum is indeed true to the original scripted text of the miracle, it provides testimony to Vendramin’s aspirations. If the text were composed or modified after 1381, it ratified his noble status. The numinous agent had already demonstrated its preference of Vendramin, by choosing, through Mézières’ decision, Vendramin’s confraternity to host its earthly conduit. It sealed that choice by further choosing only Vendramin to retrieve the relic at San Lorenzo’s, and by choosing to reveal itself one more time by saving him from financial loss. In whatever form these choices were embodied, the preference was already an established fact by the time of Vendramin’s ennoblement. The intervention of San Lorenzo fundamentally endorsed Vendramin’s social career by an agent whose 36 chapter two legitimacy was not subject to negotiation. It may not be purely a matter of personal devotion that Andrea’s widow, Gianetta, took the veil and retired to San Lorenzo after his death. Her choice underscores the special place that the foundation of San Lorenzo had acquired for the family whose fortunes were upheld by the divine right, there and then.24 By the later decades of the fifteenth century, as the confraternity conceived of the idea of a new pictorial cycle in honor of the Cross and commissioned the incunabula perhaps, among other things, as a guide to the artists, more poignant reasons stressed the relevance of the miracle at San Lorenzo. Its special attention to Andrea Vendramin made more sense as the fifteenth century wore on. The Vendramin family continued its economic, social, and political ascent. In 1404, Zaccharia Vendramin headed one of the republic’s most important governing bodies as one of the three heads of the Quarantia.25 In the 1430–1450s, Andrea and Luca Vendramin, the sons of Bartolomeo, appeared among the families most frequently elected to the Senate, a testimony to their political commitment and rising prestige among the politically active Venetian elite.26 They also enjoyed enough wealth, if the chronicler Malipiero is to be trusted, to fill up to two galleys on the Alexandria run (loaded with costly spices), all by themselves.27 On several occasions, Vendramin operations involved Antonio, Zaccaria’s son: the family held together.28 Throughout the fifteenth century, members of the family consistently held top offices in the Serenissima.29 The family’s crowning achievement came with the election of Andrea Vendramin, the grandson of the elder Andrea, the guardian grande, himself a member of the scuola, as doge in 1476.30 The link to the

24 ASV CIN, b. 208, Pietro Tibertini, has # 5 on loose leaf, dated November 22, 1398, updated May 4, 1399, Gianneta daughter of Mafio Ingegneri, widow of Andrea Vendramin. Gianetta had become a nun at San Lorenzo and willed to be buried there. 25 Luzzato, I prestiti della Repubblica di Venezia, 244. 26 See the evidence in Andrea Muzzato, “Problems and possibilities of constructing a research database. The Venetian case,” Storia di Venezia. Rivista, vol. II (2004), tables on pages 29–30. 27 Domenico Malipiero, Annali Veneti dall anno 1457 all 1500, ed. by Francesco Longo and Agostino Sagredo, Parte quinta, Archivio storico italiano 1st series, 7: 2, (1844), 661. 28 See an example in ASV CIN, b. 149, notary Vettor Pomino, paper register 1434–1438, f. 32r, dated July 19, 1436, where the three Vendramin made a Bolonese merchant their factor. 29 See the database The Rulers of Venice, 1332–1524. Interpretations, Methods, Database. Compiled by Benjamin Kohl, Antonio Muzzato, and Monique O’Connell, version 4.0, 2.26.2009, an e-book available at http://rsa.fmdatabase.com/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=venice4–0%20 intact&-loadframes. 30 The future doge became a member on March 16, 1423, see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 37r. the miracle of san lorenzo 37

Vendramins carried some of their éclat to the collective body of the confraternity as well. Not through coincidence did Gentile Bellini decide—or was perhaps asked—to portray the guardian Vendramin with the face of his grandson, the later doge, whom he knew personally.31 The interest was mutual. The family, too, thought the continuing affiliation with the scuola and its precious relic an important component of their public and civic identity. As time progressed, the connection and the occurrence of San Lorenzo were increasingly emphasized. The first generation after the guardian grande, his sons Bartolomeo and Zaccaria, even without mention of the Cross or San Lorenzo in their wills, left small bequests to San Giovanni’s but made arrangements to be accompanied to their last resting place by the confraternity.32 However, in 1472, while still a procuratore of San Marco, Bartolomeo’s son Andrea Vendramin bequeathed outright a lavish gift of state bonds to the confraternity in his will. He, too, requested the confraternity march at his funeral.33 A few years after his death, in 1484, two of Zaccaria’s grandsons, Girolamo and Giovanni, bequeathed real estate of significant value to serve as a hospice for twelve destitute confraternal brothers. In the lengthy explanation of their pious donation, they cited family devotion to the Cross as well as the elder Andrea Vendramin’s piety and reputation. They also mentioned that the Cross had worked innumerable miracles, but even though the last miracle had occurred just four years earlier, they specifically described the miracle at the bridge of San Lorenzo and the elder Vendramin’s role in that event. Devotion went hand in hand with emphasizing the family’s special status.34 In 1486, several members of the family, including the sons of Doge

31 A miniature in the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam portraying Doge Andrea Ven- dramin bears marked resemblance to the face of the elder Vendramin. The painting, Portrait of a Doge, Cardinal, and Secretary, was done by an artist in the Bellini workshop and the face might have been painted by Gentile Bellini himself, see Franz Heinemann, Giovanni e i Belliniani vol. 1 (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1962), 616. Howard Collins, “Time, Space, and Gentile Bellini’s The Miracle of the True Cross at the Ponte San Lorenzo (Portraits of Catherina Cornaro and Pietro Bembo),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th series, 100 (1982), 201–8 noted the identification on 206 n. 2, but his argument of three or even four temporal planes in the painting is tenuous. 32 ASV, ANT b. 575, # 722 and ibid., b. 364, f. 56r. Both of them left very small bequests, 20 ducats each, to San Giovanni, which is a paltry sum given their wealth. By way of comparison, Bartolomeo left 2000 for each of his three daughters’ dowry. 33 ASV ANT, b. 870, f. 74v; he bequeathed two thousand ducats in state bonds. 34 ASV SG SGE, Instrumenti, Reg. 89 (1324–1666), f. 86. ASV SG SGE Reg. 34, Catastico 1323–1495 (compiled 1550), f. 145r contains the record of the donation of a house by Geronimo and Giovanni Vendramin, great-grandsons of the guardian grande Vendramin through his son Zaccaria and grandson Antonio in 1484. The documentation of Giovanni 38 chapter two

Vendramin, Paolo and Alvise as well as a nephew and another relative, joined the confraternity; and more followed in the 1490s.35 Alvise made a bequest to San Giovanni’s.36 The pattern continued in the sixteenth century, with men of different branches of the clan consistently becoming members.37 The intimate connection to the relic that the family claimed is perhaps best illustrated by Titian’s family portrait, executed ca. 1543–1547. This portrait of Gabriele and Andrea Vendramin with the latter’s seven sons depicts the group adoring San Giovanni’s crucifix with the fragments of the True Cross.38 Finally, when Marco Barbaro composed the family stems of the Venetian noble houses, he opened the Vendramin line with Luca but knew nothing about him. Of the elder Andrea however, he knew and recorded two important facts: the latter’s contribution to the war of Chioggia, which netted him the noble status, and the miracle at San Lorenzo with Andrea Vendramin’s involvement in rescuing the fragment of the precious wood.39 The elder Andrea’s involvement in the miracle of San Lorenzo had become a foundational myth for the family—a myth that became highly important with Doge Andrea’s ascendance, a crucial component of their social identity into the sixteenth century. The family clearly felt compelled to stress that exclusive supernatural support. Regardless of their rapid incorporation into the politically most powerful and socially most prominent nucleus of the Venetian ruling class, the Vendramins had only recently arrived. Their citizen and Geronimo’s fund or commissaria is in ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 302, filza A, where f. 1 is the simple notarial act dated March 26, 1484, while f. 2r–4r and f. 18r–20v contain two transcripts of the lengthy explanation of their motives that the Vendramins made the day before and gave separately to the scuola. 35 A list of the scuola’s members, possibly from the 1480s, mentions several figures of the Vendramin clan: Giovanni, son of Antonio, Antonio, son of Geronimo, Alvise, son of Doge Andrea, who had passed away, Zaccharia Vendramin, also deceased in 1486, and Leonardo, son of Lucca Vendramin, ASV SG SGE Reg. 12, no pagination. The list in the already mentioned Reg. 6, in the part composed in 1489–1490 has Geronimo son of Anto- nio, and Lucca Vendramin, AVS SG SGE Reg. 6, no pagination. Giovanni, son of Alvise and grandson of Doge Andrea appears on a list made in 1486 in the patrician’s segment, see ASV SG SGE Reg. 11, no pagination. A latter hand added “1491” next to his name, indicating his demise. 36 ASV ANT, b. 870, parchment register, f. 65r–v. 37 ASV GS SGE, Reg. 14, a list of members with a mariegola dated to 1545, f. 11r lists Andrea Vendramin son of Zaccaria in 1504, f. 13r, Zaccaria Vendramin son of Zaccaria, in 1520, and f. 14r Andrea Vendramin son of Luca in 1544. 38 Peter Pouncey, “The Miraculous Cross in Titian’s ‘Vendramin Family’,” Journal of the Wartburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2 (1938–39), 191–93. For the portrait see Harold E. Wethey, Titian. Vol. 2. The Portraits (London: Phaidon, 1971), fig. 136–40. 39 Marco Barbaro, Arbori de’ patritii venete, ASV Miscellanea Cod., I. Storia Veneziana. VII.33, f. 199r. the miracle of san lorenzo 39 status would have hardly been forgotten against the background of leading noble clans who could trace their genealogy through several centuries. In 1476, Andrea Vendramin won election with a slim majority and apparent vote manipulation. Significant opposition existed in the electors’ Council of Forty-One, overcome by his relatives among the older families. Patricians of ancient stripes openly expressed their disdain for the newly arrived Vendramin.40 A year into his reign, Antonio Feleto, a member of an eminent cittadino family with long roots in the republic’s legal administration, a lawyer, and a former employee of Vendramin’s, maligned him publicly by stating that the Forty-One must have been hard pressed to select a doge since they could not find anyone better than a cheese-monger.41 That attitude is not accidental. The last quarter of the fifteenth century revealed an increasingly hard perception of the divisions in the Venetian social hierarchy, especially of the differences between the upper crust of the wealthy, elite cittadini, and the patrician nobility. The latter began emphasizing more rigorously their aristocratic status and the distinctions that set them apart from even the most prominent commoners. The younger Andrea Vendramin, the future doge, was touted as “the most beautiful youth” in Venice by the middle of the century; but that description, the service to the Serenissima, and the commercial and real estate wealth his family commanded, were apparently not considered sufficient.42 The confraternity’s decision to commission a new painting cycle, in which the elder Vendramin figured prominently as the Cross’ chosen personage, bolstered the Vedramin position as well-established

40 According to Sanudo, the elections were outright flawed, see Angela Caracciolo Aricò, ed., Marin Sanudo il Giovane, Le Vite dei Dogi (1474–1494), vol. 1 (Padua: Antenore, 1989), 67. Filippo Tron, Vendramin’s major opponent, stated that Andrea Vendramin was not qualified for a doge, since he had only been ennobled in the aftermath of the war of Chioggia, ibid., p. 70. 41 Malipiero, Annali Veneti, 666–7. Malipiero records that Feleto used the word casar- uol, which can mean food-seller or cheese-monger as well as anyone engaged in trade with “greasy” products such as oil. Feleto was sentenced to two years in prison and exile for life, but he surely vented a common sentiment. 42 For the rapid accumulation of substantial real estate property by the fraterna of Andrea and Luca Vendramin in the middle quarters of the fifteenth century see Elizabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse” Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge, (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 1992), 427–8, and additional evidence in ASV, CIN, b. 195, # 5, loose parchment folios for 1435 and 1444. Doge Andrea Vendramin listed several of his houses in the will he had prepared in 1472 while still procuratore di San Marco, see ASV ANT, b. 870, parchment register, f. 74r–77r. It is at least indicative that the second miracle of the Cross related to Andrea Vendramin and is concerned with the saving of his oil-laden ships at sea tells also how he was alerted to the trouble on the water while asleep and dreaming about a blaze that was consuming his house in Venice. 40 chapter two members of the Venetian political leadership. It also paid testimony to the scuola’s corporate position as conduit of God’s grace. Fully, the spirit of the late fifteenth-century outburst of artistic and architectural energy strengthened the linkages to the supernatural in what were to be some of the city’s darkest hours. It was also contemporary to another massive investment in the symbolic self-promotion of the family, the construction of the tomb of Doge Andrea Vendramin in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi. Executed by Tullio Lombardo in 1493–94, the tomb has been considered the most important funerary monument and the benchmark of the architectural and artistic sophistication of late fifteenth-century Venice ever since.43 The cognitive aesthetics of Lombardo’s sculptures and Bellini’s painting together constructed a visual reality that proffered solid proof of the greatness of Venice, the devotion of its people, the divine grace lavished upon them, and the role of the Vendramin as the human linkage between all of these things. If the Vendramin felt somewhat defen- sive against the background of late fifteenth-century social adjustments, the investment in the artistic projection of their rank and status provided unshakable testimony for their membership in the Venetian chosen elite, both figuratively and literally. Even if they felt secure enough in their position after Doge Vendramin’s election, an artistic tour de force was certainly in synch with the general mood of the time. As refined contemporaries knew, beauty was efficacious, and miraculous beauty even more so. The textual renditions of the miracle of San Lorenzo and their supposed prototypes in the confraternity’s books dovetail well with the principal premises and shifts in the social constitution of the city in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The “virtual cover” and alternative proof for the veracity of the texts, the authenticity of the miracles, and the efficacy of the relic, the large canvas by Gentile Bellini, had similar social underpinnings. The reference point here can not only be seen as the continuous exaltation of the Vendramin, which looms large indeed. Note also that the aesthetic medium allows for another strand to enter the reception of the miracle, strengthening the message of the textual narratives and adding elements only comprehended through the gaze. Bellini’s painting supplies three specific visual clues amplifying the implication of the texts. First, his composition focuses on a heroic

43 For Doge Vendramin’s tomb see Wendy S. Sheard, “Sanudo’s List of Notable Things in Venetian Churches and the Date of the Vendramin Tomb,” Yale Italian Studies, vol. 1:3 (1977), 219–68. the miracle of san lorenzo 41 individual, the guardian grande Andrea Vendramin. The painting stresses the exceptionality of its central figure. Right in the middle of the frenetic activity to retrieve the Cross, Vendramin appears to advance unperturbed and with decorum, as a true patrician should. He is closer to the viewer than the other participants in the istoria, and pride of place stresses his social importance, just as being the closest one to the Cross stresses charismatic sanction of his special position. The confraternity brothers and onlookers in the scene appear cognizant of what had just happened and appear animated and in motion. Some actually point to the Cross. Others gesticulate, raise their arms, or kneel in prayer. Gondoliers remove their hats or turn their eyes upward to the heavens to acknowledge this extraordinary phenomenon. In the middle of all this, Vendramin calmly floats forward, holding the Cross aloft, his white robes trailing behind, with hardly a ripple disturbing the calm surface of the water. The brothers who attempted to retrieve the Cross swim hard toward the relic, pushing forward with mighty arm strokes. Vendramin, in just as much depth of water, proceeds smoothly toward the embankment. Second, Bellini conveys the motion of the figure of Vendramin. The guardian progresses regally, his body upward, halfway out of the water, hardly in the stance of a swimmer. The visual perception achieved, rather, is one of Vendramin carrying the Cross, the relic supported and propelled by its bearer. With what may appear an awkward element in an otherwise seamlessly executed scenery of animated activity, Bellini in fact accomplished a perfect visual correspondence to the implicit suggestion of the textual narratives that the Cross had chosen Vendramin for the role of its human savior. Taken together, composition and rendition of motion deliver the message that Vendramin’s stance in the social reality that enveloped him was not of human making, but rather a product of divine favor. Such visual statement was not consistent with the institutions and policies of social engineering throughout a century that considered the top citizens, patricians and elite cittadini alike, exclusive creatures of the state. Painting the guardian with Doge Vendramin’s face may have softened or deflected the impact. A layer of different meaning may have been deposited, identifying the painting as an ideological prop for the evolving position of the doges. At the time of the painting, official propaganda articulated an image of the doge as someone more than “first among equals” or a “tavern sign,” as a deprecating saying portrayed. Rather, the doge became an icon of Venice, the living embodiment of the Venetian polity, an exceptional figure, just as Vendramin appears exceptional in the painting. The tight control and restrictions on the first executive’s real powers remained in place, but the 42 chapter two doge remained the embodiment of a state that had come of age and correspondingly enjoyed a primacy that set him apart, for the duration of his service, from other members of the patriciate.44 Nonetheless, the message is clear, even more conspicuous than the indication of Vendramin’s bona fama that induced Mézières to donate the relic itself. That the current doge was a Vendramin did not hurt either. With the Cross’ assistance and Bellini’s artistic talent, the Vendramin clan stressed that whether as cittadino, patrician, or doge, their progenitor’s and their current identities were independent of man-made conventions. On that count, Bellini’s concept of Vendramin comes as close to the assertion of self-fashioning as possible. Thirdly, Bellini introduced a particular element that the texts lack, and for good reason. Anachronisms abound in contemporary narrative painting for a variety of motives, and Bellini made no exception. The canvas reveals several temporal planes. The visual identification of the two Vendramin, the guardian and the doge, is one case in point, as also are the highly individualized facial features of some spectators of the miracle and individuals kneeling on the platform on the right-hand side. For the figure of Vendramin, however, another anachronistic representation offers special import. For, as he floats toward the embankment, the guardian stares straight ahead at another illustrious figure. Kneeling on that embankment, Caterina Cornaro, the Venetian-born Queen of Cyprus of a century later (a time when the Vendramin had allied with her family), devoutly meets his gaze on the same level, providing both eyewitness proof for the miracle and the aura of top nobility toward which Vendramin strives effort- lessly. Once again, Bellini intimated that the composite, extra-temporal Vendramin figure he created actually possessed a multi-layered status not wholly dependent on Venetian political conventions. On the surface, Caterina’s presence advertised the Vendramin relationships to powerful old houses. Doge Vendramin was Caterina’s in-law, having married a son, Paolo, to her sister, Cornelia, in 1473. Marco Cornaro, Caterina’s father, a member of San Giovanni’s, may have been instrumental in the election of the younger Vendramin as doge in 1476.45 Furthermore, Caterina stood

44 Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 204–5 citing a law in ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 13, f. 78v of July 5, 1447. 45 Paolo Vendramin married Marco Corner’s daughter and Caterina’s sister Cornelia in 1473, see Marco Barbaro, Libro di nozze patrizie, BNM, Ms. It. VII. 156 (8492), and Benjamin Arbel, “A royal family in republican Venice: the Cypriot legacy of Corner della regina,” Studi Veneziani, 16 (1988), 131–52, at 138, citing Marin Sanudo, Le vite dei dogi, RIS, XXII, 1204; idem, “The Reign of Caterina Corner (1473–1489) as a Family Affair,” Studi veneziani n.s., 26 the miracle of san lorenzo 43 for Cyprus, from where the Cross had come. She was thus a qualified witness to the manifestation that confirmed its authenticity. But above all, Caterina was queen. In spite of her abdication in 1489 and the assumption of her prerogatives by the corporate political body of the Serenissima, Caterina was enveloped in the special éclat of the royal personages until her death in 1510. The direct visual link between her and Vendramin in Bellini’s painting is as complex an affair as Vendramin’s figure, but its meaning implies status by affiliation to a royal person rather than private figure or state servant. Her presence, therefore, remains another expression of a quest for identity that resisted the attempts of the state to exclude other factors in molding the identities of its top classes. Gentile Bellini’s conceptualization of the painting, on both a compo- sitional and individual figures’ plane, imparts on the occurrence a meaning that made Vendramin and his position central to the entire cycle of canvases on the miracles. That concept is what no less a connoisseur than Giorgio Vasari concluded after surveying the paintings in the 1560s.46 Vasari’s trained eye perceived yet another, un-theorized and implicit component of the painting that is worth discussion. The argument is based on the conjecture of a social correspondence between Gentile Bellini’s own career status as a member of the profession and Venetian citizen on the one hand, and the fundamental meanings embedded in the rendition of the miracle on the other. By the time Bellini was commissioned to paint the miracle of San Lorenzo, he had reached the peak of his career as an artist and member of the respectable upper-class Venetian society of the later fifteenth century.47 He held a remarkable socially upward career, considering his family origins. His father, Jacopo Bellini, son of Nicolo and member of San Giovanni’s who established the Bellini’s reputation as foremost artists and masters of one of the mere two recognized painting workshops in the city, began as the son of a tinsmith perhaps not even native to the city.48 This

(1993), 67–86, at 77 and n. 38, and the Appendix; as well as David Hunt and Iro Hunt, eds., Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (Nicosia: Trigraph, 1989). Marco Corner of San Cassian is listed among the scuola’s noble members in AVS GS SGE, Reg. 12, no foliation. 46 Cited after Brown, Narrative Painting, 235–6. 47 See Jürg Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985), 1–38 for Gentile’s curriculum vitae and ibid. 79–80 for the San Lorenzo painting for San Giovanni Evangelista. 48 Jacopo Filippo Foresti, the prolific chronicler, mentions that Gentile was born in Padua. The reference may be just to the accident of birth, since Jacopo worked in Padua, but it may also indicate the family’s Paduan provenance, see Brown, Narrative Painting, 55; see also Wuthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 240. 44 chapter two ancestry of manual work would have defined Jacopo as a popolano, but his talent guaranteed him status as cittadino. Gentile ploughed ahead in the same spirit. When he took over the business upon his father’s death, probably in 1469, he had already been granted the honorific title of Palatine Knight by Emperor Frederick III for undefined services. Four years later, he supervised the restoration and repair of the decorative program of the Great Council’s hall, a commission greatly adding to his honor. In 1479, he received another knightly title, “Golden Knight,” accentuated by the gift of a heavy gold chain from the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. He proudly displayed this chain on a medal he struck himself. The Grand Council addressed him as fidelis civis noster. For the grandson of a popolano tinsmith, Gentile did quite well. In 1492, he served as guardian da matin for the scuola of San Marco, a position only open to elite cittadini originarii. The office provided excellent commentary on his status as the imperial honor of knighthood.49 Gentile’s artistic style, of which the canvases for San Giovanni’s miracle cycle are a good example, mirrors typologically his and his family’s life experience as upward-bound persons. This fact corresponds to the socially mobile career of the Vendramin on a fundamental level. The only difference occurs due to the families starting their ascents at different rungs of the social ladder. Both families, however, climbed to the respective limits of their social progression. In Gentile, the Bellini reached as far as allowed, only the very top of Venetian society being off limits. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Gentile chose to portray his synopsis of Venice, the great procession in the piazza San Marco, with the cathedral’s top cut off. As for the Vendramin, by virtue of their head start, the sky was the limit. Gentile’s rendering of The miracle at the bridge of San Lorenzo bears the marks of his artistic sensibility in manner, color, style, and composition as much as it embodies his social experiences as a member of the upper cittadini class. The painting is bright, open, and airy. A generous amount of light pours onto the wide-open scenery. The dynamic rendition offers a winding double perspective and considerable amount of ener- getic movement enfolding onto a relatively open space. It offers generous room around the central figure. It leads the eye, from the focal point of Vendramin and the Cross, to the stone bridge in the background with

49 ASV SG San Marco, Reg. 135, dated July 15, 1492 cited after Pietro Paoletti, La Scuola Grande di San Marco (Venice: Commune di Venezia, 1929), 137 and translated in David Chambers, ed., Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1970), 56–57. the miracle of san lorenzo 45 the massed confraternity brothers in the middle, and the crowd parts to highlight three figures representing the topmost ranks of the Venetian social hierarchy: a noble, a knight, and a senator. Above these figures flies the scuola’s standard. It draws the eye up, where the sky opens; a comparison with the scuola as the place of the upwardly-mobile tempts the viewer. The perspective on the architecture makes the action appear to enfold outwardly. The buildings, the bridge, and the canal all work to support rather than organize or constrict the space where the action takes place, within hard-defined flat surfaces, corners, and edges. Windows on all floors are thrown wide open or un-shuttered. The entire impression conveyed by Bellini’s style, color, and composition is one of an environment informed by openness, dynamism, and advancement. Decorum and structure afford a central, evidently chosen figure the ample opportunity to “arrive” without obstruction in space, time, and society. The conclusion to which the artist came in interpreting the theme, with all of his existentially determined “luggage,” suggests itself logically. The Miracle at the Bridge of San Lorenzo may be read as an aesthetic metaphor for both Gentile Bellini’s and Andrea Vendramin’s artistic and social careers respectively, exquisitely crafted by the former and accomplished in full by the latter. There is more, however. To use Ervin Goffman’s concept, Bellini’s artistic style “keyed” the rendition of a miraculous action from a century earlier in a different register.50 His style patterned its perception within the semantic field of Vendramin’s ascent not only because it was a typological equivalent to Bellini’s own social experience, but also because the social backcloth of that typology revealed the corporate aspirations of the elite cittadini class. In its entirety, the canvas offers a renewed reminder that, back in 1370 and throughout a good part of the fifteenth century, the Vendramin were not just one family success story but a general inspiration for the elite cittadini originari. They were a metaphor for upward mobility, openness, and social progress, the principal aspirations of elite citizens. As has been argued, one of the principle problems that Cinquecento Venice confronted was finding a balance between the two fundamental social principles of openness and closure.51 For the political

50 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 45. 51 Chojnacki, “Social Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Second Serrata;” idem, “Iden- tity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata,” in Dennis Romano and John Martin, Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City State, 1297–1797 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 263–94; Mueller, “Espressioni di status soziale,” passim. 46 chapter two oligarchy, this issue was decided in the first decade of the century, when a proposal to aggregate new families in the nobility at a patrician house’s extinction fell to defeat in the Great Council. The elite cittadini of the guardian Vendramin’s rank would have liked to think that the jury was still out a full century later. chapter three

Relics, Business, and Nature: The Miracle with Andrea Vendramin’s Oil Ships

A mere week after the Cross manifested itself spectacularly at the bridge of San Lorenzo, the relic performed another miracle, much less public and more utilitarian, but no less dramatic. Saturday night, March 9, 1370, as Andrea Vendramin, guardian grande of the scuola, lay in bed, a troubling dream seized him.1 His house was burning. The fiery impression was so vivid that his heart pounded rapidly. He awoke highly distressed, only to find it a dream. Still, this premonition was far too alarming to ignore. Worried, he descended from bed. Barefoot and clad only in a nightshirt, he threw himself on his knees in supplication before a sacred image.2 Recalling the miracle of the Cross at San Lorenzo’s, he invoked the relic, ardently entreating it to protect him from the danger of conflagration. As he prayed, a gale wind suddenly arose. A storm broke out. The tempest abated before dawn, however, and no sooner had the sky cleared than Vendramin betook himself to the scuola, as confraternal officials

1 The miracle must have occurred on that Saturday, since the first occasion on which the Cross could have manifested itself was the previous Sunday. In 1370 it fell on March 3, and was the first authorized occasion on which the relic could have been taken out on procession after its acquisition the previous December 23, 1369, and while Andrea Ven- dramin was still guardian grande. The elections for a new guardian were to be held on the third Sunday of Lent, which fell on March 17 in 1370. They must have gone as scheduled, but Andrea was still in office on March 19, 1370, when he accepted on behalf of the confraternity eight ducats in gold from the estate of Michele de Laxenola, see ASV CIN, b. 5, Giovanni de Argoiosi, parchment register, f. 14v, during the transitional period before the new executives took over. That leaves the option for the miracle to have occurred on March 16 as well, but since there is no indication that that was Vendramin’s last day in office, I am inclined to accept March 9. The earliest reference for the next guardian grande, Giordano Coffanero I was able to locate is from May 30, 1370, ibid., f. 15r when he appears receiving another bequest. 2 The texts refer to the sacred object as ancona, a term with which fifteenth-century inventories of household objects identify pained images of the Virgin, or icons in the Greek Orthodox style, from where the term and the devotional practice appears to have been borrowed. Venetians were very fond of such images, frequently cited in inventories as having been executed alle greche, or in the Greek style, see Margaret Morse, “Creating sacred space: the religious visual culture of the Renaissance Venetian casa,” Renaissance Studies 21:2 (2007), 151–84, at 159. The Virgin was a major fire-protecting power in Venice, see the works in Venezia in fumo below, note 4; remarkably, however, Vendramin initially addressed the Virgin but quickly hedged his bet and turned to the Cross. 48 chapter three customarily attended on Sundays. But this was no ordinary weekend. March 10, 1370, fell on the second Sunday of Lent, and the confraternity was set to march through the city on the second of its regular Lent processions. In addition, this ceremony was the last to be supervised by Vendramin, since his term of office was just about to expire. On the following Sunday, the third Sunday of Lent, according to the scuola’s Mariegola, the General Chapter was scheduled to convene in order to elect a new guardian grande.3 In the first hours of that day, as officials gathered in the meeting hall, two mariners appeared at the door demanding to see the guardian. Sea captains, these men were charged with two ships carrying olive oil for Vendramin’s soap manufacturing business. On the night before this meeting, the two ships survived a terrible storm, only because a miraculous apparition of a brightly shining cross in the sky had led them safely to harbor. When asked about the kind of cross, the sailors replied that they did not know; but when conducted to the True Cross in the albergo, they immediately recognized it and fell on their knees, suf- fused in tears, to worship the relic and offer thanks for delivering them from peril. The Cross proved its powers again. It saved lives and saved Vendramin from severe financial loss. Fire on a cluster of islands densely populated with wooden structures and surrounded by water, two vessels loaded with a highly flammable commodity, scores of men on board, valuable cargo, and a sizable investment, all at the mercy of destructive forces: these key components of the being in the world were quintessentially Venetian. The divine broke into high profile as it shed light on the chief anxieties of the perennial Venetian struggle with the elements. More importantly, perhaps, this miraculous story highlights a peculiarly Venetian view on the complex connections between men’s business, God, and nature. The narrative of the story explores the domain of each of these powers, assigning agency where due and mapping out specific spheres of action. Contrary to expectations, these powers appear to be in a balanced state. Each functions in full accordance with its nature. None transgresses into the clearly demarcated province of the others. The texts fix the actors in their own spatial and temporal planes in a realistic, pragmatic manner and afford a glimpse into the layers of meaning that coalesced together to define exactly what counts as a miracle a la Veneziana.

3 Gian Andrea Simeone, ed., La Mariegola della Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evange- lista a Venezia (1261–1457) (Venice: Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, 2003), 128. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 49

To begin, Andrea Vendramin had good reasons to worry about fire. Devastating fires frequently occurred in Venice, with the cityscape continuously remolded by blazes large and small.4 In 1370, Vendramin owned residences in two separate parishes, San Cassian and Santa Focsa. The accounts do not specify where he was at the time.5 The San Cassian residence was situated closely to the densest concentration of buildings in the Rialto area, containing flammable material prone to catching fire. His businesses and shops were stoked with oil-derived combustible ingredients and commodities. At the time of his disturbing dream, the city had just begun to develop a systematic policy of fire-fighting, still quite inadequate. Since the beginning of the fourteenth century, increasing ad hoc legislation on fire prevention evolved, but even a blanket prohibition on keeping lanterns, candles, and open fires burning nightly in shops at the Rialto, in 1340, exempted precisely some of Vendramin’s businesses, specifically the cheese-mongers, oil vendors, and vendors of processed meats.6 Small wonder he lost sleep over a dream of fire. Still, connecting Vendramin’s dream to a specific message implied by the text is nearly impossible. The causes and significance of dreams, including their importance as signs of forewarning of specific future events, were subject to a wide roster of interpretations by the late fourteenth century. The Somnium Danielis, the most popular and widespread work in the genre of dream books proper, designated dreams of fire as representations of general warnings of danger. If we take the wording of the text literally, Vendramin interpreted

4 The history of fires in medieval Venice is still to be written. Early modern antiquarians have compiled lists of the major conflagrations that plagued the city, culled from dozens of sources, see for example the lists in Codici Cicogna 773 and 1144 in the library of Museo Civico Correr. None of them mentions a fire during Andrea Vendramin’s lifetime. Modern researches have not thus far followed through with a systematic inquiry and prefer more essayistic approaches. See casual references in Bartolomeo Cecchetti, La vita dei Venexiani nel ‘300 (Venice, 1885), vol. 1, esp. 103–6; Duccio Balestracci, “La lotta contro il fuoco (XIII– XVI secolo),” Città e servizi sociali nell’ Italia dei secoli XII–XV, Atti del Dodicesimo Convegno di Studi del Centro Italiano di studi di storia e d’arte, Pistoia, 9–12 ottobre 1987 (Pistoia, 1990), 417–38; and the contributions to Venezia in fumo: I grandi incdendi della città-fenice Vol. 1, ed. Donatella Calabi (Venice: Leading, 2006). 5 He is referred to as Andree de Vendramino Sancti Cassiani civi nostro in a Senate decision of 1351, see ASV, Senato, Misti 26, f. 53r, March 10, 1351, quoted after Benjamin G. Kohl, The Records of the Venetian Senate on Disk, 1335–1400 (New York: Italica Press, 1997–2001), Kohl Nr 1523. He is also mentioned in the census of 1379, see I prestiti della Repubblica di Venezia (Sec. XIII–XV). Introduzione storica e documenti, ed. Gino Luzzatto (Padua: A. Draghi, 1929), 193. 6 Cecchetti, La vita, 20–21, 40, 105–106, notes also the more systematic policies beginning in 1325. 50 chapter three his own dream thus.7 In light of current dream theory and his businesses, his anxiety seemed quite well-founded, as was his supplication to the Cross. He may or may not have been aware that, at least on one occasion in 1230, another fragment of the True Cross had demonstrated miraculous resistance to fire, remaining intact as a blaze incinerated relics and reams of parchment from the ducal archives in St Mark’s basilica.8 Naturally, in any case, he worried about fire and turned to the most powerful relic close to him. Intriguingly, his forewarning was not followed by an actual conflagration as one would have expected. Instead, a fortuna set things in motion. This night windstorm nearly sent Vendramin’s ships to the bottom of the sea and precipitated the reve lation of the Cross. The term fortuna equates a tempest with the uncontrollable element of chance, as if to stress the need for its taming by a higher power. Unexpected gale winds are the hallmark of the northern Adriatic, and the closer a ship ventures into the shallow waters near the city, the more dangerous those waters become. Sudden squalls of considerable force still rattle the lagoon today. Back in the 1370s, the average vessel under sail could do very little in such weather. These storms are generated from low-pressure atmospheric fronts moving over the east- central Mediterranean. They bring strong winds from the southeast, the sirocco, intensifying as they blow through the narrow main axis of the Adriatic Sea, which is hemmed in by the mountains in Italy and Dalmatia. Upon reaching the Alpine range, the storm interacts with cold air masses, causing a bora, blowing from the northeast and affecting primarily the northern edge of the sea. Venice’s weather is thus situated at the meeting point of a strong northwest-bound air current and the cold secondary west-southwest-bound cross-flow over the Alps and the lagoon of Venice. The expanse of the Adriatic allows the sirocco to generate enough energy to push seawater ahead and produce strong currents, occasionally massive waves and, in the lagoon, acqua alta, flooding the city. While the sirocco picks up strength, it facilitates northbound traffic; but as it reaches gale

7 For Somnia Danielis see Steven R. Fischer, The Complete Medieval Dreambook: A Mul- tilingual, Alphabetical Somnia Danielis Collation (Berlin & Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982), 70. For an overview of medieval dreams see the elegant synthesis of Steven Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). The most pertinent meaning of dreaming of danger is, perhaps, urging the dreamer to act, as Vendramin did immediately upon waking up in terror. 8 Ennio Concina, “Fuochi di medioevo,” in Calabi, ed., Venezia in fumo, 33. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 51 force and meets the bora, the steady air current frequently degenerates into tempests of considerable proportions.9 The sea storm reported in this miracle is not confirmed by independent evidence and can only be scrutinized against the general pattern of storm formation and recorded occurrences in the region during the period. The weather pattern has changed since the 1500s, but some conclusions may be deduced from the available data for the 1300s, accidental as it is. First, much like today, prior to the 1500s the high season for massive storms and sea surges in Venice was autumn, during the months of September, October, and November. March, the beginning of the navigational season and the month in which the miracle occurred, is generally a calmer period. Second, the latter half of the fourteenth century enjoyed, on the whole, a relatively quiet period in that area, with few recorded strong storms and dangerous surges of acqua alta, relatively mild winters, and a lagoon mostly clear of ice during winter. Meteorological factors may be correlated to astronomical shifts, specifically solar activity, which also could have affected weather patterns. The previous period, including the early part of the fourteenth century, enjoyed low solar activity, the so-called Wolf Minimum (1282–1342), and showed a greater frequency though not an extraordinary high density of storm occurrences. Similarly, the weather seemed considerably more perturbed, with a peak of stormi- ness during the following solar minimum known as the Spörer Minimum (1416–1534). In between this periods, a decades-long spell of a climatic optimum occurred, with calmer weather and a minimum of reported storms, acqua alta, and frozen lagoon. Third, the storm-generating factors, the combination of air-sea temperature differential and wind speed and direction, all remained constant, which could cause both massive storms and high sea surges. The cold bora descended upon the warmer water currents in the Adriatic, and the lagoon pushed north in the sirocco. Stormy weather causing shipwrecks and wreaking havoc in the lagoon, as an anomaly, could thus occur during the optimum period, at any time of year. Such exceptions include the well-documented storm of 1380 and the sea surge of 1385, when the lagoon froze over as well. For the later period, two documented storms occurred, respectively on March 18, 1771, and on March 10, 1797, when chilling nightly bora with gale force winds sank ships

9 Dario Camuffo, Caterina Secco, Peter Brimblecombe, and Javier Martin-Vide, “Sea Storms in the Adriatic Sea and the Western Mediterranean during the Last Millennium” Climatic Change 46 (2000), 209–23. 52 chapter three and caused heavy damage. Furthermore, sea surges, affected primarily by meteorological factors, held a virtual constant maximum in the lagoon in the period before the 1500s, with a peak in late autumn, between October and December, and a minor secondary maximum in March. Pulses of bora added impetus to the water masses carried by the sirocco to generate acqua alta. Finally, with the exception of the diversion of the river Brenta to the south (beginning in 1324 and continuing intermittently), by 1370, none of the major hydraulic works that affected fresh water flows in the lagoon (another contributing factor influencing weather in that area) had been completed.10 The prevailing weather patterns in this period dovetail well with the report of this miracle. Andrea Vendramin retired, apparently, free from worry about his cargo at sea. The dream that scared him so much indicates no prior fear about the ships’ fate. The weather had been calm that evening, and the tumultuous wind only picked up after he awoke around midnight. The premonition alluded to possible trouble with his landed property in Venice, and he sought to avert that trouble with fervent prayer to the Cross. His prayer explicitly requested protection from fire. If night- mares feed upon underlying daytime anxieties, his dream vision suggests no clear connection to his oil-laden ships. Due to the Lenten season, Vendramin would likely have not overindulged in food or drink, additional causes of bad dreams. He must have been aware that his oil cargo (and perhaps the ships, if he owned them) was on the high seas or about to arrive, but he showed no signs of concern either at the first indications of a gathering storm or just after the tempest had passed. At dawn, he conducted his usual business at the scuola as if he had nothing to worry about. A merchant with considerable practice in chartering and sailing cargo boats, he must have felt assured that, given the experience of several decades as well as the mild season, his investment would arrive safe and sound. So, the story of the sailors rings true. “This past night was the worst we have ever had,” asserted the captains, “and there has never been such a tempest at sea as that; we truly felt we were about to perish and be lost.” With allowance for dramatic exaggeration, they may not have actually encountered such a violent tempest in their service at sea. The most recent massive sea storm recorded in Venice occurred a quarter of a

10 Camuffo et al., “Sea Storms,” as well as Dario Camuffo, “Analysis of the Sea Surges at Venice from A.D. 782 to 1990” Theoretical and Applied Climatology 47 (1993), 1–14, and “Freezing of the Venetian Lagoon since the 9th Century A.D. in Comparison to the Climate of Western Europe and England” Climatic Change 10 (1987), 43–66. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 53 century earlier, in 1343. Twenty-seven years can dim memories. Although many sailors began their careers at early ages, Vendramin’s captains may not have even been on board ship at the time of that last storm. Because the storm in the miracle is not corroborated independently, it may not have measured up to the proportions of the storms of 1343 and 1380, or perhaps it only affected traffic primarily outside of the lagoon, but it does fit into stormy weather patterns of March documented by later sources. The craft that fought this storm are referred to as navigli, a generic term telling us little more than that they were sailing ships rather than commercial galleys.11 They were likely of the nave latina type: short, round sixty-footers of about 100–200 tons carrying capacity, similar to the ship Vendramin provided in service of the republic during the war of Chioggia.12 These ships were the work mules of Adriatic traffic, with one of two masts, routinely lateen sail-rigged. More rarely but throughout the period, mer- chantmen equipped with square sail as well. Alternatively, the ships might have been marciliane, large, unarmed cargo vessels with a capacity from 100 to about 350 botti, lateeners during the thirteenth and likely the better part of the fourteenth century, when they began to carry square sails. Typically, Chioggians operated the marciliane. A ubiquitous ship in the western Adriatic, the marciliana sported a shallow draft, suitable to the sandy coastal waters and river estuaries from Puglia to the Po. A seventeenth-century regulation of the Cinque savi alla mercanzia indicates that these vessels were, since inception, designed for the coast of Puglia, where they picked up cargos of “oils and almonds, and other commodities of

11 To the best of my knowledge, only Jean-Claude Hocquet, Denaro, navi, e mercanti a Venezia 1200–1600 (Rome: Il Veltro, 1999), 175 identifies naviglio with a small-tonnage craft characteristic for the fourteenth century. See also his La sel et la fortune de Venise Vol. 2. Voiliers et commerce en Méditerranée 1200–1650 (Presses universitaires de Lille, 1979), 97, where he discusses the marciliana, a small round ship popular in the 13th–15th Centu- ries, and averaging between 50 and 100 tons, or 100–200 botte but getting bigger as time progressed. It was a shallow-keeled vessel and could go up rivers, usually had more than one mast, and was not armed. For the sixteenth century, see Claire Judde de Larivière, Naviguer, commercier, gouverner: Économie maritime e pouvoirs à Venise (XVe–XVIe siècle) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 29, who equates naviglio with “nef.” 12 According to the dimensions given by Michael of Rhodes, see the critical edition of Pamela O. Long, David McGee, and Alan Stahl, eds., The Book of Michael of Rhodes: A Fifteenth-Century Maritime Manuscript, 2 vols. (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009). In 1379 Vendramin offered a ship of 200 botti, which would translate into about 120 deadweight tons carrying capacity as estimated by Frederic Lane, 0.6 tons for a botta, see Frederic C. Lane, Venice, a Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 479–80, supplement. 54 chapter three the region” and offered cheap maintenance and operational costs.13 The sailors mentioned that the storm tore up their sails and brought down their masts, using the plural, arbori; but since two ships were involved, we cannot determine whether they were one- or two-masted craft, the latter being quite common in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Venice. Either way, while the midsize and large lateen-equipped bulk carriers offered the advantage of sailing very close to the wind and catching the lightest breeze, the large yardarm made them clumsy and difficult to operate in stormy weather. By the latter half of the fourteenth century, Venetian maritime statutes, taking into consideration the square-rigged cog’s easier operation, had reduced the requirement for manning a 240- ton ship to twenty-eight crew members, of which eight could be appren- tices younger than twenty years. On the one- or two-masted lateeners of the same size, earlier regulations required a crew of fifty men.14 Reduced crew made for cheaper freight but further affected the ship’s functioning in bad weather. In such conditions, the lateen sail needed to be lowered down and replaced by a storm sail, a procedure requiring the quick judgment of the shipmaster and quicker work still on the part of all hands on deck. Hesitating to substitute for the fair weather sail in the hope of riding the storm, combined with a sudden outbreak of fierce gusts of wind could well result in fractured yardarms, sails torn to pieces, and broken masts. The craft in the miracle were also heavy, single-decked vessels, since the mariners had to dispose of the casks and boxes (casse & botte) and other goods on deck in order to lighten the load. Botta, besides being a Venetian measure, is a large wooden-staved cask, or tun, frequently full of wine, used for wholesale shipments to European and Asian markets.15 As was often the case, the vessels appear to have been overburdened and vulnerable to turbulence. The load on the deck was piggyback freight, though; the valuable cargo of oil was housed below deck and remained on board ship. The sailors usually had no way to quickly dispose of the oil or did not dare. Throwing deck cargo overboard while keeping the heavier main load in

13 Hocquet, Denaro, navi e mercanti, 202–204. 14 Frederic C. Lane, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1992), 38–40. 15 See Frederic C. Lane, “Tonnage, medieval and modern,” Economic History Review, s.II, 17 (1964), 213–33; Ugo Tucci, “Un problema di metrologia navale: la botte veneziana,” Studi Veneziani, ix (1967), 201–246; Jean-Claude Hocquet, “Tonnage ancien et moderne: botte de Venise et tonneau anglais,” Revue Historique, 281 (1989), 349–60; and Ronald Zupko, Italian weights and measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Ameri- can Philosophical Society, 1981), 34–9 for the variety of meanings of botta. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 55 the hold increased the stability of either type of ship struggling under buffeting winds in the shallow waters of the lagoon. Doing so allowed the ship to navigate—a crucial operation. With the masts down in a strong driving wind, most likely a bora from the northeast pushing them toward shore, the sailors understandably panicked. The storm was also vicious enough to break the ships’ rudders, obstructing navigation. Such a misfortune was more likely on a lateen-sail vessel. The steering devices most commonly in use on such craft, by the last quarter of the fourteenth century, were rudders of either box or modified-box quarter rudders or swing quarter rudders. The stern mount, curved or straight, appeared on Venetian war galleys by the first quarter of the 1300s. It was not common and then used sparingly on Adriatic cargo boats throughout the fourteenth century. The stern mount was also less likely to break under side pressure.16 Quarter- rudders, mounted on the sides of the ship toward the stern, offered infe- rior maneuverability but held a major advantage compared to the stern mount. They could be relatively easily replaced with large spars, or even planks pried from the deck of the ship and shoved through the mounts or rope loops on the side of the vessel. A two-masted lateneer could continue to operate in such conditions without a back rudder if it was originally outfitted thus. Loss of the rudder(s) was not such a disaster, since the ship could continue to negotiate obstacles, especially in the lagoon. The rudder kept the prow properly oriented when tackling waves and wind gusts and helped the ship follow course.17

16 The summary of prevailing ship types, sail, rigging, and steering is after Cesare Levi, Navi Venete da codici, marmi, e dipinti (Venezia: Filipi, 1983, first ed. 1892), who has several depictions of late fourteenth-century single-masted square-rigged boats and single- and two-masted lateneers with back rudders; and Lillian Martin, The Art and Archaeology of Venetian Ships and Boats (London: Chatham Publishing, 2001), 110–19, 131, 161–3, and fig. 105, 147, 148. For the seaworthiness and drawbacks of lateen-rigged ships see also Ian C. Campbell, “The Lateen Sail in World History” Journal of World History 6:1 (1995), 1–23; F. Castro, N. Fonseca, and F. Ciciliot, “A Quantitative Look at Mediterranean Lateen- and Square-rigged Ships,” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 37 (2008), 347–59. 17 I make these conjectures on the basis of the excellent study of Lawrence Mott, The Development of the Rudder: A Technological Tale (London: Chatham Publishing, 1997), especially his conclusion of the versatility of the quarter-rudder. In a personal communication, Dr. Mott was so kind to elaborate, confirming that it was possible to fashion a quarter-rudder from any long spar on board ship, that single-masted ships of such size, equipped with a quarter-rudder, could improvise a replacement while underway, and that a two-masted lateener or cog, originally outfitted with a back rudder could relatively easily navigate without a rudder at all in case of emergency. I use the occasion to thank Dr. Mott for his kind assistance. 56 chapter three

Nonetheless, with their masts broken, the sails tattered, and the original rudders lost, Vendramin’s ships required assistance from on high to limp into port at St Mark’s.18 They got it, most unexpectedly, with the brightly shining Cross in the stormy sky appearing to lead their way to safety. Here again, the manner in which the supernatural intervention chose to manifest itself appears to have been finely calibrated to the conditions of the ships and the state of affairs in the air and water, as told in the miracle. The ships lost propulsion power, but they were buoyant, lighter, and, if the conjecture about their stirring devices is correct, capable of basic navigation. The storm passed as quickly as it started, apparently without need- ing divine interference. In a matter of hours, calmer weather returned before dawn. As the same squall that hit Venice battered the ships, and the stormy front was neither large nor strong enough to merit recording by the contemporaries, they must have been close to, if not already in, the lagoon, and unfortunately caught up in local turbulence on the last leg of their journey. Had they been farther away in the open sea, they likely could not have arrived in the short time span from the moment deep at night when Vendramin awoke to feel the wind rising to the moment they docked in safely at daylight. Dreams occur in the fifth phase of sleep, known as REM, happening no earlier that an hour and a half into the beginning of the first sleep cycle. If Vendramin retired at mid-evening or later, the nightmare must have visited him shortly before midnight. In such a timeframe, the vessels could not be carried by the water current pushed city-wards by the sirocco while drifting with the aid of the falling bora. In addition, the night of March 9, 1370, began a full moon phase. The event fell, therefore, on the date of astronomical alignment of the moon, earth, and sun known as syzygy, which causes the maximum tide in Venice, the “spring tide,” at new and full moon phases. The combination of a strong sea current, steady wind from the south, and surg- ing tide all working in the same direction (perpendicular to the coast at Venice under the impact of the most important factor, the sirocco) most likely provided sufficient propulsion to carry the ships to port. All they needed were visibility to avoid the treacherous obstacles in the lagoon, and guidance as to the direction of their final destination. The Cross fur- nished both, serving, as the sailors said, as their beacon, guide, and pilot with its brightly shining light.

18 On the portuary system in Venice see Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Le port de Venise à la fin du moyen âge: entre la lagune et la ville un ‘effet’ portuaire?” in I porti come impresa economica, ed. Simonetta Cavacchiocchi (Paris: Le Monnier, 1989), 625–52. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 57

That light, too, might have been a miraculous alignment of the divine will with the progression of another natural factor. On the night of March 9, the moon hanging over the lagoon was sufficiently bright to provide it. Moreover, for observers in Venice and southeast of the city, where the ships were likely located the moon’s movement on the nightly sky charted a trajectory that, by the end of the astronomical day, led the sailors precisely toward the city. The moon’s path that night began from the southeast with a slight deviation from the 20-degree parallel and proceeded westwards until midnight. It continued west-southwest until daylight returned on March 10. The account mentions no rain, suggesting that the stormy wind was not a dark bora, carrying no heavy cloud cover from the northeast. The cloud cover, therefore, must have been light, a mere product of the mixture of humid air masses carried north by the sirocco. The bora, strong enough to cause the storm, was capable of tearing that overhang before it fell and affording the moon an opening to peek through and supply the much-needed light. At midnight, the moon would have been directly over the heads of the sailors, moving west. Thereafter, it began its slow drift to the southwest, but the direction it offered in the few hours around midnight must have sufficed for the helmsmen to find their bearings, provided they knew their way around the lagoon.19 All this, of course, makes perfect sense if the ships came from the south, bypassed Chioggia, and entered the lagoon to the south-southeast of Venice, through the modern-day ports of Chioggia or Malamocco, having used the sirocco for the greater part of their journey along the coast. Taking a beating during the night, they were still west- or northwest bound as the storm passed and travelling toward the city. Given the cargo these ships carried, that certainly may have been the case. The principal cargo in the ships’ hold was oil, the foundation of Vendramin’s fortune and a much-needed commodity in Venice. The Vendramins traded in olive oil and its derivatives since before settling in Venice.20 By the mid-fourteenth century, this family held numerous shops dealing with oil, soaps, cheeses, and processed meats, all located in the Rialto area. The oil business was so crucial for them that, as already discussed, in 1351 Andrea Vendramin petitioned the Senate and gained

19 The moon’s trajectory was calculated by Eileen Korenic from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. I would like to use the occasion to thank her for her kind assistance. 20 According to a murky reference in codice da Ponte, here quoted after Eugenio Musatti, Venezia e le sue conquiste nel medio evo (Verona-Padua-Leipzig: Drucker e Tede- schi, 1881), 380–83. 58 chapter three permission to trade in oil with preferential conditions that compensated for a loss incurred when the king of Hungary’s men forcefully seized a Vendramin boat laden with textiles and other merchandise off Puglia.21 The commune also held a keen interest in encouraging the procurement of oil. As a staple of the traditional diet, olive oil was a crucial commodity in Venice, never traded under free market conditions. The communal authorities subjected oil to strict regulation and supervision. Since the 1240s, one of oldest governmental bodies dealing with food supply, the office of the Ternaria Vecchia, concentrated chiefly on monitoring and policing the oil trade to secure oil availability, stocking a state reserve, and ensuring that only the proper quality of oil was sold to retail consumers. In 1302, the Ternaria purchased one half of the oil imported and then sold it at fixed prices; by the latter half of that century, that quantity decreased to one quarter, but still a substantial intervention.22 Furthermore, in the 1370s, olive oil was not only sold as foodstuff but fed into the expanding soap manufacturing business, a business in which the Vendramins participated heavily, as the miracle reports.23 Since the middle of the fourteenth century, Venetian soap was produced in two varieties, a finer sort for domestic hygiene needs and a coarser brand for the wool and silk textiles manufacturing. In the same decade that Andrea Vendramin received permission to extend his oil trade, the guild of woolen textiles manufacturers prohibited the use of aqua forte in the cleansing of woolens and prescribed solely the use of soaps.24 The soap rinsed away grease in the

21 ASV, Senato, Misti 26, fol. 53r, March 10, 1351, in Kohl # 1523. 22 For an exhaustive survey of the literature on olive oil trade in medieval Italy see Andrea Brugnoli and Gian Maria Varanini, Olivi e olio nel medioevo italiano (Bologna, 2005). Despite burgeoning studies, a comprehensive inquiry into the trade of olive oil in the Adriatic and the city of Venice itself is still not available. The older article of Bartolomeo Cecchetti, “Il vitto del Veneziani nel sec. XIV,” Archivio Veneto vol. 30 (1885), part II, 309–19 is quite the only discussion of the operation of the Ternaria with regard to the oil trade. For the Venetian oil trade in the early modern period see Salvatore Ciriacono, Olio ed Ebrei nella repubblica Veneta del Settecento (Venice: Deputazione, 1975), and Ivo Mattozzi, “Crisi, stagnazione e mutamento nello stato Veneziano sei-settecentesco: il caso del commercio e della produzione olearia,” Studi Veneziani, n.s., vol. IV (1980), 199–276. 23 A detailed study of the Vendramin soap business, well documented in their vast archive, is planned by Luca Mola (personal communication by Dr. Mola). What appears to be a somewhat later addition to the chronicle of Georgio Dolfin confirms that soap manufacturing was Vendramin’s primary business by 1382, see Angela Caracciolo Aricò, ed., Giorgio Dolfin, Chronicha dela nobil cità de Venetia et de la sua provintia et destretto. Origini-1458, vol. II (Venice: Centro di studi medievali e rinascimentali E.A. Cicogna, 2009), 104 and note j. 24 Andrea Mozzato, ed., La Mariegola dell’ Arte della Lana di Venezia (1244–1595), vol. 1 (Venice: Comitato, 2002), 79–80, provision of October 19, 1359. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 59 fabrics that resulted from the woolens manufacturers’ use of oil in the pre-production of treating wool threads to make them more amenable to weaving. By the mid-fourteenth century, this process had become standard procedure in Venice.25 The textile guild’s decision increased quality, and thus gave a boost to soap manufacturers as an added bonus. In silk manufacturing, soaps were used to strip the raw silk threads of sericin prior to dying in order to ensure the brilliancy and durability of color. Olive oil imports thus served the major textile guilds at two critical stages of the production processes, in raw state as oil and in processed state as lower-quality industrial soaps. Little surprise, therefore, that Vendramin eagerly inquired about his olive oil cargo as soon as the mariners finished their tale of narrow escape. The miracle refers to Vendramin’s soaps as sauoni bianchi, indicating they were of the finer sort, but given the abundance of lower-quality oil on the market feeding the textile industry, the Vendramins would have hardly passed on such a lucrative opportunity. Even after the expansion in the terraferma in the fifteenth century, olive oil was procured from overseas as a basic foodstuff, as lamp fuel (especially in churches), and as a principal ingredient in the soap manufacturing—one of the backbones of Venetian domestic industry. Vendramin’s oil imports likely originated in Puglia and southern Italy, and so, most likely, did the ships that got caught up in the storm in the miracle. Vendramin held business interests in Puglia in 1351, and possibly before that time. Also, in the 1350s and 1360s, under pressure from the Venetian soap manufacturers, the Senate passed bills to limit the competition of Anconitan soaps. These bills freed up some of the area’s oil for export to Venice and subsidized Venetian soap exports outside of the Adriatic.26 Puglia, for its part, served as a major supplier of olive oil to Venice, both for domestic consumption and for re-export to Northern Europe and the Levant. During the fourteenth century, the majority of this product came from that area. Puglia was the Kingdom of Naples’ largest olive oil market. Oil was exported chiefly from the Terra d’Otranto and from Bari. Exports were especially profitable from Bari, where the local authorities maintained low export dues and had turned the city market into legal staple for its large agricultural domain. Bari also operated four annual fairs; and

25 See Luca Mola, “Il mercante innovatore,” in Franco Franceschi, Richard A. Goldth- waite, and Reinhold Mueller, eds., Il rinascimento italiano e l’Europa. Vol. 4. Commercio e cultura mercantile (Treviso: Angelo Colla, 2007), 623–53. 26 Eliyahu Ashtor, “Il commercio levantino di Ancona nel basso medioevo,” Studies on the Levantine Trade in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum Reprints, 1978), 217–19. 60 chapter three other Puglian towns also held their own fairs. Fourteenth-century export numbers are unclear, but the better documented period since the mid- fifteenth century shows significant expansion. Until 1480, the olive oil was directed to Venice and used or re-exported from there; after that date, a good deal of Puglian oil went directly to the Levant.27 The importance of Puglian oil was underscored by the presence of Venetian consuls in the area, in Trani and Otranto, permanently stationed in the region since 1308; the consul of Trani was transferred to Bari in the sixteenth century.28 The season, too, suggests a cargo from Puglia. The first shipments of newly produced oils were normally from Abruzzo, arriving at the markets of Rialto around Christmas. Then the products of other presses made their way up the Adriatic, Puglian oil likely later in the season. Lastly, oil from Puglia was considered superior to oils from Istria and Crete.29 It sported a longer shelf life, up to four years, while oil from the isles went rancid after a year or so. Oil from Puglia was also susceptible to mixing with other oils as well. On both counts, this oil was more suitable for the production of the trademark white soaps manufactured by the Vendramins. Vendramin’s ships most likely carried olive oil from central and southern Italy, oil destined to satisfy Venetian appetites as foodstuff for local consumption, as a profitable re-export commodity, and as raw material for one of the city’s strongest industries. The vessels’ route, northward along the coast, helps explain their miraculous salvation in the storm, while the cargo highlights the extent of divine involvement in not only rescuing sailors’ lives, marine hardware, and a private citizen’s investment, but also securing the city’s sustainability. Olive oil was one of the few crucial staple commodities perfectly embodying the link between the interests of the individual, the corporate bodies, and the civic authorities of Venice. The divine action re-affirmed the importance of that link and gave it a blessing from on high. It was very much a business-like arrangement, a mutual

27 Karin Nehlsen von Stryk, L’assicurazione maritima a Venezia nel XV secolo (Rome: Veltro, 1988), 500–501 provides abundant evidence for Venice-bound oil shipments from Puglia in the fifteenth century. The list of insured ships is populated with oil-carrying boats, for 1471, 1473, 1474, 1475, 1476, 1480, etc. As a general trend, it appears that until 1480 Puglian oil went directly to Venice. After 1480, a good deal of shipments were redirected for direct export to the Levant, chiefly Alexandria. 28 ASV SAV, “Elezioni sec. XIV–XV,” Reg. 313, index, identifies Pietro Mocenigo as consul taking over in 1361; the next mentioned is Ottaviano Bon, holding office in 1393. For the oil production of Puglia in the period see Eleni Sakellariou, “The Cities of Puglia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Their Economy and Society,” in Alexander Cowan, ed., Mediterranean Urban Culture 1400–1700 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 97–114. 29 Ciriacono, Olio ed Ebrei, 11; Mattozzi, “Crisi, stagnazione, e mutamento,” 205–6. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 61 co-operation between four partners, each doing their part, respectively for the honor, survival, satisfaction, and prosperity of all concerned. By the time the narrative appeared in print and Perugino was busily painting the story, interested parties on the human side had increased their stakes and found even more reasons to count on the divine agent to step up its involvement. The Vendramins, a large clan split between two branches originating with Doge Andrea and his brother Luca, not only augmented their commercial wealth but also siphoned off a good deal of it in a massive acquisition of real estate in both the city and the islands in the lagoon. Residing in Santa Fosca, between 1428 and 1453 the Vendramins purchased or otherwise acquired rental facilities, residen- tial buildings, storefronts, shops, warehouses, and other commercial and industrial properties in the old home parish of San Cassian and in Santa Fosca, as well as in the parishes of San Geremia, San Moise, Santa Maria Formosa, San Toma, San Marziale, San Zulian, San Stin, San Salvador, and San Bartolomeo, with prime positions at Rialto; in addition, they purchased a new residence in Chioggia.30 This shopping spree greatly diversi- fied their portfolio but increased their vulnerability to fires. The anxiety plaguing the elder Andrea and causing his nightmare must have rung truer, even, to his grandsons. Not for nothing did they offer some of that property to the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista in 1484, clearly mentioning the Cross’ miraculous interventions.31 Ironically, Perugino’s painting commemorating the miracle with the ships was at least partially sponsored through their donations and was ultimately lost in just such a blaze, most likely in 1567.32 Fire was not the only problem. As the century wore on, divine intervention at sea became more urgent. Weather also provided quite the challenge. Following the same pattern of relative calm in early spring,

30 Data collected by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”: Espaces, pouvoir, et société à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge, vol. 1 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, 1992), 427–8. 31 For the donation see the relevant chapter. 32 The incunabulum mentions the painting as made “de man de un Perosino,” and indeed, Pietro Perugino is recorded in Venice in 1494 and 1497. The painting that was lost in the fire was re-done by Andrea Vicentino in 1588, as reported by the print of 1590 but this, again was lost sometime after 1787 when Dionisi described it as comprising the three narrative moments of the miracle in the same picture: Vendramin in his bed, the ships in the storm, and the captains conferring with Vendramin after their return to safety. See Giacomo Dionisi, Sommario de memorie ossia descrizione succinta delli quadri esistenti nella veneranda Scuola Grande di S. Giovanni Evangelista ed annessa chiesa con li nomi dei loro pittori (Venice, 1787), 20. 62 chapter three ten acqua alta surges and seven major storms appear on record, and the elements had clearly become less temperate during the fifteenth century. Particularly devastating was the tempest of the afternoon of August 10, 1471, when a sudden outbreak of a north-easterner sank dozens of boats and drowned more than a thousand people in the lagoon and the Grand Canal, which was full of boats for St. Lawrence’s festival.33 Furthermore, much of the Vendramins’ wealth continued to be generated by imports, and especially by the processing of olive oil in their soap factories. The miracle story mentions that Vendramin needed the oil specifically “because he manufactured white soaps, as those of his family still do,” but did not elaborate further. Anecdotal evidence, however, reveals that, by the middle of the fifteenth century, Vendramin soaps had become the benchmark for quality in this industry, so much so that one could purchase them sight unseen, as recorded by Benedetto Cotrugli in his business manual of 1458.34 Ensuring the smooth delivery of oil for the family business was clearly worth the family’s devotion and material contributions to the confraternal hosts of the Cross. The role of soap manufacturing as a major industry in the city increased as the century progressed. According to a later observation, despite all the com- plaints about competition from other Italians, the fifteenth century was described as the “golden age” of Venetian oil imports and soap exports.35 In 1489, authorities were so interested in the industry, and so assured in the city’s ability to satisfy the demand of local and export markets, they prohibited the manufacturing of soap outside of Venice and in all of the territories controlled by the Serenissima.36 Vendramin factories continued to produce a good deal of high quality soaps. Between 1497 and 1514, Luca Vendramin, a grandson of Doge Vendramin, declared ownership of an atelier in Giudecca, in Santa Eufemia, and invested in a variety of other enterprises. Michele da Lezze, involved in transporting a load of these soaps to Alexandria in 1511, echoed Cotrugli and praised the Vendramins

33 Dario Camuffo et al., “Sea Storms,” 213. 34 Benedetto Cotrugli, Il libro dell’arte di mercatura, ed. Ugo Tucci (Venice: Arsenale, 1990), 78, book 1, ch. 17. 35 The remark belongs to Andrea Memmo, podestà of Brescia in 1728, quoted after Ciriacono, Olio ed Ebrei, 11, note 7. 36 Salvatore Ciriacono, “Industria e artigianato,” Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Vol. V. Il Rinascimento, Società ed economia, eds. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1999), 567 and 590, nn. 231–8. the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 63 as the best in the business.37 The government’s awareness of the importance of soap making is demonstrated time and again during the sixteenth century. In 1553, the Senate declared that soap making was one of the most important businesses in the city, due to its large tax revenues. In 1569, the savi alla mercanzia were preoccupied in preventing foreign competition from undermining the industry.38 A reminder that the divine agent was engaged in protecting soap making was clearly to be appreciated: by the industrialists, by the confraternity, for it benefited from donations, and by the authorities. All would have considered addressing the supernatural in order to assuage any uncertainties they may have harbored about the successful operation of the business an apposite move. In oil trade too, in the 1590s, Venice had become the principal staple port for both Puglian and Eastern Mediterranean oil as well as chief distribution point for supplying Northern Europe and the Levant. Trade in oil ranked on par with the critical grain trade; indeed, the importance of oil and soap trades grew just as the Venetian economic horizons shrunk. Between 1586 and 1619, their share as revenue-producing commodities for the public treasury, in terms of levying customs and taxes, and their role in keeping industry and sea traffic and men busy, peaked dramatically. This was a time of a veritable boom in oil imports and soap manufacturing.39 The relevance of the miracle increased exponentially just as the narrative underwent a second printing in 1590. The original gist of the story of this miracle, however, was about estab- lishing the reputation of the relic and its potency as an agent of the divine. The miracle’s purpose was to have men recall and affirm the deep layer of continuous divine presence embodied in the Cross. From that perspective, the narrative is strikingly unspectacular and un-supernatural. It is steeped in a highly realistic flavor. The events are described in mundane detail with vivid, even scenic visual dimensions. They are also set within clearly delineated boundaries in space and time. We are informed about the date, place, and time as well as all of the circumstances of Andrea Vendramin’s nightly quasi-penitential supplication. We are told about his heart racing and the evidently unusual manner, for a respected citizen, in which he descended from his bed to pray. Later, we learn exactly where

37 ASV SD, b. 15, San Angelo, Nr. 56, 1514, see Claire Judde de Larivière, Naviguer, commercer, gouverner. Èconomie maritime et pouvoirs à Venise (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 167. 38 Judde de Larivière, Naviguer, commercer, gouverner, 168. 39 Mattozzi, “Crisi, stagnazione, e mutamento,” 201–3, 216–25. 64 chapter three he was when the shipmasters came knocking at the scuola’s door and how he received them, inquiring about their story. The sailors’ account, rendered in direct speech, is similarly picturesque and abundant in visual detail. One may easily imagine these sailors frantically moving about their ships, trying to lighten the craft by throwing deck cargo overboard, with the vessels’ hardware crashing down all around them. The syntax of the language accentuates the tangibility of the events narrated. We are also told, directly and indirectly, and in just as vivid verbal strokes, of the emo- tions experienced by the actors: Vendramin’s fear, anxiety, and heart-felt supplication and the sailors’ terror, desperation, and then final relief and tearful adoration of the Cross. These emotional experiences follow a clear theological sequence. The Cross, too, to judge by the sailors’ immediate recognition, manifested itself in a concrete, visual manner accessible to the senses, appearing enshrined in its crystal case. The profoundly realistic canvas of the narrative seamlessly integrates the supernatural. It, too, was presented in a real, tangible, and physically discernible presence. Apparently, the narratives’ author(s) conceived the miracle as tangible and “abundantly” present only as embedded in the very material, natural circumstances of existence, as working within them alongside other natural and manmade powers. If the miracle was not juxtaposed to, but rather aligned with, natural realities, then what, exactly, made it a miracle? Battered but buoyant ships finding their way to port amid a passing storm at the break of daylight is, perhaps, a wonder at most but hardly a miracle. This much must have been clear to any Venetian who had ever set foot on board ship. Indeed, the Cross intervened as a free-choice agent that left ample scope for action to the other participants in the event. Nature followed its course unperturbed, acting in an unpredictable, overpowering, chaotic manner as expected, unstructured by moral and material considerations concerning the loss of human life and ships and cargo. The storm was an unmotivated, spontaneous action without moorings in any criteria what- soever. The narrative gives no impression that the natural action was “set” as a frame by the divine to highlight its own powers. The wind arose by itself, and the accounts offer no indication about its cause, be it human sin or divine retribution. It did break and tear marine equipment, and it did damage the vessels as it would normally do when strong enough. The tempest died down, again with no reference to external forces calming it. Similarly, human actions and manmade developments followed their own courses. Unlike nature, their motivations are clearly spelled out. Vendramin and the sailors held purely material concerns, the former about his life, the miracle with vendramin’s oil ships 65 possessions, and cargo and the latter about their lives, wages, and vessels. No explanation is given about the nightmare that spooked Vendramin, woke him up, and sent him down to his knees before his altar without even dressing himself. Fire in the neighborhood, an elemental force to be sure, but familiar chiefly set by men—a human action affecting other humans—was reason enough. The sailors, too, turned to what they saw as a practical measure, disposing of the overload, rather than addressing the divine in supplication. They did what was humanly possible and pragmatic for men caught up in a storm. But then came the involvement of the divine, in a logical progression of concerns, delivering material benefits to a higher moral end. The intervention was as freely enacted as it was detached from the actions of the other agents. Vendramin prayed for delivery from fire, not for the rescue of his ships and cargo. The sailors did not even think of seeking divine assistance. The Cross chose to act of its own accord and on its own terms, not invoked or bound by supplication beforehand, within a sphere that did not overlap with the areas of others. Nonetheless, the direction of its intervention was to teach a spiritual lesson via a material one. Therefore, the miracle narratives contain at least four principal levels of signification. A miracle was not an exotic occurrence at odds with mundane experiences.40 It had to be plausible according to the same pragmatic and realistic criteria defining the Venetians’ everyday interactions with their immediate environment. A miracle at sea had to make sense to weathered seamen—seamen who knew that, prayer or not, the storm would not stop until running its natural course and that, under the right conditions, a battered ship could still make it to port. The second significance ran along the same vein, that each of the forces participating in the event, nature, man, and God, was an agent in its own right with clearly defined and discrete spheres of actions and responsibilities. The elements ran their course unaffected by either the efforts of men or the intervention of the divine. The supernatural, present in the relic, did not cancel, override, or defy the laws of nature. It simply revealed itself in a world parallel to the playground of nature. Men, for their part, acted within the parameters defined by human capabilities, unable to prevail over nature

40 This is the standard way of defining a miracle in the practice of the time; see most recently Michael Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle, 1150–1350 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 8–29, and Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (The Wiles Lectures given at the Queen’s University of Belfast, 2006) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–35. 66 chapter three or bring about the intervention of God. Third, we find the determination to display and affirm the essence and interests of each agent in the face of the other participants in the interaction. Nature’s essence and core function was the force of chance, erratically playing itself out without purpose. Men’s essence transpired in the pursuits of the material world: Vendramin was interested in his house and oil, the sailors in their hardware and lives, the community, represented by the confraternity, its chief officials and top executive, in the provision and prosperity of the city. God’s purpose was men’s salvation, in all senses of the concept. Finally, we see the narrative’s progression from purposeless to meaningful, from a lack to a full- ness of sense and signification. The miracle enlightened men practically as well as spiritually and led them to realize where, in the progression of things, true meaning resided. God worked alongside nature and toward men’s material interests to ensure that humans do not forget that, besides nature’s blind forces and their own industry, existence in this material world and salvation in the next can be only guaranteed by acknowledging the presence of a moral and spiritual force. That story, to paraphrase Clifford Geertz’s definition, men had to keep telling themselves, lest they forget it and perish, in either the watery world of their own or in the eternal damnation of the next. Business leaders like Vendramin, vested in industries of utter importance for the economic survival and wellbeing of the community, might have read it just in that typology, as a demonstration of the significance of larger concerns closely tied to their private preoccupations. chapter four

Church, State, and Sainthood: Francesco Querini and the Miracle with the Demoniac

The dramatic public manifestation of numinous power through the Cross on March 3, 1370, and the intervention during the night storm that delivered Vendramin’s ships the following weekend must have established the reputation of the relic as a mighty vessel of God’s grace. There can be little doubt that the confraternity lost no time in spreading the news of the miracles. As the next miracle demonstrated, attention was paid. Unfathomable as the ways of God might have been it would have hardly been lost on discerning minds that the apparent actions of the Cross were oriented to the material world. While enhancing the honor of the confraternity, the devotion of the faithful, and the sanctity of the city, the relic proved an apt vehicle for articulating some of the central social and economic preoccupations of contemporary society. A new revelation of the Cross, a show of its thaumaturgical capacity, reinforced that perception. This time around, the divine action appears to have had a bearing on the unstable boundaries between secular and sacred authority, a murky issue, prone to conflict, that resurfaced periodically in Venice and reached one of its peaks in the latter quarter of the fourteenth century. In the days of Francesco Querini, patriarch of Grado, there was a demoniac in Venice. Querini was well known as a pious and saintly person, and the possessed man’s relatives asked him to exorcise the wretch, hoping he could successfully expel the demon. The patriarch responded that he did not have such powers, but perhaps the True Cross at San Giovanni could do it. The relic was promptly brought over to the patriarchal see. Armed with it, Querini duly liberated the demoniac. The highly public miracle cemented the Cross’s reputation. As our sources have it, the narrative is quite short. It lacks the detail and broad-ranging description present in the stories of the first two miracles. The account reads more like a summary prepared for an aspiring saint’s dossier than an excited first-hand testimony to a wondrous event. The laconic rendering even hints at a later composition or redaction, with the reference to Querini as patriarch of Grado. This clarification would have been pointless before 1451 and would have become necessary only after 68 chapter four the patriarchal see was transformed into patriarchate of Venice during the tenure of Lorenzo Giustiniani, when both the metropolitan see of Grado and the city’s primary ecclesiastical institution, the episcopate of Castello, were suppressed. Short and straightforward as it is, though, the account touches on a number of issues that were quite sensitive at the time and was doubtlessly understood in that way by the informed public. On the surface of it, there was nothing controversial in the choice of the divine to reveal itself one more time to chase away the agent of evil tor- menting the demoniac. Nor is there much surprise that it chose to manifest itself through the mediation of the patriarch, the highest ecclesiastical authority in Venice. The incumbent, Francesco Querini, later beatified, was the scion of an illustrious Venetian family that included several members known for exemplary piety. Yet the same family had also produced an overly ambitious man, Marco Querini. In June 1310, in association with his son-in-law, Baiamonte Tiepolo, and other close family members as well as a Badoer, he stirred what was to be the last public disturbance in the city involving open fighting between factions of the ruling oligarchy. The story is well known: the action ended in disaster, Marco lost his life, several Querini were exiled, and the family palace was taken over by the government and converted to an office building for the supervisors of butchers’ craft. Although Marco’s miscalculation did not affect other branches of the clan, which served the republic faithfully in some of its highest offices, it was not easy to wipe clean the blemish of public opprobrium that was cast on the Querini. Nonetheless, as some of the highest-ranking nobility were involved, the authorities dealt carefully with the issue. While in the aftermath of the failed coup assassins were hired to take out the culpable individuals, during the next generation the remainder of the clan was gradually restored to its former position. A brother of Francesco’s was a procuratore of San Marco, demonstrating the public trust vested in the Querini. Still, the process was slow, and not until 1406 was the family fully re-integrated into the ruling class.1 In that aspect, Francesco’s reputation would have been a contribution to restoring the family name’s prestige. At the time of his election to the metropolitan see of Grado in 1367, he had already distinguished himself as a humble servant of God in a progression of important charges. Having embraced life in the church quite young, he proceeded to become a parish

1 See Dennis Romano, “The Aftermath of the Querini-Tiepolo Conspiracy in Venice,” Stanford Italian Review, 7 (1987), 147–60. the miracle with the demoniac 69 priest of Santa Maria Formosa, his family parish, as members of the family had done before him.2 In 1349, he was made bishop of Capodistria. As testified by one of his later successors to the see, there he distinguished himself not only by his piety but by working some unspecified miracles as well, a sure sign that something greater was in view. Somewhere along the way, he acquired a degree in theology, adding the distinction of learning to an already outstanding career of extreme piety and pastoral service. An appointment to the more prestigious archbishopric of Crete followed in 1364. Three years later, on December 7, 1367, the Senate elected him patriarch. He had come up to ballotage already in 1351, but had lost. This time, the vote went overwhelmingly in his favor. On December 22, Pope Urban IV issued his approval and transferred him officially to the see of Grado. He held the position until his death five years later, on June 30, 1372, and was buried in Santa Maria dei Frari. His saintly demeanor so impressed the city that just a few months thereafter, on August 19, the Senate authorized the Venetian ambassador at the Roman Curia to petition the Pope to canonize him, citing as a reason “the numerous and marvelous miracles he worked both in his life and after his death.”3 The speed with which the Senate acted to seek his canonization indicates that he had the full political support of the government. For unknown reasons, the petition did not succeed, but Venetians commonly acknowledged him as a saint, a beato. The account of the exorcism he performed on the demoniac through the Cross, may well have been compiled at some point between March 1370 and his death in 1372 as part of the dossier prepared to testify to his sainthood, and was later included or redacted for the miracles collection. It may have also been a part of the officials’ strategy for rehabilitating the Querini. His humble denial of personal powers to effect the cure is therefore meaningful in more than one way: it is most fitting not just in the context of his spirituality and sanctity but against the background of that later political project as well. Francesco the priest faced the numinous as Quirini the noble faced the government.

2 Bartolomeo I Querini, bishop of Castello (1274–1291) held simultaneously the plebanate of Santa Maria Formosa as well; his nephew and bishop of Castello himself, Bartolomeo II Querini (1293–1303), held the plebanate of St Martin’s; see Antonio Rogon, “I vescovi Veneziani nella svolta pastorale dei secoli XII e XIII,” in Franco Tonon, ed., La Chiesa di Venezia nei secoli XI–XIII (Venice: Edizioni Studium Catolico Veneziano, 1988), 47, n. 25. 3 AVS Senato, Misti, Reg. 34, f. 25, August 19, 1372. See also Flaminio Corner, Opus- cula Quator quibus illustrantur gesta B. Francisci Quirini, Patriarcha Gradensis, Joannis de Benedictis, Episcopi Tarvisini, Francisci Foscari, Ducis Venetiarum, Andrae Donati, Equities (Venice: Marco Carnioni, 1753), 11–12. 70 chapter four

The patriarch was thus well positioned, as a qualified exorcist, to make up for the trespasses of the older generation. He led a saintly life fortified by miracles performed during his ministry at Capodistria, had a distinguished career and the credentials of a learned man, and held the authority of the highest ecclesiastical official in Venice. The account states that he had a “special devotion to this sacred Cross,” a reference stressing his humility and justifying his choice of prop in performing the cure. He was not a member of the confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista, but at one time belonged to the brotherhood of Santa Maria della Carita, and is listed in one of the scuola’s mariegole.4 This too, might have been a consciously taken political decision rather than solely an act of Marian devotion. Members of that confraternity had been especially active in the armed suppression of the conspiracy in 1310. Their contribution had been sol- emnly acknowledged by the authorities. The reasons for Francesco’s special devotion to the Cross can only be conjectured. Our sources state that he was a Franciscan. Antiquarian scholars of the Order take it for granted that he had taken the habit.5 There is no other direct reference in known contemporary material, but the general tenor of his life and deeds accords well with the indication in the account. If so, Franciscan devotion to symbolism of the cross is well known: it dates back to St Francis himself.6 The reference would affiliate him closely with the Frari church, where the Querini chapel was also located. This connection would have also given him an early chance to be more often in the presence of the relic, since at this time San Giovanni’s brethren held their liturgies in Santa Maria dei Frari, and would have taken the cross there. The possible connection with the Franciscans aside, the devotion to the Cross might have also resulted from an earlier acquaintance with the fragments possessed by San Giovanni Evangelista. Querini took over the metropolitan see of Crete from Peter Thomas, the first owner of the relic, who had incorporated it in his processional insignia and wielded it during the crusade of Alexandria before he bequeathed it to Philippe de Meziérès. Furthermore, Querini’s appointment coincided, on the one hand, with the Cretan revolt, which

4 Flaminio Corner, Opuscula Quator, 14–15. 5 Bartolomeo Cimarelli, Delle croniche del’Ordine de Frati Minori instituto dal S.P.S. Fran- cesco. Parte Quarta, vol. 2 (Venice: Barezzi, 1621), 1107; Flaminio Corner, Opuscula Quator, although he quotes Cimarelli, stresses that the references to Quirini’s membership in the Franciscan order are dubious, since he is not recorded as a friar in the inscription in the mariegola of Santa Maria della Carita, as was the custom of the time, see ibid., 15. 6 For a recent overview see Barbara Baert and Lee Preedy, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), esp. 376sq. the miracle with the demoniac 71 threw the island into confusion and might have affected his travel and, on the other, with the diplomatic sojourns of Peter Thomas and Philippe de Meziérès in Venice from early 1364 through early 1365.7 Archbishop- appointed Querini must have had, therefore, at least one occasion to meet Thomas, and several more chances to hear about the Cross or even catch a glimpse of it. Peter Thomas’ extreme devotion to the Cross, documented in his Life, and its use as an official sign of his rank would have made the relic highly visible during his stays in Venice. Querini was acquainted with Philippe well enough to be mentioned in the latter’s will as his spiritual father and beatus, a saintly figure to whom Philippe bequeathed a “small silver-encrusted icon” likely made in the Byzantine fashion and depicting the Annunciation.8 In addition to his qualifications, Querini was close at hand when needed. Since the latter part of the twelfth century, the patriarchs of Grado had all but abandoned their titular city and resided almost exclusively in Venice. In 1156 Patriarch Enrico Dandolo (1134–1186) had received as a gift from a member of the Corner clan a piece of prime real estate directly on the Grand Canal in the vicinity of Rialto, in the contada of San Silvestro, and built a residence there. Being in principle the ranking churchmen on Venetian territory and commanding superior authority by virtue of their office, the patriarchs of Grado had also gradually acquired direct jurisdiction over several parishes in the city. These districts had been exempted from the sphere of authority of the city’s titular cleric, the bishop of San Pietro in Castello. Besides providing the patriarchs with a jurisdictional foothold, the parishes supplied revenues and gave them a more active role in handling ecclesiastical matters within the city. By the middle decades of the twelfth century the expanding area of patriarchal rights, the incumbents’ permanent presence in the city, and the overlapping areas of authority exercised by bishop and patriarch began to give rise to frequent tensions and controversies. The oath of submission that the bishops offered their metropolitan meant little in this context.9 One of the earliest recorded conflicts occurred in 1140, between Patriarch Dandolo and the bishop Giovanni III Polani, and was provoked

7 Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant 1204–1571. Vol. 1. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 253–60. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 114. American Philosophical Society: Philadelphia, PA, 1976. 8 Jorga, “Le testament,” 133. 9 See for example the oath of Bartolomeo II Querini to the patriarch on June 20, 1293 in Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae, vol. 13 (Venice, 1749), 241. 72 chapter four by the clergy of San Salvatore forming an Augustinian branch with the authorization of Grado without seeking the prior approval of their direct superior, the bishop of Castello. Another heated conflict was between Patriarch Angelo I Barozzi (1207–1238) and Bishop Marco Michiel. The quarrel was settled in 1231 by a commission appointed by Gregory IX (1227–1241), which confirmed the bishop’s rights and jurisdiction over the city’s diocese with the exception of five parish churches which had been granted to the patriarch.10 The territorial division did not eliminate jurisdictional overlapping and frictions over revenues. In 1327, a major controversy flared up over who were to have the rights over the tithes of San Bartolomeo, which a provincial synod had just transferred to the patriarchate. The issue dragged on for almost thirty years, and was only resolved in 1359, apparently with the quite logical decision assigning the tithes to the patriarch.11 The popes, Innocent IV in 1354, and Gregory IX in 1367, contributed to the confusion by respectively issuing and then confirming a bull that gave the bishops of Castello exclusive right over tithes from all assets of deceased Venetians.12 The previous conflicts had been intramural; the issue of the tithes was much more controversial because in Venice such matters were never purely ecclesiastical. The frictions brought the two external powers, the papacy and the government, into position to arbitrate. Around 1150 Pope Eugenius III had conceded to the doge and the government the right to elect the patriarch of Grado, as well as the bishops in the lagoon and the abbots and the abbesses in the republic’s domain, reserving for the Curia the right to ratify the decision.13 While all the parties concerned had their own agendas and political exigencies, and while other developments dictated contingent policies, between the later part of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the 1400s two loose alliances took shape. The bishops of Castello consistently sought and frequently obtained the support of the papacy. The patriarchs of Grado enjoyed the support of the government and aligned their policies accordingly. This political configuration may have been partly due to the fact that the bishops of Castello were, with very few exceptions, mostly scions of the top Venetian patrician

10 See Vittorio Piva, Il patriarcato di Venezia e le sue origini (Venice, 1938), 113, 220. 11 Gianbattista Gallicciolli, Delle memorie venete antiche profane ed ecclesiastiche, vol. 3 (Venice: Domenico Fracasso, 1795), 327. 12 Ibid., 328. 13 Silvio Tramontin, “Dall’episcopato Castellano al patriarcato Veneziano,” in Giovanni Vian, ed., La chiesa di Venezia tra medioevo ed età moderna (Venice: Edizioni Studio Cat- tolico Veneziano, 1989), 56. the miracle with the demoniac 73 clans, including the Querini. The patriarchs were of diverse origins, even though early in the period there were Querini among them as well. Since the 1250s, however, the incumbents were almost exclusively foreigners. That hundred-year-long stretch was broken in 1361 with the appointments of Orso II Dolfin (1361–1367) and, then, Francesco Querini, after whom another string of non-Venetians occupied the office until 1400, when the local nobility reasserted its hold on the see.14 The diocese of Castello, although in theory ranking lower, was still the more consequential of the two appointments, its jurisdiction within the city offering possibilities for enhancing the status of the bishop’s family, especially because after the serrata of 1297 the state began to assert itself in re-defining patrician status. The bishops could also count on family and faction support in their dealings with the government, an option entirely closed to the foreign patriarchs. The latter were more likely to cooperate and work with the local parish clergy and the authorities. It stands to reason, therefore, that besides the government, the patriarch was the choice of those who elected the parish clergy and local ecclesiastical personnel. The elections were not up to the general assembly of the parishioners, usually socially and economically heterogeneous. The electors were the property owners and “respectable” members of the citizenry, men of wealth and note in their local community, the elite cittadini foremost among them. The bishops’ claims for larger jurisdiction were prone to conflict with the state on a number of contested issues, but also had the potential to irk the citizen elite. The patriarchs’ limited rights in the city precluded most reasons for such conflicts.15 The episode with the exorcising of the demoniac ought to be scrutinized against the background of these alignments. In April 1367, a few months before Francesco Querini was to become patriarch of Grado, Paolo Foscari, another member of the Venetian high patriciate, was elected by the Senate to the see of Castello. It was a heretofore very rare case of two scions of the most distinguished ranks of the nobility taking the highest ecclesiastical offices almost simultaneously.

14 See the lists in Piva, Il Patriarcato, 119–121. 15 An extensive list of the rights of the bishops of Castello was composed around 1308 by Bishop Ramperto Polo (1303–1311), known as Cadaster of Bishop Ramperto, reproduced in full by Giuseppe Cappelletti, Storia della Chiesa di Venezia dalla sua fondazione sino ai nostril giorni, vol. 1 (Venice, 1851), 316–334, and Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae, vol. XIII, 241–251. 74 chapter four

Their tenures, however, and their relations with the Senate could not have been more different. While Querini apparently remained on the best of terms with the government, Foscari stirred up a number of bitter controversies over rights and revenues that pitted him against the Doge, the Signoria, and the clergy of several parishes. Almost immediately after taking office in 1367, he summoned the primicure and the chaplains of San Marco to appear before him. The order was a direct affront to the cathedral clergy and the authority of their patron, the doge, since they had ancient privileges exempting them from such treatment and had been endowed with immunity from episcopal and patriarchal authority by the Roman Curia on a number of occasions. Already in 1177, it was stated, Alexander III officially confirmed the status of San Marco as the doge’s private chapel. In 1251, Pope Innocent IV had granted its primicure quasi-episcopal dignity, allowing him to wear a miter and carry the ring and staff of a bishop. Most recently, in August 1344 the Great Council had ascertained that the cathedral clergy owed obedience exclusively to the doge. In July 1353, Doge Andrea Dandolo issued an edict declaring they should not even be called “canons of San Marco” since that would imply they could be assimilated into the bishops’ councils, which would infringe upon ducal prerogatives. They were chaplains of the doge, officiating in his private chapel and subject to his authority. Foscari would have none of that. To him, the exemptions enjoyed by the cathedral clergy were illicit, based solely on the power of the state, in direct contradiction to the rule that as the head of the diocese he had jurisdiction over all ecclesiastical establishments, San Marco included. By extension, he argued, that would mean that San Marco was not subject even to papal authority. Casting his claim in terms of a clash between church and state, Foscari, a doctor of the laws of both, was pushing for a clearer delineation of authority in an area quite murky in Venice at the time, and at the expense of the state to boot. The government refused to budge, and in a well-articulated rebuttal turned down his claims.16 Foscari persisted and, if that was not enough to chart a collision course with the Signoria, picked up a new quarrel with the secular authorities shortly thereafter. The issue was an old one, concerning rights over ecclesiastical tithes. Traditionally in Venice, tithes were paid at the end of

16 For this episode see Gaetano Cozzi, “Juspatronato del doge e prerogative del primicerio sulla cappella ducale di San Marco (secoli XVI–XVIII). Controversie con i procuratori di San Marco de supra e i patriarchi di Venezia,” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, vol. CLI (1992–1993), Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, facs. I (Venice, 1993), 10–11. the miracle with the demoniac 75 one’s life, and were willed by benefactors as they saw fit, to their parishes, to the procurators of San Marco, or to the bishops’ treasury, and were then apportioned accordingly. Beginning in 1144, the bishops had aggressively asserted their rights as exclusive recipients and administrators of tithes; by 1192 they had received four papal privileges to that effect. Despite these rulings, throughout the twelfth and the thirteenth century tithes continued to flow into different hands. In the beginning of the 1300s the lack of clarity in the distribution of the funds produced a major clash between the bishop and the secular authorities. In early 1302 Bishop Bartolomeo II Querini requested that tithes were paid to his treasury and apportioned by him; but the Great Council refused to yield. The bishop struck back, excommunicating the doge and the members of all councils, and placed the city under an interdict. His sentence was disregarded, but the situation could not be left unsolved, especially since Querini appealed to the pope, the indomitable Boniface VIII. The pope’s mediation of the dispute brought about a temporary resolution but did not disentangle the contesting parties’ claims. The conflict flared up again in 1345, under Bishop Niccolo Morosini, and despite the appointment of a special commission to sort out the issue, it remained unresolved. The financial impact of the Black Death further complicated the situation, leaving both institutions vying for scarce resources, and the controversy began anew. Negotiations dragged through 1350, and drew in two popes as well, to end up with little more than restating each side’s claims. When Foscari assumed office in 1367 he immediately picked the tithes issue, facing opposition from both the parish clergy of his churches and the secular authorities. His efforts earned him the nickname “Bishop of the Dead,” but made no impression on the Signoria, which insisted on control over the tithes. The elite parishioners represented in the confraternal leadership would have concurred with the soubriquet. The demands of the bishop bore directly on the amount of funds that flowed into the scuola’s coffers precisely at the time that elite citizens had begun a transition into defining a good part of their social identity as providers of social services and managers of the communal wealth. The secular authorities, though guided by their own agenda, shared the sentiment. In August 1367, the government issued an edict that tithes were not to be paid to the bishop except when explicitly willed in the testaments of the deceased; for tithing in all other cases a special license of the Senate had to be obtained.17 In response, Foscari appealed to the Roman Curia and left Venice to argue his case. The mediation of

17 Gallicciolli, Memorie, 3: 331. 76 chapter four

Pope Gregory XI did little to defuse the conflict. The confrontation esca- lated and on April 8, 1372, the Senate resorted to formal threats to exile his father, confiscate the family property, and deprive him and his heirs of membership in the patriciate if Foscari did not acquiesce to the state’s position. In the face of such determination on the part of the government, the pontiff finally gave up and in 1375 removed Foscari from the stage by transferring him the archbishopric of Patras in Greece.18 This last phase of the controversy stirred up by Foscari introduces yet another stakeholder in the struggle over the tithes and with this a potential protagonist in the drama of exorcism, the Venetian parish clergy. The pope apparently expected the commune to reciprocate by being more accommodating to the needs and demands of the clergy. It took two more years to settle the tithes issue with them as well.19 Although of lower stat- ure than both bishop and patriarch, local priests had the authority and qualifications to exorcise and normally availed themselves of it. They had none of the authority and prestige of their ecclesiastical superiors but had closer ties with the parishioners to whom they ministered on a daily basis. As a group, the clergy were represented by the bishop, but at the latter part of the fourteenth century had already articulated a separate corporate identity embodied in their nine congregations.20 The tithes case highlights how their loyalties and their dependence on local revenues pitted them against the government and their nominal superior. Nonetheless, despite occasional frictions, the links between the bishops, several of whom kept the status of pievano, and the parishes affected the standing of the clergy.21 Corporate identity, local power networks, and social connections associated the clergy with the elite citizens and the government while formal allegiance connected them to the bishops. A high profile public act involving the numinous and a local priest in 1370–1372 would have been no less politically significant—acknowledging the position of the clergy vis-à-vis the lay powers—than a situation in which the bishop of Castello played the main part.

18 For an overview of the conflict see Dieter Girgensohn, “In primis omnium rectum dimitto decimum: Kirchenzehnt und Legate pro anima in Venedig während des hohen und späteren Mittelalters,” Zeitschrift der Savigni-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte vol. 122, (Kanonistische Abteilung, 91) (Vienna-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), 280–282. 19 Ibid., 282. 20 Bianca Betto, Le nove congrezioni del clero di Venezia (sec. IX–XV): Richerche storiche, matricole, e documenti vari (Venezia: Antenore, 1984). 21 See Rigon, “I vescovi Veneziani nella svolta pastorale dei secoli XII e XIII,” 35–6. the miracle with the demoniac 77

Barring the unlikely situation of the Cross being handled by a non- clerical practitioner, the charged relations between the government and the ecclesiastical personnel in the early 1370s on the one hand, and the nature of the record of the exorcism on the other, suggest that the numinous agent was quite limited in its options. Francesco Querini was the only figure that could have performed the miracle. The conclusion applies even after considering circumstances that would have made him the divine choice by default. In the absence of Foscari the patriarch was the principal ecclesiastical authority in Venice, and Foscari was absent from Venice at least since the summer of 1371.22 It was only normal, and there had been precedents in the past, that the patriarch exercised full powers in the city for years during vacancies in the metropolitan see.23 It is also possible that the demoniac belonged to one of the six or seven parishes under the patriarch’s direct control. It could have been that the right to exorcise was not determined.24 Foscari was a doctor of both laws, but Querini had the proven reputation of a miracle-maker. Whatever the circumstances, the miracle emphasizes that the bishop was not indispensable, and that lay society was just as well served by his distinguished alternative. Unlike a parish priest, Querini was an authority vested with formal leadership, an acknowledged typological equivalent to the Signoria. If Foscari had attempted to eliminate lay powers in the sphere of ecclesiastical matters and thus separate church and state, Querini was the embodiment of their perfect symbiosis. Through him, the numinous demonstrated its powers to make whole a member of the lay society by enlisting a high ecclesiastic who deployed a sacred relic owned by a lay corporation that was considered “our Cross” by the government.25 One wonders if the evil spirit thus exorcised was not a subtle reference to Foscari, who allegedly afflicted the body politic as much as the demon tormented the body of the possessed. In the early 1370s, therefore, there were good reasons for identifying Querini as the proper figure to mediate the thaumaturgical intervention

22 Foscari consecrated the church of San Giovanni Battista in Giudecca in February 1371, but it was a vicar of his that consecrated the church of Santa Euphemia in September 1371, and Foscari is not otherwise documented in Venice. He must have left, therefore, between February and September, see Piva, Il Patriarchato, 240. 23 Gallicciolli, Memorie, 3: 325. 24 In the most extensive list of rights, privileges, and revenues of the see of Castello, compiled for Bishop Ramperto Polo (1303–1311), exorcism is not mentioned, see Catastico del Vescovo Ramperto in Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis, vol. XIII, 241–51. 25 ASV, Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 15, f.122v, May 4, 1457. 78 chapter four of the Cross at the expense of the city’s clergy and bishop. Years later, after Querini’s death and the unsuccessful attempt to canonize him, the miracle narrative could have been read not so much as a means to prop up personal or family status than as an indicator of the re-ordering of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the city. During the following decades, the pattern of the relations between the bishops, the patriarchs, and the secular authorities continued in the same vein, sustaining the relevance of the patriarchs. Under the impact of political and inner ecclesiastical developments, the Roman Curia slowly shifted its policy and aligned with the Signoria and the patriarchs. The next three patriarchs to 1400, all foreigners, were on the best of terms with the authorities, reforming the local regular clergy, serving as the republic’s diplomatic envoys, affirming noble families’ rights of patronage over ecclesiastical establishments, and generally enhancing the prestige of the see in the city.26 To judge from acts of their chancery, the patriarchs acknowledged the bishops’ jurisdiction where it was clearly demarcated, even over their own palace.27 Their confidence grew, however. Citing the absence of a bishop during the Foscari controversy, in 1376 Patriarch Tomaso da Frignano (1372–1382) sought to acquire the see of Castello in commenda from the papacy. He was turned down but, in 1378, the precedent of acquiring establishments under the bishops’ jurisdiction in commenda was established with the church of Santa Croce de Luprio, which eventually passed under the control of patriarch Domenico Michiel (1445–1451) even before the suppression of Castello.28 The raising status of Grado attracted the nobility’s interest. In August 1400, the de Benedetti clan placed a scion of theirs on the throne, the Dominican Giovanni VI, and inaugurated the line of more assertive Venetian patriarchs of Grado. The bishops of Castello, Venetian nobles one and all, were reduced to feeble remonstrations over the steady encroachment of the metropolitan see upon their sphere of authority. In 1422, for example, Bishop Marco III Lando, an activist clerical supervisor, protested Patriarch Giovanni Dolfin’s consecration of the refurbished church of San Silvestro, but promptly conceded the right upon request.29 The bishops also continued to antagonize

26 Piva, Il Patriarchato, 119–121. 27 See, example, an act of Angelo Correr from 1396, indicating “Actum et datum Venetiis in capella patriarchalis palatii gradensis apud ecclesiam sancti silvestri castellanae dioece- sis,” cited by Tramontin, “Dall’episcopato Castellano al patriarchato Veneziano,” 80, n. 44. 28 Ibid., 123. 29 Piva, Il Patriarchato, 122, after Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis, vol. IV, 38–9, and 127. the miracle with the demoniac 79 the secular authorities. Early in 1401, Bishop Leonardo Dolfin (1392–1401) refused to be invested with the see by the newly installed Doge Michele Steno. The Signoria lobbied the pope for his removal, and later that year Boniface IX transferred him to the see of Alexandria. In addition, the bishops’ seeming inability to discipline their diocesan clergy while protecting their immunity put them at odds with the government. In May 1407 Gregory XII had to intervene personally and throw the weight of the Roman Curia behind the right of the authorities to persecute law-breaking clerics in certain circumstances. The incumbent at the time, Bishop Francesco II Bembo, otherwise a pious person who had served the Senate as an envoy to England, was apparently indifferent or, more likely, overly protective of his subordinates. Pietro Dona, installed in 1426, did not even manage to take possession of the see in person during his two-year tenure. Such episodes, anecdotal as they are, conform to the pattern of the 1370s. The reconfiguration of the political alignments highlighted in the miracle narrative with the stress on the patriarch and the marginalization of the bishop culminated in 1451 with the suppression of the see of Castello. The establishment of the patriarchate of Venice in that year, however, changed the equation. Now the sole ecclesiastical authority, the patriarchs of Venice inherited the cluster of thorny issues formerly handled by the bishops in their relations with both the local clergy and the government. The government increasingly regarded the office as part of the structures of the state and treated the patriarch as a functionary. Rather than enjoying support as a counterbalance to episcopal claims and being a sought-after outlet for the patrician clans to assert themselves as autonomous entities vis-à-vis the Signoria, the patriarchs were now the minor player in the distribution of resources and power in the city. The Signoria, on the other hand, having stepped up its policy of defining individual nobles exclusively as servants of the state, was even less likely to tolerate alternative modes of self-definition. The combined effect of these developments was the progressive limitation of the autonomy of the patriarchal institution as a representative of parallel authority, as the patricians’ means of self-assertion, and, not least, as a competing revenues claimant. The patriarchs, mostly patricians of elite families, acquiesced. Upon the news of his promotion, Lorenzo Giustiniani was quick to stress that he had accepted the papal appointment for the glory of the republic.30 His successors preoccupied

30 Antonio Niero, I patriarchi di Venezia, da Lorenzo Guistiniani ai nostril giorni (Venice: Studium Cattolico Veneziano, 1961), 13. 80 chapter four themselves exclusively with pastoral work and clerical discipline. Maffeo Girardi (1466–1492), a Carmelite, joined the doge in a confrontation with the pope over the former’s juspatronato of the church of San Giacomo.31 In August 1492, bent with years and in poor health, he obliged the Senate and went to Rome to participate in the conclave that elected the new pontiff. Despite his acclaim by the Romans as the apparent new pope, he did what he was asked, and cast his ballot for Rodrigo Borgia, the future Alexander VI. His vote tipped the balance.32 Spats between patriarch and government were rare and less intense and were dealt with internally. The Signoria made sure that the patriarchs were fully aware of their complete dependence on the government. Furthermore, patriarchal authority was seriously curtailed by the extensive rights of the local clergy. By the later years of the quattrocento the parishes were all but independent in electing their clergy and managing their property and benefices. The government, while carefully controlling the clerical class, vigorously supported them in any confrontation with their ecclesiastical superior. With the Signoria’s on their side, the nine clerical congregations, the Venetian clergy’s corporate organizations, gained strength vis-à-vis their metropolitan.33 In such circumstances, activist patriarchs saw their effort to enlarge their jurisdiction, assert control over local clergy, and face off with government effectively sidelined by both parishioners and the authorities. When the prelate was ambitious, frictions were unavoidable. The decade during which the miracle narrative was printed in the incunabulum and the large canvas celebrating it was commissioned and executed by Vittore Carpaccio coincides with such a rare period of tensions. The 1490s rift between the parties involved was not as impactful as that created by Bishop Foscari, but the case illustrates well the extent to which the patriarchal claims were now a nuisance to be brushed aside rather than a serious threat. The incumbent at the time was Tommaso Dona (1492–1504), a Dominican conscious of his position and bent on asserting its dignity. He spent generously on the embellishment of the cathedral, renovated the patriarchal palace and added a baptistery dedicated to St John the Baptist, and had the ceremonial staircase reconstructed. His patronage

31 Cozzi, “Giuspatronato,” 14. 32 Niero, I patriarchi di Venezia, 45. 33 See Betto, Congregazioni, passim; Paolo Prodi, “Structure and organization of the church in Renaissance Venice,” J.R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 419–22; Dennis Romano, “The Parochial Clergy and Communities of the Sacred,” in his Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 91–118. the miracle with the demoniac 81 was laudable, but other pieces of his program caused frictions with both his clergy and the government. One of his first acts, in January 1493, was to legislate that only qualified priests should stand for election to local benefices, in effect meddling in what had been exclusively a parish privilege. Sometime in early 1493, the patriarch confronted the clergy and parishioners of San Bartolomeo, forbidding them to rent out the church’s portico for commercial use, stressing his authority in local property management. In 1496, he sparked another quarrel with the parish, attempting to impose his own choice for vicar against their candidate. The parish resisted, and Dona informed both the pope and the Senate. The Senate refused to take sides on the vicar issue, practically dismissing the patriarch, despite the fact that San Bartolomeo was under his jurisdiction. The conflict dragged on into the early 1500s, and was not resolved even after the pope had excommunicated the vicar elected by the parish. In 1503, Dona had to bring up the issue to the Senate and the doge again, to meet with the same dismissive answer. This cool reception may have been due to an old grievance. Two years earlier, in 1501, Dona had promulgated an edict that aimed to stimulate devotion in San Marco’s. The doge, seeing this as an endeavor to enlarge patriarchal authority at his expense, prevented its implementation. Furthermore, Dona’s tenure was marked by another governmental step in redefining the position of the patriarch within and without the city. Until 1492, candidates for the patriarchal dignity either nominated themselves or were nominated by a third party. In November of that year, the Council of Ten discontinued the practice and placed the entire procedure of elevation to the see in the hands of the Senate. The move had the effect of curtailing severely the meddling of the Roman Curia, which had been frequently proactive in patriarchal elections. It also limited the potential of the election to fraction the patrician class. Ultimately, it made the patriarch very much a functionary, a creature of the government. Dona’s tenure, therefore, illustrates the patriarchal predicament at the end of the Quattrocento. Now a mandatory component of the confessional state, the patriarch was reduced to a minuscule agency in Venetian political life.34 Which is exactly how Carpaccio positioned the patriarch in his rendering of the miracle, executed in the 1490s, as the government was extending the limitations on patriarchal authority while extolling the dignity of

34 Niero, I patriarchi di Venezia, 15, 46–9. 82 chapter four the position.35 The overlapping of political context and artistic vision is striking. In Francesco Querini’s time, the context of the miracle dictated that the patriarch, rather than any other ecclesiastical or lay figure, conveyed the Cross’s powers. The account in the incunabulum duly reflects the status quo. A century later, in Dona’s decade, while the tradition of the narrative had to be respected and the patriarch had to be present, the context of the latter’s standing and position in the city necessitated his marginalization. Against this background, Carpaccio’s visual interpretation is impressive for its capturing of the delicate balance between the traditional importance of the participants in the drama of the exorcism and the socio-political context that enabled and permitted their exercise of agency. The bridge of Rialto in the background, the bustling Grand Canal at center-stage, the impressively figural and painstakingly detailed architecture that shapes the painting’s perspective are all the true protagonists of the scene. Collectively, they stand for the structure and ordered activity that embodied the city as the authorities would have liked to see it. The figural narrative encompasses two temporal frames, each placing the actors of consequence, the sacred object, and the hosts of the relic and patrons of the painting, the brotherhood of San Giovanni Evangelista, in a carefully determined position. In the first temporal snapshot captured by Carpaccio, the confraternity and the mounted Cross occupy one of the fulcrums of Venetian life, the middle section of the bridge, as they tra- verse it on their way to the patriarchal palace. They are operating in a visual past tense, and are accordingly minimized by perspective and displaced to the side of the true axial node of the painting, the Grand Canal and the Venetians of all walks of life strolling along its right bank. The second frame captures the act of exorcism, again stressing its temporal centrality and artistic present tense by means of spatial perspective. The confraternity, the relic, and the patriarch loom large before the observer, occupying the upper foreground, as demanded by the cannon identifying the sacred. The scene, however, enfolds even more conspicuously to the side of the painting, brushing against its left-hand frame. The importance of the act and, by extension, its protagonists, is acknowledged by some of those present around the patriarchal palace, but the activity occurring there is accidental to the reality depicted by Carpaccio. Ordinary life on

35 The incunabulum dates the painting to 1494, but art-historical analysis of Carpaccio’s career had led prominent authorities to suggest a later date in the same decade, see the discussion of Vittorio Sgarbi, Carpaccio (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994), 17–59. 1494 is the most likely date of the commission. the miracle with the demoniac 83 and around the canal is central to the painting. The patriarch, his entourage, the relic, the possessed man, and the confraternity are engaged in an action that is both an integral part of and utterly marginal to the crowd of Venetians mulling leisurely around. For whatever the status and personal authority of Francesco Querini may have been and however logical his choice as numinous agent, the painting was the commission of an elite cittadini-led association. Positioning a noble, no matter how saintly, at the focal point on the visual narrative would have gone against the assertive self-identification of the citizen elite of the turn of the century. For the cittadini leadership, which by the late 1400s had come to identify themselves with the state, a portrayal of life at the Rialto was acceptable; Querini at the center of it was not. The principles of Carpaccio’s visual interpretation in the painting align perfectly with the context in which the miracle could have been read in the 1490s, but they are relatively uniform across his work and appear to operate independently of context. Throughout, his style is premised on unity of geometry, scale, and color, and occasionally space, but rarely on unity of action. It lacks hierarchical ordering and, as with Carpaccio’s fellow painters of the narrative school, has a strong ekphrastic emphasis. Priority is determined by convention rather than narrative organization. Aesthetic unity is subjected to a specific taste for the particular. Authenticity and credibility are provided by painstaking detail unrelated to the story that is being told. Several visual nodes compete for the observers’ attention. The eye arrives at the displaced dramatic event only hesitantly, immediately to leave it and meander away. As in most of his work, the visual theme has migrated to the margins. The painting is “de-centered” or “de- territorialized.”36 The Healing of the Possessed Man thus fits fully into a style of figural poetics and cognitive aesthetics shared by other prominent members of the “eyewitness style.” Moreover, the latter are consistent with the structural characteristics of contemporary literary genres, that of the chronicle, the diary of the viaggiatore, and the diplomatic relations of the period. The forms of expression of the later fifteenth century appear to share a mentality informed by common cultural values, being instances of a cultural meta-language interpreting the reality of their age.37

36 The definition is after Jean Paris, L’atelier Bellini (Paris: Lagune, 1995), 282. 37 See the perceptive analyses of Brown, Narrative painting in the age of Carpaccio, and Vittorio Sgarbi, Carpaccio. 84 chapter four

While these linkages offer possibilities for interpretation, a specific nexus between the political context of the miracle, which dictated the marginalization of the patriarch, and the cognitive aesthetics of Carpaccio as an “eyewitness painter” can only be speculated. Two conjectures, however, suggest that just as the numinous had had little choice in the early 1370s but to employ Francesco Querini, so the author(s) of the account was not in a position to extol the bishop of Castello, and so Carpaccio, likewise, could not but “de-centralize” his composition. The first has to do with the location of the event. The accounts state that it took place “in the patriarchy.” Carpaccio chose to make it public, positioning it on the piano nobile of the loggia facing the Grand Canal, in full view of the traffic below. While the presence of witnesses other than the protagonists and the confraternity may have been a requirement for the authentication of the miracle, the choice created complications. The loggia as it stood in the 1490s, and as it was portrayed by Carpaccio, was linked to the complex of structures at Rialto, the bridge, the commercial spaces on and around it, and the governmental loggia at the other lateral side of the bridge, rebuilt with columns from the old courthouse in the mid-1420s.38 To place the patriarch center-stage would have made him the foremost component of the composition and, consequently, the dominant source of agency. Within such a visual context, that would have been an open political statement that the Signoria would hardly have tolerated. The second complication stems from the nature of the miracle. Affliction by demons was not in itself a damning condition. It could have resulted from a variety of causes both internal and external to the demoniac, with social, collective, or personal factors at play. In all cases, however, it indicated disjointed realities in which the ordered state of existence ceased to apply. Pressures had converged on the individual to throw his psychological equilibrium out of balance, opening a crack into which the demonic forces seeped into his personality.39 Innocent victim of malicious powers or perpetrator of moral ills, the possessed man signified a problem. Whether it was a structural phenomenon, suggesting a social malaise in the community, or strictly personal, restricted to an individual and easily dealt with, depended on the painting’s visual logic. In Carpaccio’s style, displacement and marginalization of central narrative components are

38 See Romano, The Likeness of Venice, 64. 39 For an exemplary discussion of possession and exorcism see Giovanni Levi, Inher- iting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, transl. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988). the miracle with the demoniac 85 the norm, but nowhere else are they so powerfully counterbalanced by a contrasting reality. The composition of the Healing of the Possessed Man frames the symbol of disruption as an aberration, juxtaposing it to the prevailing, amply documented normalcy wrapped around it. Anything less would have telescoped the symptom of trouble into a major category. Carpaccio’s rendering, by choice or by stylistic default, acknowledged its existence but minimized its impact on the larger entity to which it belonged. True to the story, it forcefully implies that Venice was still the paradigm of an organic whole strong enough to heal and reincorporate one of its ailing members, rather than a polity characterized by ontological frictions it was unable to resolve. Carpaccio suggests an equilibrium in the bitter repartees of the time between secular and sacred, lay and religious, faith and pragmatism: unstable and contested, but equilibrium nonetheless.40 Fine-tuned to the tensions in the republic’s political theocracy as it was, Carpaccio’s visual record of the miracle projects an optimistic vision in the face of ongoing bickering between the principal stakeholders that continued well beyond the 1490s. The core message of the textual accounts, the balance between the patriarch’s humble admission of his limitations and the formal acknowledgment that he was, after all, the chosen vessel of the divine, rang relevant throughout the sixteenth century, unaffected by shifting political and religious contingencies. By the time of the second edition of the account in 1590, several developments had combined to bring pressure to bear on that precarious equilibrium without managing to upset it. It may well have been that the appeal of the miracle was precisely its capacity to support contradictory positions. The lack of cultural consensus about the miracle’s meaning—did it bolster the figure of the patriarch, or did it stress his limitations—generated social consensus about its relevance.41 On the one hand, there was the mounting significance of the top prelates’ affiliation with the numinous and their capacity to enhance public awareness of the divine presence through operation of traditional props and mechanisms, such as relics and miracles. The council of Trent had re- affirmed the importance of such components of the faith in the context of

40 A Christian drama occurring on the second floor, a miracle of the faith—and a display of secular fashion of the youth, a pair of Ottoman Turks, and a knight of St John’s rubbing shoulders (and gondolas) directly underneath! 41 As per James Fernandez’s theory, most succinctly expressed in his “Symbolic consensus in a Fang reformative cult,” American Anthropologist 67 (1965), 902–29. 86 chapter four its struggle against Protestantism, the general effort to strengthen belief, and the push to stress proper leadership. The latter part was of particular importance for three of Venice’s chief prelates during the sixteenth century. Francesco Contarini (1554–1555), Vincenzo Diedo (1555–1559), and Lorenzo Priuli (1590–1600) were all laymen elevated to the see by the Senate’s fiat. Expressions of the republic’s zealously guarded control of its clergy, their appointments underscore the crucial import of episcopal consecration and papal confirmation: sanctions, which in themselves were sufficient to transform a lay person into a member of the clergy. Canonical legality, however, did not confer upon the patriarchs a crucial component of the office, charismatic legitimacy. To that effect, the reminder that the patriarchs were in closest proximity to the divine should have been wel- comed by all parties and, one may assume, the faithful as well. It shored up the special character of the office and the exclusivity of the position. On the other hand, there was the steady countercurrent of forces working to limit patriarchal authority, restrict ecclesiastical autonomy, and fully incorporate the clerical establishment in the corporative structures of the confessional state. Individual state officials defied excommunica- tion with the retort that they obey one prince only, the doge, and do not acknowledge any other authority, as an officer of the cattavér, Alvise Bembo, declared to Patriarch Giovanni Trevisan (1559–1590) in a conflict in March 1573.42 Patrician clans rallied by their cloistered women to resist vigorously the reform of nunneries undertaken by the patriarchs. Lay parishioners, local clergy, and the clerical congregations successfully fought patriarchal attempts to acquire control over the elections of parish clergy. The government went out of its way to protect its juspatronate of the patriarchal see against a renewed attempt by the Roman Curia to consider it a temporary concession, most notably with Pious IV’s bull of 1561. The words that the miracle accounts put in Francesco Querini’s mouth, “I am not of such authority” to effect healing, and the referral of the matter to the higher powers of the relic owned by a corporation of the state conform to a climate of highly circumscribed patriarchal position. By a curious twist of fortune, it was another member of the clan, the Dominican Girolamo Querini (1524–1554) who attempted to tip the balance in the opposite direction and enlarge patriarchal prerogatives. During the first part of his pontificate, Querini picked up every possible fight in the diocese, confronting local clergy and government over appointments, ben-

42 Niero, I Patriarchi, 95. the miracle with the demoniac 87 efices, and tithes, squaring with the regular clergy over clerical discipline, and quarreling with the resident Greek community over their dogmatic and liturgical autonomy. Defeated on all counts, he left Venice in 1541 for a self-imposed exile in Vicenza, never to return, his powers devolving to the primicure of St. Marco and the papal nuncio, and later to his vicar in the city.43 Querini’s fate indicates clearly that the status quo established under Dona had become the norm. Such was the situation in 1590, when Lorenzo Priuli assumed the patriarchal authority and the text of the miracle was reprinted in Galuano’s slim new edition. Once again, the account sublimated the conflicting interpretations of the story, not to resolve them, but to suspend the tensions inherent in their contradictory visions in an eternal coexistence constantly challenged by contingent developments but never completely upset, a truly miraculous feat indeed.

43 Niero, I Patriarchi, 72–87.

chapter five

Drawing a Line Between Citizen Classes: Regimenting the Popolani in the Miracle at the Bridge of San Lio

The great confraternities were associations of men (and originally women as well) who sought spiritual solace, material support, outlets for their predilection to serve the community, the honor of belonging to a prestigious institution, and opportunities to network with social peers and kin- dred souls. They included people of all walks of life, from great nobles to destitute persons on the last legs of their earthy journeys. Quite the only thing that the members of San Giovanni’s were supposed to share was a particular devotion to the evangelist and the Cross, and the exalted piety that came with such devotion. As is always the case with a cross-section of urban society numbering several hundred people, however, there were those who considered that minimum requirement a burden. In the first decade of the fifteenth century there was just such a person in the confraternity. A dissolute man who favored taverns and brothels as haunts, he had repeatedly refused to join the Cross-led journeys of the scuola. One day, urged by a friend who was also a San Giovanni’s member to mend his ways and attend funeral processions so that he, too, may one day have the benefit of the Cross attending his funeral, he retorted curtly. He did not fancy, he said, following the relic at funerals, nor did he wish the Cross to attend his own funeral. Challenging the divine did not go without retribution. The man’s time came, and as he was from the parish of San Lio, the confraternity raised the Cross and marched to convey his remains for burial. All went well until the procession mounted the bridge in front of the church. The bearer of the Cross suddenly halted. The relic immobilized him, and would not let itself be carried toward the campo in front of San Lio. Changing the Cross-bearer failed to produce results. The ceremony was allowed to continue only after the guardian grande was informed by the dissolute man’s friend about the words of the deceased, realized that a greater power was in action, and ordered the relic taken down and replaced by a simple cross. The procession moved again and entered into the church to pick up the body. The brothers and onlookers who were to take part in the service had just witnessed yet another miracle worked by the Cross. 90 chapter five

As the accounts have it the relic’s goal was the unmasking and condem- nation of moral failure and disrespect for the sacred. Both were serious infringements of religious norms (the man’s uttering bordered on blas- phemy), the ideal order of the community, and confraternal discipline, and these infringements constituted as good a reason for the interjec- tion of the divine into everyday space as the injury of divine honor by the dissolute brother. In a political context, besides shirking confraternal responsibility, such acts were also contestations of authority. The man was indifferent to the efficacy of the relic’s presence, which shaded into unbelief, but also challenged the authenticity of the Cross, certified by an inquisitorial court staffed by legal professionals, eminent citizens, and formal representatives of the government. His words broke with the official requirement for “speech orthodoxy,” the Venetian form of normative political correctness in the period. The Council of Ten and the Quarantia enforced that norm on the pain of fines and banishment.1 The offense called for censure to protect the honor of those in power, in this world and the next. The relic responded on its own authority with punishment by imposition of moral opprobrium. Accounts of exactly what happened at San Lio hinge on a hierarchical sequence in the narrative. Before it became clear what was responsible for the traffic jam on the bridge, several persons attempted to help and get the Cross moving. Their successive involvement portrays the social arrangement that was highlighted at San Lorenzo in a reverse order. The first to become aware that something was amiss, perhaps some accident, was the guardian grande. He instructed one of his “companions,” therefore likely a man of the banca rather than a common brother, to take up the penello with the Cross from the brother carrying it and proceed. The companion failed. Then another person got involved, a mariner, a man robust and bold, who volunteered to carry over the Cross, confident in his strength. He too failed in his turn, “and if the first two did badly, he fared even worse,” as the texts comment. It is at this point that the friend of the deceased, who had been well aware of the dead confratello’s failures and had tried in vain to bring him to his senses, realized what might have caused the procession to halt and reported it as a miracle to the guardian grande. The accounts’ narrative thus establishes a progression of rank in a descending order, beginning with the most socially prominent personage,

1 For speech control in the time of the miracle see Guido Ruggiero, Violence in Early Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 125–37. the miracle of san lio 91 the guardian, going down through the hierarchy, including the associate of the dissolute man, and ending with the culprit himself. Other than the clue that suggests hierarchy through narrative logic, the social status of the brother who was shamed by the Cross at San Lio is not indicated; neither is his name or occupation. His transgressions make him a figure incompatible with the upper classes represented in the confraternity.2 Individual moral failures aside, the patricians were a group apart (they were listed separately on the confraternity rosters) and were not subject to the requirements demanded of the rest of the brotherhood. Furthermore, it is improbable that a citizen institution like San Giovanni’s would have presumed to castigate a nobleman and cast a shadow on his moral standards. That was not in the scuola’s authority to do and would have been considered a political affront by the ruling oligarchy. Publicly ostracizing a noble for unbelief would have cut at the very heart of the Venetian political theology. It is also highly unlikely that the moral delin- quent came from the ranks of the elite citizen leadership that ran the confraternity. By the turn of the century their position in the scuola had come to inform a good deal of their social identity and they had made an effort to publicize the Cross as its symbolic embodiment. Following it in procession was not a burden; rather, it enjoined to their honor and its authority rubbed off onto them as collective officialdom and as individual citizens. That leaves only one option. In all probability, the dissolute brother was a popolano, a commoner exercising a mechanical trade who was excluded from the political process, the domain of the noble magistrates, and the managing of the republic’s administrative and bureaucratic logistics, a preserve of the upper crust of cittadini. The logic of the story, the provisions of the scuola, and the dynamic of the larger Venetian society of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries offer clues that support this conclusion, and allow for an opportunity to conjecture about the principal meaning of the miracle. The miracle of San Lio is the only one in the cycle that is completely anonymous. It appears that there were good reasons for that. Removing individualization casts the account participants as representatives of the principal social types. In terms of the accounts’ narrative logic their silence as to names mentioned appears highly relevant. The accounts accord well

2 In addition, at the time of the miracle the upper classes had not yet been fully differentiated, see Stanley Chojnacki, “Social Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Second Serrata,” Renaissance Studies 8:4 (1994), 341–58. 92 chapter five with the political mythology of the republic. The dissolute man’s refusal to join the confraternity was a denial of the corporative principle as the main identity-building category of the community. It flouted the fundamentals of social life as Venetians saw it in its ideal form, based on consensus, cooperation, concord, group solidarity, collective dependence, the common good, and effacement of individualism. Anonymity demonstrated that the words and actions of the dissolute person deprived him of identity, as identity itself was rooted in group belonging. They also jeopardized the identity of the entire community.3 From a theological perspective, forgoing names conforms to the religious adage of “hate the sin but not the sinner.” The Cross disgraced the brother but did not deny him honorable burial. Once the moral failure had been identified there was no need to damn him forever in the memories of future generations. An example had been made from which could be extracted a generic lesson, and that fulfilled the Cross’—and the confraternal leadership’s—purpose. Thus the accounts’ withholding of identifying information makes the dissolute man, his righteous friend, the men involved in the attempts to restart the procession, and the confraternal officials, types rather than individuals. The texts supply clues as to the protagonists’ age, occupation, habits, and status within the confraternity, but never a name that would allow for treating the episode as an individual aberration due to the personal failures of a unique, single personage. This conclusion has consequences. There are reasons to think that the narrative category of type corresponded to a real-life social body. The failure thus becomes a feature of the class to which the dissolute brother belonged. In the later fourteenth century the rank-and-file popolani comprised the mass of the scuola’s membership as they had before, but, with permanent exclusion from the banca and the devolution of the General Chapter’s powers, their agency had become extremely limited. Together they had become objects rather than subjects of the confraternal purpose. Deprived of individuality, the dissolute brother stood for the popolani class of society. His comportment and his action, a moral failure and a contestation of authority on principle,

3 On these principles see the succinct summary of James Grubbs in his Introduction to Family Memoirs from Venice, xix–xxi, and Margaret King, Venetian Humanism in the Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), chapter 2; Patricia Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” passim, and Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Car- paccio, passim; and David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). On patrician flouting of these same norms, Patricia Brown, Private Life in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). the miracle of san lio 93 exposed that social group as lacking the essentials of what already constituted a qualification for leadership on any level. His castigation was a means of public separation of that group from the body of the community represented in the confraternity and the elite cittadini who had appropriated it as a means of self-expression. And, as time wore on and the elite citizens’ identity came to be fixed definitely in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, a few decades before the print of 1590, the way of life of the dissolute brother put him firmly outside their ranks. Since 1569 a part of the legal definition of an elite citizen had been that he lived hono- ramente e civilmente, something that could not be said about the man of the miracle.4 Furthermore, the trespass was met with a reprimand expressed in a very specific manner, arrested progression. In the economy of interaction between social reality and its narrative representations, the categories operating in the accounts’ rendition of offense and punishment require correspondence in the same order of abstraction in social terms. In other words, the narrative category of motion corresponds to the social category of mobility; the halting of motion mirrors the progressive regimentation of society, the lower classes of popolani being the most affected. Little wonder, therefore, that the miracle at San Lio is not about dynamics. The dissolute man was expected to participate in processions but he stayed put. The miracle too, is all about stasis: staying put, staying within limits, knowing one’s place, fulfilling one’s obligations, not crossing over. The bridge here is a threshold to obligations that could not be rescinded and mobility that had been curtailed. The duties, it appears, reflected a trend in the social dynamic of the state that restricted social mobility. The texts do not mention it, but leading a virtuous life and marching in procession behind the Cross at funerals were not up to the discretion of individual brothers. Piety was mandatory. It was the duty of the rank-and-file “brothers of the discipline,” clearly spelled in the scuola’s constitutions.5 It was not a liability to be accepted or rejected lightly, for four reasons. First, it was part of the basic contract between the confraternity brothers ensuring each of them a larger pool of devout intercession on behalf of their souls. Second, increasingly more important as time wore on, accompanying deceased brothers on their last earthly journey was the duty of the

4 Giuseppe Trebbi, “La cancelleria veneta nei secoli XVI e XVII,” Annali della Fundazi- one Luigi Einaudi, 14 (1980), 71. 5 As stated in the scuola’s mariegola, Chap. XVI and XXI, see AVS SGE Reg. 32, f. 207v. 94 chapter five commoners and poorer members, vis-à-vis the well-to-do citizens and the patrician brothers who contributed the overwhelming majority of alms enjoyed by lower-class brethren. Well-attended processions illustrated the social harmony of Venice, confirmed the status of the elite, and added to the chance that they would end in God’s good books. Third, the relic depended on worshippers to validate its charisma as much as the brethren depended on the relic to give a boost to their good fortunes in this world and in the hereafter.6 Finally, as already noted, by the early fifteenth century attending processions led by the Cross was not only a confraternal tradition and obligation, but a state matter as well. As the government looked for means to enhance the image of the city as a sacred entity, it tapped on the great confraternities with their impressive array of brothers for public ceremonies. Following the Cross became a political duty in obeisance of the state, a demonstration of good citizenship. Demurring was tantamount to political disobedience. For these reasons, already the early fourteenth-century statutes of the confraternity had established attendance at funeral processions and liturgical services for dead brothers as main duties of the members. In its agreement with the Badoer family the scuola had obtained the right to four monuments in the church of San Giovanni under which deceased brothers who had made such arrangements were laid to rest. On all other occasions, upon a brother’s death, the confraternity staged a procession to the parish church where the body lay and then took it with due ceremony, flagellation, and singing, to its designated burial place. After the burial, the brothers continued to serve the departed by singing a number of Paternosters, donating alms for their souls, offering prayers, and paying for masses on their behalf.7 For all this to be effective the brothers had to live a virtuous life by the regulations duly imposed upon them. Preventing the perpetration of sin was a major goal of confraternal regulations. Misdemeanors such as gambling and drinking at taverns and con- versing with prostitutes reflected poorly on the scuola’s status as a vehicle of grace that was to be distributed to the community. It diminished the efficacy of the entity. When the Cross refused to lead the miscreant to his final resting place, it was not entirely personal. By asserting itself, the divine agent also affirmed the social, political, and spiritual meaning of

6 See Patricia Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” 184–92 and on the mutual relation between sacred object and worshippers, Richard Trexler, “Ritual Behavior in Florence: The Setting,” Medievalia et Humanistica, 4 (1973), 128sq. 7 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 3, f. 6r. the miracle of san lio 95 confraternal devotion. Then again, the dissolute brother might have been lower in rank and status, but it does not appear that this put him in a position of dependence on his social betters. Despite the admonitions of his comrade, he carried on with his deprived life until the end. One can assume, and indeed that was the case, that at the time the miracle occurred there were no social conditions, or institutional mechanisms, to enforce either virtuous life or outward expressions of confraternal piety. It took the action of the authority of the highest standing to set things straight. The theological side of the supernatural action as a stern admoni- tion threatening the loss of spiritual privileges is clear, but there is more to the accounts than theology. The verdict issued to the dissolute brother with the miracle at San Lio reflected long-standing arrangements in the problematic linking of the sacred and the social in late Trecento Venice. These arrangements indicate the confraternity’s growing ability to attract men of means but also the potential for resentment this generated. Already in 1344 the confraternal statutes allowed nobles to join the scuola as “honorary” members, exempted from obligations while enjoying grace upon the payment of the normal annual dues plus a one-time special fee of twenty five ducats in gold, which went into the corporation’s alms programs. Admittance was at the sole discretion of the executive bodies, the banca and the Great Chapter, bypassing the general meeting.8 A decade later it was apparently realized that too many patricians would be in a position to influence confraternal policies and turn the corporation into an extension of the Grand Council rather than a preserve of the cittadini. The scuola attempted to curb the trend. In 1359, patrician membership was cut down to fifty and members had to shoulder all confraternal obligations.9 Wealthy commoners, elite cittadini foremost among them by default, were still able to purchase exempted membership. The regulations indicate the citizen elite’s determination to preserve its leading role in the corporation, and also resentment against the encroachment of patricians on commoners’ turf in general. The corporate spirit of equality came under pressure with corresponding effects on confraternal devotion. It appears that the governmental body in charge of supervising the confraternities, the Council of Ten, which was after all a patrician institution, was not fully attuned to that development and was slow to adjust its

8 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 3, f. 20, Chap. 57. 9 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 3, f. 22v–23, Chap. 61. 96 chapter five policies. In 1409, it passed a regulation that may have triggered the miracle of San Lio. Nobles were granted special treatment in monetary terms and were exempted from the ten ducats entrance fee. Likely having in mind the economic position of poor patricians, they were allowed to pay whatever they considered fit.10 The patricians evidently considered much less than the standard fee, putting the confraternity under financial stress, as the scuola complained to the Council of Ten some years later.11 Earlier that year, on February 12, 1409, the Ten sweetened the pill by reserving the leadership of the scuola to the boni homini, excluding the nobles but, perhaps more importantly, the vast majority of the brethren with lower status and resources as well.12 Coincidentally, in the same year came the first recorded official request that the confraternities attend a state ceremony that was purely political, the funeral procession of the condotierre Jacopo del Verme.13 The next year, 1410, the Ten ordered that the four top executives had to be cittadini originarii, or cittadini by privilege who had been members in excess of twenty years.14 The confraternal lists of deacons suggest that the rest of the banca had similar social standing as their duties would imply as well. These provisions, even if not designed to draw an economic class distinction within the confraternal membership, amount to a mini-serrata, setting apart the wealthy and the privileged from the poorer brothers and those with popolano status.15 The impact of the Ten’s financial and administrative regulations may not have been felt immediately after 1409–1410, but they certainly affected corporate morale.16

10 ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Parti Miste, Reg. 9, f. 25v. 11 ASV SG SGE, Parti, Reg. 41, f. 34, petition to the Council of Ten dated March 27, 1430. On the relations between San Giovanni Evangelista and the Council of Ten see William Wurthmann, “The Council of Ten and the Scuole Grandi in Early Renaissance Venice,” Studi Veneziani, 18 (1989), 15–66. 12 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 9, f. 48. 13 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 9, f. 23v, February 13, 1409; see also Wurthmann, “The Council of Ten and the Scuole Grandi,” 59. 14 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 9, f. 48v. 15 Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor, 63, 72–3 argues that these policies were a conscious effort to distinguish confraternal membership according to economic class; I concur with Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi and Venetian Art, 75 n. 2 that the argument is misplaced. 16 Francesco Sansovino would be the first author to date the miracle, for he thought that a decision of the Council of Ten dated May 11, 1374 referred to the miracles of San Lorenzo and San Lio, see Venezia citta nobilissima et singolare (Venice, 1581), f. 100v; in fact the Ten did not specify San Leo and at that date there were already two miracles, if not three, as the exorcising of the demoniac had already happened. Patricia Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” 194 dates the miracle in 1372–1379, on the ground that after the Cross’s reaction at San Lio the confraternity decided not to take it out for funeral processions, and the earliest such decision was recorded on March 4, 1379, see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 1, the miracle of san lio 97

Such developments could not have failed to generate resentment in the lower-class membership of the scuola. The confraternal climate was ripe for recalling the miraculous intervention at San Lio. As the narratives have it, the transgression that drew the ire of the divine was not so much the dissolute brother’s deprived life, nor his refusal to march in any procession, but his denial to attend specifically funerals. His friend’s argument juxtaposes the eventual attendance of the Cross upon his death to the confratello’s current obligation while alive. On the principle of reciproc- ity that informs so much of the scuole’s existence in the Venetian social and spiritual worlds, the structural logic of the miracle points to shirking attendance at funeral processions as the brother’s main failure. The obligation that he neglected was more confraternal than civic and was therefore required of him not because of his position as a citizen of Venice but due to his rank and status as a member. Given that attendance at funerals had become an institutionalized marker of (lower) social status, the action of the Cross came to seal that status by stressing that processions were his duty and not a negotiable charge to accept or refuse at will. The miracle, therefore, recognized and addressed the rising tensions that followed the reorganization of the economy of confraternal involvement to the exclusive benefit of nobles and cittadini and at the expense of the popolani “brothers of the discipline.” A secondary tier of exchange was created underneath the interaction between the grace-dispensing divine agent and the pious efforts of the formerly economically, socially, and politically indistinguishable human supplicants. The new arrangement predicated that superior link on another hierarchical relationship, that of the human-to-human, mundane exchange of tangible commodities, in this case monetary payment for attendance at liturgical services. That relation was basic to society, but the religious corporations of the battuti had appeared exactly to efface it in a real-symbolic erasing of the worldly differences that fractioned the community. The miracle stressed that tensions had become sufficiently high for there to be a need to highlight the intrinsic fusion of the two exchanges to legitimize the hierarchy of the

f. 21v. However, the accounts only state that it was decided not to take the Cross out except on the days specified in the Mariegola, without specifically mentioning funerals. More importantly, on January 25, 1458, the banca voted to “not take [the Cross] outside the [confraternal] house except on the days specified below so that the devotion of the people does not vane” by the too frequent exposure to the relic, see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 220v, and Brown, ibid., 190 and n. 28. The provision only makes sense if the Cross had been taken out on other occasions, either because the decision from 1379 did not concern funerals, or because it has been disregarded. 98 chapter five secondary tier. The challenge to the Cross it reflects demonstrates that the disenfranchised lower classes acquiesced in the conceptual vocabu- lary mystifying the social regimentation enacted by the government but did not acknowledge its legitimacy. While patricians and the elite cittadini sacralized a social relationship through the relic, the lower classes secular- ized the sacred artifact on which the social rearrangements were pinned. Assimilated to the nobles in the relationship, the cittadini seized on the same conceptualization and called on the divine to lend its authority to the new order. Hence the miracle was designed to shore up their exclusive position and separation from the manual workers as much as to stamp out unbelief. Resentment on the part of the popolani was to be expected, just as the elite cittadini are expected to have seized the opportunity to draw a moral boundary around themselves that excluded the lower class. The miracle highlights the dynamic of the social coagulation of the elite citizens through their action to contain and circumscribe the contagion creeping up from below. They were not noble for sure, but they were anxious to point out that they did not belong to the common lot either and that exclusion from political authority did not assimilate them to the masses. Eager to fashion an identity for themselves, they accepted the line drawn for them from the above and in turn drew a line for those whom they counted below their station in life. Indeed, if the miracle occurred in 1409 it would have been at the funeral of a certain “Simon di Michiel, tun- maker,” the only member of San Giovanni’s from San Lio who is recorded as having died in 1409 and during the entire period of 1399–1414.17 Simon had married a neighborhood girl, Cristina, in 1374. Married life would have been incompatible with taverns and prostitutes, but he might have lost his spouse later, which would make his way of life and his bitter retort about the Cross at least understandable, if not pardonable. Back in 1374 Simon had written his wife a receipt for a repromissa on 15 lire di grossi or 150 ducats, which indicates enough in the way of material circumstances to carry a dissolute life for a while.18 The date is uncertain, however, and in the spirit of the miracle it would be unfair to pin the moral failures and the challenge of the Cross on the man. If in the early part of the 1400s it had been the wealthy citizen and patrician elites who shirked their obligations, by the last quarter of the

17 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 71, f. 111r. 18 ASV CIN, b. 168, notary Marco de Rafanelli, loose parchment leaf # 9, repromissa receipt of Simon, botarius of San Lio, dated September 5, 1374. the miracle of san lio 99 century the situation had reversed. By the later decades of the fifteenth century, as the confraternity conceived the idea of a new pictorial cycle in honor of the Cross and commissioned the incunabulum, there were more poignant reasons to stress the relevance of the miracle. The period witnessed developments with significant impact on the confraternity brothers of lower extraction. The 1490s were especially disturbing, but the trouble had begun with the long, sixteen-year war with the Ottomans in 1463–1479. Hard pressed in the Mediterranean, and with trouble brewing in the terraferma, Venice saw a slump in its commercial activities and massive loss of wealth for the state and ordinary citizens. The poor brothers of San Giovanni Evangelista, like those of the other great confraternities, became increasingly dependent on the well-to-do and the wealthy. The poorer brothers, certainly lower class however defined, had only one way to pay back the charitable contributions doled out on their behalf: by participating in the funeral processions honoring deceased corporate benefactors and reciting prayers for their souls. The confraternity officers were well aware of the problems that poorly attended processions created for the scuola and seized on an easy solution. Poorer brothers depending on corporate charity may not have been too pious, but they could not afford to lose their alms. They could be, and were, transformed into indirectly paid mourners for the well-to-do.19 Already in 1430 the scuola’s officers were authorized to withdraw corporate support from poorer brothers who failed to appear at four processions.20 In 1490 the Council of Ten authorized the scuola to mandate attendance at funeral processions for all those who received alms and benefices or held probationary status, on pain of losing the benefits or the chance to join.21 The miracle at San Lio was a stern reminder of that obligation and a testimony of its growing importance for the confraternity. It can be argued that the scuola’s concern with that precise problem was behind the petition to the Council of Ten to authorize the resumption of the procession to the church of

19 See the often-quoted statement of the guardian grande of San Rocco that the confraternities were “making one a son and another a stepson of misser San Rocco when all should be equal sons,” in Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” 196. On the other hand, the confraternity made sure they would receive enough alms by limiting the latter only to members of the scuola in 1467, ASV SGE, Reg. 32, f. 12v. 20 ASV SGE, Parti, Reg. 41, ibid. 21 ASV SGE Parti, Reg. 8, f. 82, f. 40–41. For a discussion of the process see Pullan, Rich and Poor, 70–78. 100 chapter five

San Lio to commemorate the miracle, approved in 1475.22 Among other reasons, the same preoccupation may have transpired behind the fact that the painting with the miracle was one of the first to be done, and was ready in 1494. And yet, exactly at the point when corporate charity mattered so much more for the rank-and-file brothers who fell on hard times, two developments took place that must have affected their morale. First, the officers of San Giovanni Evangelista and their counterparts in the other scuole diminished support of charity to funds dedicated to their lavish redec- orating campaigns. The cittadini officialdom at first attempted to meet the raising expenditures by signing up more members. In 1478 it became known that the scuola had enrolled over 200 people in excess of the legal number of 550. The Council of Ten immediately mandated their dismissal.23 By the early 1490s, the situation had changed. In February 1491, the scuola humbly petitioned for an expansion, and the Council of Ten duly obliged their request to that effect. It soon became clear that that would not suffice. In September 1492, the Council had to authorize the suspension of an annual charitable distribution to secure additional funds to the tune of 200 ducats per year.24 The partial reorientation of confraternal spending may have been spiritually well justified in the eyes of the confraternity officials, but the effect of those cuts on corporate morale cannot be over- looked. Second, even as corporate spending augmenting poorer members’ resources was being pared down, the Ten allowed preferential treatment of noble confraternity members. In 1481, the magistracy went to the extent of ordering the scuola to enroll gravely sick and even deceased patricians who desired (or had desired) to obtain the spiritual benefit of such affiliation.25 In 1498, some time after the incunabulum with the miracles was printed and four years after Mansueti painted the miracle at San Lio, the

22 ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 18, f. 69, from May 1474. The approval came some months later, see ASV SGE, Parti Miste, b. 41, f. 66. Of course, this could also be due to competition with the scuola grande di Santa Maria della Carità, which has obtained its own fragment of the True Cross in 1472. Importantly, however, San Giovanni Evangelista’s immediate reaction in 1472 was to petition the Council of Ten for permission to take the Cross out on the feast day of San Lorenzo, thus commemorating the miracle that initially and decisively established the Cross’s reputation as a sacred object. Brown, “Honor and Necessity,” 194 states that the new supplication is surprising, but in the light of the social need to secure poorer brother’s attendance it is not really startling. I would argue that the two petitions were finely calibrated to meet different needs. 23 ASV, Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 19, ff. 101–102. 24 ASV, Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 24 (1488–1490), f. 205, ibid., 6 (1492), f. 164. 25 ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 20, f. 57. the miracle of san lio 101 magistracy reinstated the entry fee for nobles at a minimum of ten ducats, the standard amount for commoners of all stripes. The Ten repeated the injunction in 1505, which indicates that the nobles resisted paying even that much.26 Such was the atmosphere in which Giovanni Mansueti painted his Miracle at the Bridge of San Lio. As in Bellini’s portrayal of the miracle of San Lorenzo, Mansueti’s work is quite apposite to the meaning embedded in the story of the miracle. The painting, along with a second piece he did for the True Cross cycle, The healing of the daughter of Nicolo di Benvegnudo, appears to have been his first major assignment. The commission won him another important patron, the scuola of San Marco, which hired him to work on their own decorative project. Very little is known about Mansueti to venture a guess why the scuola of San Giovanni entrusted him with this task.27 The association with the Bellini atelier must have played an important role. Mansueti had been an apprentice in their workshop and maintained a lifelong affiliation with the Bellini even after his major commissions. He may have needed their support. All of his known work shows the expertise of a craftsman, a careful, articulate artist with a good deal of skill but little imagination and none of the creative, inventive touch characteristic of the great talents. For most of his large paintings there are preparatory drawings made by someone else’s hand. Mansueti followed them to the extent he was capable. His artistic ability was limited, and he appears to have known and acknowledged that. For all practical purposes he was a man of mediocre talent, secure in his niche but under pressure, consistently outdone and overshadowed by others, first by his masters, then by his peers, and ultimately by painters of the younger generation, such as Giorgione and Titian. He had not much taste for the sublime. His strength was in conveying mundane, everyday features. In his waning years, in the late 1520s, his major patrons became increasingly uncomfortable with his work. His heirs had to resort to a lengthy litigation to recoup some of the wages promised to him by the confraternity of San Marco. He was successful in terms of staying busy but his life had none of the luster, glamour, and social ascension of Gentile Bellini’s. Stability, conservatism, and even stagnation characterize Mansueti’s place in the artistic community.

26 ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 27, f. 218, Reg. 30, f. 200r. 27 For Mansueti see Sandra Miller, “Giovanni Mansueti, A Little Master of the Venetian Quattrocento,” Revue roumaine d’histoire de l’art, series beaux-arts, 15 (1978), 77–115. 102 chapter five

At the time he began the work on the Miracle at San Lio Mansueti had already developed his identifiable style. Its chief features are unmistakable in the painting and are even more pronounced if compared to a drawing attributed to the hand of Gentile Bellini and likely prepared for the painting of the miracle. Gentile’s sketch is airy and light, almost serene, bearing his hallmarks of openness and decorous movement. By contrast, Mansueti’s canvas depicts one of the most crammed and condensed spaces he ever painted.28 The scene is overcrowded, Mansueti’s typical visual garrulity bursting along the seams. His desire to fill space translates in a pictorial agoraphobia. The painter altered the architectural topography of the square in front of San Lio, bringing the bridge closer to the church, making the buildings in the rear background close in on the spectator and the houses on the left and right tower menacingly above the bridge. Mansueti’s concern for architectural detail is overwhelming. So are his human figures popping up from every window, door, roof, or balcony, massing in open spaces, and floating in gondolas and boats from which one cannot see the water of the canal. Dynamics, perhaps attempted, elude the spectator. Except for architecture, perspective is lacking; layers of people compete for the beholder’s attention. The impression is that of an overcrowded, condensed reality, with little if any room to move, the visual tale of an arrested progression. A ribbon of black-clad patricians and senators in red togas populate the foreground; the white-robbed confraternity brothers that they separate from the viewer come second; a third layer of “everyone else” clusters behind the latter and populates the margins. Mansueti structured his pictorial tale against the background of these three color- and size-coded categories: patricians, confraternal brothers, and “others.” The first two visually participate; the remainder merely attends. The painter himself seems to straddle the divide between brothers and onlookers, standing at the tail end of the procession but dressed in lay robes (he was not a brother of San Giovanni’s). That was precisely the position where Mansueti was situated, socially and artistically, in 1494. His rendering of San Lio’s miracle’s main message, enveloped in abundant architectural and structural detail, construes his metaphor of contemporary Venetian society and his place in it. It was an overwhelming order, but also a comforting one. It was congested, but

28 For a discussion see Miller, “Giovanni Mansueti,” 81 and Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, 152–3 for Mansueti’s “copious style.” and ibid., 154 for a reproduction of Bellini’s drawing for the San Lio painting. the miracle of san lio 103 since everyone was in the proper place there was not much chance that someone would get elbowed out. In society, as in the architectural frame he so delighted in depicting, every detail mattered. Even the smallest part of the order had a functional task, conveying beauty, supporting action, or providing testimony. Nothing could be subtracted or taken out without affecting the efficacy of the whole. For a painter of average skills, quite conscious of his limitations, the message of the miracle of San Lio was a solid guarantee that ratified social hierarchies and his status. His canvas captures the moment after the miracle had occurred. The numinous agent had sanctified the order “as is” with Mansueti’s place in it. In case there was any doubt, the artist duly portrayed himself affirming his faith, not only in the charisma of the sacred object and the shame of the miscreant, but in the numinous action that confirmed his belonging as well. Ultimately, Mansueti’s visual cover conforms to the implicit lesson of the textual foils of the miracle in the account that was included in the dossier as we now have it, the printing of the incunabulum, and the printing of 1590. His concentration of human figures effaces exceptional individuality on principle, even when it is “outspoken,” as in his self-portrait and that of Nadal Colona.29 It reaffirms the principle that identity is collectively fashioned, that those who matter, nobles and earnest citizens, loom large in the foreground, that everyone is watching, and that there is no escape from the structural confines that frame existence. That alone would have sufficed to convey at least a layer of the meaning of the miracle as the elite citizens might have contemplated it.

29 Nadal Colona was a priest of San Lio, member of San Giovanni’s, and a notary public active 1459–1497. He has several parchment leaves and a paper register in ASV CIN, b. 62.

chapter six

Healing the Sick, Helping the Poor: Service and Identity in the Miracle of the Daughter of Nicolo di Benvegnudo

On March 11, 1414, in the year of Bartolomeo di Archangeli’s second term as guardian grande of San Giovanni’s, Nicolo di Benvegnudo of San Polo was elected to serve a term as a deacon for his district.1 Nicolo was a brother of good standing and, as it will appear, a man of sincere piety and concern for the impoverished members of the community. He had joined the scuola in 1408 and the appointment was his first appearance on the banca, indicating that he was a man of substance as well. He would go on to serve one more term, in 1421–1422. How old he was at the time is difficult to ascertain, but in 1414 he had been a married man with several daughters, one of them a three year-old toddler. He did not have many years left though, for he passed away on November 18, 1426.2 Whether he had been getting on in years at the time or his life was cut short in his prime we will likely never know. He must have felt the end approach- ing, because in November 1425, about a year before his death, he made

1 Bartolomeo di Archangeli, (or “arcangelj”) guardian grande in 1414–1415, served a second term in 1406–1407, was a notary active in 1388–1418, and recorded several wills. There are 61 documents of his hand now extant. Many of the testators are from the parish of Santa Maria Formosa, but there are others from Trinity and other parishes, quite spread out and comprising a few women as well. Number 24 is the will of Maria Foscari, spouse of Francesco Foscari, dated 1412. See ASV ANT, b. 55d. For his, and Nicolo di Benvegnudo’s election in 1414, see ASV SG SGE Reg. 71, Libro Stella I, Registro banche, elenchi fratelli morti, parti del Capitolo, riceveri, 1394–1417, f. 24v. On the same folio is the election of Tomaso dalle Verigole as nonzolo. F. 26v, where Tomaso gets replaced, lists him just as “Tomaso Negro” giving his full name. If he belonged to the main house of the Negri family, he too was of no mean stock, for they were jewelers’ house and were counted among the leading cittadini. 2 Ibid., f. 55r, for Nicolo among the members admitted in 1408; for his second term as deacon February 23, 1421 to March 15, 1422, see ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, Registro banche, inventari, elenchi frateli, parti, riceveri, 1417–1465, f. 17v, and for the date of his death, ibid., f. 71v. A note indicates that he had been buried at San Giovanni’s and a cross had been placed before his name in the list of brothers. Early- to mid-fourteenth-century rosters of San Giovanni’s contain a few Benvegnudos in San Polo, but it is not likely that any of them can be linked to Nicolo, ASV SG SGE, Reg. 3, f. 33r, Benvegnudo caleger, and idem, Benvegnudo faciator. 106 chapter six his will.3 In the period after his second term as deacon he had left San Polo and moved across the Grand Canal to San Samuele. It was not uncommon for men to make their will early in life and then update it if need be, but Nicolo might have had a premonition, or perhaps the move had prompted him to put his affairs in order. Upon his death he was laid to rest at San Giovanni’s, as he requested in his will, a tribute to his commitment to the scuola and the confraternity’s acknowledgement of his contributions. Back in 1414 he had a different cause for concern. His youngest daughter had been afflicted with a severe congenital illness. She was partially or fully paralyzed, suffered from seizures and a type of strabismus that made her nearly blind, and could not talk. The child’s impediments greatly vexed her parents. They had tried doctors and folk healers, all to no avail.4 The failure to find a cure brought the mother to desperation. Nicolo held together better, but the impaired child was always on his mind. All options exhausted, one day at the scuola he had an epiphany. He turned to the nonzolo, Tomaso Negro dalle Verigole, and asked him for three candles. Nicolo then touched the crystal case of the relic with the candles and went home for dinner. The course of the events after that is

3 ASV ANT, b. 746, notary Marciliano di Naresi, priest of Santa Maria Formosa, later of San Giovanni Decolato, active 14 17–1434, f. lxiij r–v, new pagination 218r–v; newest pagination, 25. A contemporary parchment copy by the hand of Marciliano is in Nicolo’s commissaria, ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 323, filza A, nr. 3. Filza B in the same register, f. 6r contains the original of the will on paper by Nicolo’s own hand with notes on the left-hand margin by a hand of 1460s–1470s, which indicates that at that time two of Nicolo’s daughters, Mar- colina and Eufemia, have passed away. The testator’s parish is identified as San Samuele, but there is no doubt that he is the same person as Nicolo di Benvegnudo of San Polo, for several reasons. First, the confraternal registers of the period are preserved integrally and they have only one person with that name admitted, serving, and registered as having passed away. Second, the will is more than definite on Nicolo of San Samuele’s affiliation with the scuola. Third, the will displays a special concern with the wellbeing of children, which is at the heart of the story in the miracle. And forth, the will was drawn up not in Nicolo’s own house as was the practice but in a residence of the Soranzo family. The will is summed several more times in the scuola’s documentation, in ASV SG SGE, Reg. 132, Testamenti, f. 84–85; Reg. 34, Catastico 1323–1494, (compiled 1550), f. 29v; Reg. 131, Testa- menti, 1324–1499, f. 194r–195v; Reg. 133 Testamenti 1500–1749 (an eighteenth-century copy of early wills), f. 73r–v. 4 Only the incunabulum states that the parents sought help from folk healers, strighe. The 1590 print, as befits a post-Tridentine account, eschews that reference, but adds that they consulted both male and female doctors. On strighe in the Venetian tradition see Donato Bernoni, Le strighe: leggende populari Veneziane (Venice, 1874) and on the conditions that necessitated their omission in the account of 1590 see Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1650 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989). On children in medieval miracles see Didier Lett, L’enfant des miracles: Enfance et société au moyen âge (XIIe–XIIIe siècle) (Paris: Aubier, 1997) and Ronald C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocent: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997). miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 107 somewhat puzzling. Instead of directly going to his daughter’s crib, Nicolo dined calmly and made ready to go out as if he had forgotten about the candles. At this point his wife, prompted by God as the accounts would have it, decided to vent her frustration and declared that she could not put up with the handicapped child any longer and would rather see her dead. Nicolo scolded her mildly that that was up to God’s will, then turned back, touched the girl’s forehead with the candles, made the sign of the cross over her, and prayed that she might be restored to health. The child immediately cried out loud three times and, lo and behold, her vision straightened, she called on her mother to pick her up, and she began walking at once. Whatever the nature of the girl’s impediments had been, the Cross succeeded where doctors and healers had failed. It is likely that the child’s affliction was of psychosomatic character. The application of the Cross might have delivered the salutary shock needed to render her functional, and the nature of her medical condition does not detract from the efficacy of the intervention. Be that as it may, the miracle had other implications, besides sustaining faith, which converge on the elaboration of a new image of the collective identity of the brethren of San Giovanni’s and their leadership. Healing is the preferred domain of the numinous because that is where pre-modern perceptions of the nature of surround- ing realities are most conspicuously displayed. The Cross, patterning the sequence of its actions on the great drama of Christ’s ministry, had come to the point where it had to engage in healing. Why, however, it happened at exactly that time, why Nicolo di Benvegnudo was involved, why the divine chose to address that particular type of suffering and why it was a female child that benefitted from the intervention are all questions that highlight the intersections of the social and spiritual realities as apper- ceived by the scuola’s brethren. The immediate circumstances suggest a fairly mundane background of that cross section. The timing of the miracle coincided with two major undertakings, which were bound to tax the confraternal finances. In January 1414, the scuola began deliberating the commission of a new pictorial project for its rooms. It was a serious investment which was jeopardized by the location of the scuola’s headquarters. The confraternity shared a building with a foundation of the Badoer, a hospital for poor women. Located on the ground floor, the hospital was vulnerable to fire. To protect its meeting rooms which were about to undergo a costly beautification, the scuola decided to acquire the entire building. On March 29, 1414, an agreement was signed with the Badoer according to which the 108 chapter six confraternity obtained the use of the first floor in exchange for constructing a suitable edifice elsewhere. In addition, the scuola agreed to maintain the operations of the facility.5 The confraternity had established a small hospital soon after its moving to San Giovanni’s, in the first decade of the fourteenth century while women were still allowed to join. That early facility was reserved exclusively for brothers; now the scuola was expanding its service.6 This was still the case in 1414, but women were no longer enjoying directly the benefit of membership. Sorting out the relations with the Badoer who kept the priorship of the foundation took some time and the project was expensive and took decades to complete. In the meantime, soon after the agreement was signed in November 1414, the decision was taken to have the confraternity’s albergo adorned with a cycle of the miracles of the Cross.7 Two months later, on January 25, 1415, a reference to the miracle as “recently occurred” is noted in the scuola’s final decision to commission the paintings.8 It would appear that the combined costs of the projects caused a strain on San Giovanni’s resources and a funding campaign was in order. For that, enhancing the scuola’s visibility was a precondition. A fresh miracle would have burnished the Cross’ and the confraternity’s reputation and attracted new bequests and finances. The overlapping of the timeframe of the double project and the miracle cannot be coincidental. The miracle’s first implication was thus pecuniary. That would prove to be the case in most of the relic’s manifestations for the remainder of its miracle-making career. Selecting an official and a well-heeled man for its beneficence from among the scuola’s membership was in the same vein. The banca members were among the boni homini expected to be the first to contribute to the scuola’s projects out of their own pockets. The miracle can be read as a subtle reminder to Nicolo’s fellow officials that their contributions would be duly noted in the divine’s good books. They would have hardly neglected to reflect that conspicuous spending to enhance the honor of God did, vicariously, contribute to the prestige of the confraternity and themselves as well.9

5 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 38, f. 51–52. The agreement was finalized in May 1424. 6 Franca Semi, Gli “ospizi” di Venezia (Venice: Helvetia, 1983), 52sq. See also Giovanni Scarabello, “Strutture assistenziali a Venezia nella prima meta del ‘500 avvii europei dell reforma dell’assistenza,” in Mario Tafuri, ed., Renovatio Urbis: Venezia nell’èta di Adrea Gritti (1523–1538) (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1984), 119–33. 7 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 31, f. 351, Reg. 38, f. 158. 8 ASV SG SGE, Notatorio, Reg. 140, January 25, 1414. 9 The argument was first and most profoundly developed by Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (first edition 1899, New York: miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 109

Pecuniary concerns do not exclude considerations of a different character. While healing is ubiquitously appealing it must have been particularly poignant in 1414, for the previous year had seen an epidemic, most likely one of the recurring waves of the plague, carry off several thousand souls in Venice and Chioggia. In addition, the early winter months of 1414 had been very cold and many people perished from exposure, while in August of the same year there had been a great earthquake on the mainland. Generally, it was a span of calamities and portents.10 The miracle, however, is not about tackling a sudden, deadly outburst. It is about dealing with a prolonged case of incapacitation that was not likely to result in a fatal outcome but made the afflicted person a social burden, totally dependent on the charity of others. The uncovering of the miracle’s meaning likely hinges on the choice of object for the divine action. A young female child of the time did not have a personality or status of her own; she was a factor of her father’s condition. Here the nature of Nicolo’s office within the confraternity and the little we can glean about his personality come into play. He served twice as deacon, the official whose obligation it was to visit the sick, poor, and elderly confraternal brethren in their residences, or in the scuola’s houses and hospices, to make sure they did not lack necessities and were properly cared for, and to oversee the distribution of alms to the needy brethren. In other words, the deacons were the persons on the forefront of the confraternal social services, those who did the mundane work of keeping in touch with the unfortunate and made sure that services were rendered and that the funds earmarked for their maintenance were properly expended. An office is an office, and for many the deaconship was only a stepping stone for rising in the confraternal leadership. But the office implied a good knowledge of one’s district and the conditions of the brethren down on their luck as well as regular contact with about fifty of them. It also suggested some concern with their plight, although that cannot be taken as precondition. In Nicolo’s case, that latter component was clearly there, well attested to in his will. Nicolo does not mention his unnamed spouse, who must have passed away before 1425. He had no male heirs. His concern was above all with securing the future of his daughter Marcolina, as yet unmarried. He does not mention the miracle, or whether she was the child that was

New American Library, 1953). In the case of San Giovanni’s aspects of this theory were elegantly though implicitly applied by Patricia Brown, “Honor and Necessity.” 10 According to Zorzi Dolfin, over 4600 people perished in Venice and about 800 died in Chioggia, see BNM, Ms. It. VII. 794 (8503), 291r, 292r, 294v. 110 chapter six miraculously healed, but at the time he wrote she was still young, not yet fifteen. If Marcolina was the girl of the miracle, she must have been just about to come of age. Nicolo directed the will’s executors to sell his movables and invest the proceeds in the State Loans Office in Marcolina’s name, with the interest to be paid to Marcolina either when she reached fifteen or to her husband when she married. Neither she nor her husband had to have ownership of the principal. Furthermore, he owned “terreni” in the district of Mestre, and willed that they were rented out in perpetuity. The rent had to be rendered annually to Marcolina, who did not have the right to sell or otherwise alienate his real estate. In case Marcolina died before marrying, the rents and the interest were to go to his married daughter Cataruzza and her heirs, on the same terms. If and when Marcolina passed away after marrying, half of what he provided as regular income was to go to her heirs. One quarter was earmarked for Daniele di Giacomo of Giudeca, his cousin; the remaining quarter was to be divvied up between his daughters Giacomella, Antonia, Cataruzza and her husband, and Eufemia, for as long as they lived. At this point Nicolo felt that he had dispensed with the obligations to his daughters and closer relatives and turned his attention to matters concerning his soul. Allocating the net sum of fifteen hundred ducats to San Giovanni’s, he further stipulated that after his daughters and their heirs had passed away all revenues, the interest paid by the State Loans Office, and the rents from the properties were to go to the brotherhood of San Giovanni’s. Nicolo thus established a commissaria, or estate fund gifted to the confraternity, and dedicated the use of the revenues for sustained, long-term social services to what amounts to the least fortunate members of the community, both within and outside the scuola. Every year, until the Last Judgment Day, at Easter and Christmas, from two thirds of the rents the scuola was to make bread donations to the poor brethren of the scuola who had sons and daughters and needed the charity. The remaining third of the revenues were to serve for distributing bread to poor denizens of San Polo who had children, all as alms for his and his relatives’ souls. A deep interest in the welfare of children and the need to provide for them and those who cared for them transpires in the bequest. It suggests a particular disposition of Nicolo’s and amplifies a proclivity of his that the restrained language of the miracle accounts conveys only indirectly. Finally, Nicolo appointed three executors of his will, among them his son-in-law, but provided for the possibility that they would decline the charge, in which case the management of his estate was to devolve to San Giovanni’s leadership. The executors promptly excused themselves at the publication of the will, and the con- miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 111 fraternity took over. In due course, they acquired direct ownership of the estate even before the heiresses’ deaths. By 1466 Marcolina and Eufemia had passed away and so had Antonia, who had taken the veil some time after Nicolo’s death. Giacomella, who moved to Verona and Cataruzza, now widowed, consolidated their shares and transferred them to San Giovanni’s. After a drawn-out legal contest with the goldsmith Lorenzo di Vincenzo over the properties in Mestre, in 1472 the confraternity came into full possession of Nicolo’s estate.11 Nicolo’s bequest was not exceptional. Judging from extant wills of San Giovanni’s brothers, gifts of real estate, cash, and investments in the State Loans Office that were bequeathed to the confraternity funded a steady growth in almsgiving through the second part of the fourteenth century. Some donations were modest, others outright lavish. The bequest of the wealthy draper Marin Carlo, member of San Giovanni’s, stands out as the latter kind. On June 27, 1378, he made a will in which, besides stating that we wanted to be buried in Santa Maria dei Frari in full confraternal garb, and endowing his son and daughter, he gave 50 ducats as a one-time gift to the scuola, and then 1000 ducats for the poor brothers, 1000 ducats for poor prisoners who could not pay their keep, and 1000 ducats for dowries for twenty poor girls who could not otherwise afford to marry properly.12 Relief of all varieties, for homes for old, sick, and disabled men and women inside and outside the scuola was pouring in. Some of the donations were specifically earmarked for the establishment of hospices, such as that of Bartolomeo Canal of San Simeone Profeta, who made a bequest of property to be used as a hospice in 1374.13 In comparison to Carlo’s bequest, Nicolo’s gift appears much less substantial (although we don’t know the total value of his movables and real estate), but its significance lay elsewhere. In Carlo’s will the bequest was cold cash, a one-time handout. In Nicolo’s will it was an investment, the rents and interest-bearing capital invested in the State Loans Office. This is a momentous shift.14 It is

11 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 323, filza A–B. 12 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 159, Pergamene; see notary Marco da Raffanelli, active 1364–1409, ASV ANT, b. 858, June 27, 1378. 13 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 159, Pergamene, will of Bartolomeo Canal, dated July 9, 1374, notary Giovanni de Argoiosi; recorded also in Argoiosi’s register, ASV CIN, b. 5, Giovanni Argoiosi, parchment register, f. 25r. The property was located in the parish of San Rafaele, and consisted of “unus domus sive unus hospice postioris cum medium arca.” Argoiosi himself served as guardian grande in 1380–1381. 14 Anna Bellavitis, Identitè, marriage, mobilite, observes the same shift at the turn of the century on the example of the confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia as well. 112 chapter six worth noting that at the time Nicolo made the bequest, the Loans Office had ceased to amortize principal but duly paid the five percent interest twice a year. Two circumstances resulted from the change in the handling of relief for the poor. First, by exchanging liquid cash for bonds, pious donations became capital for sustained operation of the social services performed by the confraternities, San Giovanni’s included. Social services were no longer a matter approached ad hoc. The shift is an acknowledgment of a perpetual commitment tied up with the awareness that the mechanisms and instruments of Venice’s advanced capitalist economy had now entered the realm of almsgiving and relief for the poor. Second, the change in funding tied the confraternity as a social services institution to the fortunes of the state. Selecting a deacon on active duty as the beneficiary of the miracle, and not just any deacon but Nicolo di Benvegnudo, is perhaps not accidental. As noted, by the last quarter of the fourteenth century the deacon’s duties had gone beyond managing liturgical partici- pation and rounding up the brotherhood for ceremonial occasions. The deacon’s office focused more on working with the old, poor, sick, or otherwise incapacitated members of the confraternity and the community. Where, otherwise, would Nicolo go after his meal on a day of meeting at the confraternity if not to do the deacon’s rounds? The question remains why the miracle that dealt with disease and incapacitation in childhood in the context of reorientation of the scuola’s finances occurred precisely in 1414. It may be that that was the tipping point in the confraternity’s financial management policy. A decade earlier, at the turn of the century, the confraternal coffers were overflowing and managing and maintaining real estate was becoming a problem. The financial toll of the war of Chioggia may have induced too many members of the lower classes to divest themselves of property they could not maintain and convert it into continuous social support. In 1397, for example, the Great Chapter discussed the conditions of two houses acquired through a bequest and decided that they were too old and their upkeep consequently too costly. The gathering authorized the banca to sell the houses and purchase state bonds with the proceeds. Five years later, in 1402, the guardian grande called up a meeting of the Great Chapter to inform them that the treasury was full and requested permission to invest the funds in the Loans Office. The request was approved.15 Evidence of similar cases abounds in the confraternal records of the first decade of

15 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 171, f. 185r, 189r. miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 113 the 1400s. Before the expenditures on the confraternal building and the new hospital came in, therefore, financial resources were accumulating at a rate that exceeded the scuola’s capacity to dispense with the funds outright. An adjustment of the brotherhood’s image as sustainable providers of social services thus came in the wake of positively changed financial realities. There is, moreover, another circumstance that bears causally on the miracle occurrence in 1414. The confraternal officialdom’s reorientation to social services that the miracle highlights was a response to new pressures from the state, bent on the further closing of the political class. It was a reaction calculated to enrich the self-perception of a social group that saw an identity imposed on it by outside forces. It can be argued that what informed the contents of the miracle was the necessity to put these overlapping processes in sync with the fine-tuning of the Venetian socio-political arrangements dubbed “the second serrata.” Beginning in 1414, the government promulgated a series of laws that clearly defined the composition of the patriciate and ascertained the heredity of its status.16 The developments of 1414 were a step toward the clearer distinction of the ruling oligarchy from those immediately below it, the elite cittadini. It came in the wake of a period during which their expectations for upward mobility had been positively reinforced. The establishment of the hereditary ruling class between 1297 and 1323 had not excluded cooptation and aggregation, nor had it defined the criteria for joining the Grand Council. The massive social shakeup of the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century slowed down the distilling of the nobility as a separate class. With so many of them lost, proposals were circulated for a mass aggregation of leading commoners to fill the depleted patrician ranks. The idea did not gain traction, but a few decades later the pressures of the war of Chioggia resulted in exactly such an aggregation of scores of leading cittadini, from which the Vendramin benefited. Such exceptions, and the lack of official governmental records of who actually had the right to sit on the Great Council, by then the only clear sign of belonging to the ruling class, encouraged cittadini who still aspired to political power. While the Grand Council was technically closed, only members of the few ancient noble houses had undisputed right to sitting on it. The status of anyone else of somewhat lower rank was far from clear. The ruling class had not yet become a caste. The recent aggregations after the war of Chioggia may

16 Stanley Chojnacki, “The Second serrata,” 341–58. 114 chapter six have fuelled hopes that the elite cittadini did in fact have a shot at joining the oligarchy. The case of Francesco Balduino sums up the situation admirably. In 1412 Balduino, a wealthy cittadino who had contributed to the war effort (in his opinion, no less than any of the aggregated families), was so vexed with his exclusion from the Council that he hatched a plot for a coup that would eliminate the leading families. Balduino was a scion of an old house that had been excluded from the nobility at the serrata of 1297 and, during the next century, had twice had members embroiled in anti-governmental plots.17 Francesco had had his own brushes with the law, contesting the authority of a noble official of the Beccarie in 1410.18 Three aspects are worth considering besides Francesco’s family history and personal rash- ness, which led to his betrayal and his hanging between the columns on the piazzetta. First, Francesco was quite open about his intentions with his fellow citizens. Given that the Council of Ten had been in operation for over a century and had solidly entrenched itself as the leading governmental institution of social control, as rash as he had been, Francesco clearly expected that his sentiments were shared by non-nobles of all ranks. Second, in asserting his right to join those with political power, Francesco was thinking in terms of service. In that, he was in synch with his nemeses, the Ten and the leading statesmen of the republic, who were just about to implement a redefinition of the ruling class and further its progressive closure exactly on this principle. And third, the case shows that the governing class and the state apparatus had not yet achieved political hegemony. Their legal structuring of the city’s social and political constitution were dominant enough, but they had not yet seized the mind of the cittadini. The legislation of 1414 dashed such hopes as the lat-

17 On the exclusion of the Balduino family by the serrata see Stanley Chojnacki, “La formazione della nobiltà dopo la serrata,” in Girolamo Arnoldi, Giorgio Cracco and Alberto Tenenti, eds., Storia di Venezia: Dalle Origini alla Caduta della Serenissima. Vol. III. La formazione dello stato patrizio (Rome: Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), 641–729, at 647. On Francesco Balduino’s case see ASV, Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 9, f. 82–3; and the short accounts in Zorzi Dolfin, BNM, Ms. It. VII. 794 (8503), 286v–287v and Antonio Morosini in Andrea Nanetti, ed., Il Codice Morosini: Il mondo visto da Venezia, (1094–1433), vol. 1 (Ch.63:653, Doge Michele Steno), (Spoleto: Centro di studi italiani sull’ alto medioevo, 2010), 448. Morosini does not refer to Balduino’s words. Bartolomeo Anselmo, who betrayed Balduino, was ennobled. Francesco’s widow, Francesca, made a will on Septem- ber 1, 1416, with notary Francesco Sori, cancellier inferiore, ASV, ANT, b. 1223, 227:234 or b. 1234, 174. For the episode, see Horatio Brown, Venice: An Historical Sketch of the Republic (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 271–72. 18 ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe 3646, I, f. 82r, in a scuffle with Barbono Barbaro. miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 115 ter may have harbored and created the need for alternative identification on the part of the now definitely excluded commoner elite. It was an act of social engineering that must have provoked reaction and resentment. Most importantly, were the redefinition that began in 1414 to be acquiesced to, as it was, it would have served as a stimulus for the search of an alternative self-identification of the excluded upper-class men who constituted the elite cittadini group. What would ensure the hegemony of the nobility in the decades to come so that cases like that of Balduino would not be repeated was the fundamental concord between the elite cittadini, who alone were in a position to challenge the constitutional order, and the patrician leadership in charge of the state. They concurred that service was the bedrock of social identity. This social consensus could exist without tearing society’s fabric or generating dangerous political pressure only on the condition that no cultural consensus could be reached on what service meant. Still, an undifferentiated, inchoate notion of service that included any and all of its aspects was the recipe for minor and potentially major ruptures not unlike that of Balduino’s. In the first decade of the fifteenth century the Ten, along with other state institutions, would make the tentative steps to carry out a major circumscription of their notion of service, narrowly defining it exclusively within the realm of politics. In 1414, the first clear-cut publicizing of that division became known. The cittadini acquiesced, for they now had an option: the breakdown of cultural consensus on the nature of service opened up a domain for asserting themselves in a claims competition with the patriciate without undermining the social consensus about who was in charge of politics. Only now it became possible for the state to assert itself as hegemonic power, based on an indisputable agreement on the absolute sovereignty of two typologically fundamental principles, service and exclusion, which produced a cleaner delineation of the Venetian socio-political orders, each with its clearly defined area of agency. To do that the elite cittadini had to articulate the parameters of what they considered service, and the reasons they deemed it equal if not superior to that performed by the nobility. The great confraternities, which they had come to dominate by the turn of the century, provided the forum for the new identity to be elaborated into a principal strand of self- identification for the elite citizens. The devotional practices of the scuole, originally geared to collective salvation through symbolic means, did not gradually embrace real-life social services only under pressure of market capitalism and the patrician-led state orientation of doing social policy on the cheap, though these factors cannot be discounted. Ultimately, the 116 chapter six transition occurred because it provided the citizen elite with a means to identify themselves and underscore their social worth. The initially sporadic component of relief for the poor, which had been a byproduct of confraternal devotion since the inception of San Giovanni’s and the other confraternities, put the citizen elite in contact with a social reality that needed addressing and provided them with the means to do that. In the process, they were the ones who saw a long term malaise that debilitated the body social, and came to anchor their identities in part on their capacity to identify and address it. That poverty, illness, impairment, and aging incapacitated a large segment of the Venetian underclasses was self- evident; but acknowledging that addressing these malaises was a social obligation was another matter altogether. Until the late fifteenth century the ruling oligarchy was not inclined to see a need for state involvement in that field.19 They had priorities, and their perceptions of the social order and their role in it were exclusively vested in political leadership. To the elite citizens, the issue the political oligarchy avoided offered the opportunity to assert their contribution to the state. Political and social theory provided them with conceptual tools to elaborate a vision of social realities in which their intervention, as a class represented in the confraternity, was necessary, unique, and salutary to the social body of the republic. The narratives of the miracle with Nicolo’s daughter accomplish that through metaphors that derive meaning from fundamentally and intimately interwoven tenets about gender, family, and state. The young, incapacitated, female child, the uncaring or indifferent mother and wife, the concerned and active patriarch who lacked a male heir, and the efficacious action of the Cross, as much as they are instances of real life, inter- lock to become a complex presentation of one of the principal strands of identity with which the elite citizens now saw themselves vested. At first glance, the accounts only touch on the definition of identity in the private sphere. Given contemporary discursive conventions, however, the image and role of the four principal protagonists in the domestic drama are tropes, typological embodiments of public categories. Each of them branches into at least two mutually dependent and reversible domains. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, theorists of marriage and the family had produced a series of treatises that articulated

19 Brian Pullan, La politica sociale della repubblica di Venezia 1500–1620. Vol. 1. Le Scuole Grandi, l’assistenza e le leggi sui poveri (Rome: Il Veltro, 1982), 226–7. miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 117 the Venetian and the Renaissance view of the household as a political metaphor for the civic body. Fra Paolino, a Franciscan friar originally from Venice, lists five duties of the wife in his De regimine rectoris (1313–1315): to honor her in-laws, love her husband, raise the family, maintain the home, and be above reproach in word and deed. Francesco Barbaro (1390–1454), the Venetian humanist, in his De re uxoria, narrows the duties of the good wife down to three. The third is to maintain the household. While the husband is the undisputed master, the wife has the pride of place in the household as a discrete zone of her realization. Giovanni Caldera (1400– 1474), in his more broadly oriented discussion of the socio-economic order of the republic, De oeconomia veneta, wrote that “the home is in the likeness of the city.” The Florentine Dominican Giovanni Domenici, the closest contemporary of the miracle and an influential voice, concurs in his Regola del governo di cura familiare that the wife is crucial for the raising of children, instructing them in the five obligations concerning God, their parents, themselves, the polity, and the human predicament (“fortuna”). Lauro Querini, in De republica, thinks in the same organistic vein stating that the city, just like the household, depends on having harmoniously interconnected and sound members. If one member fails, the whole body suffers.20 The prevailing trend in the early 1400s therefore had been to conceive of the city and the household as mirror images and typological equivalents in a seamless and reversible reality.

20 I sum up the findings of Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 3–43. For Dominici’s work, not discussed by Romano, see Giovanni Dominici, Regola del governo di cura familiare (Florence: Editrice Fiorentina, 1927), 101 sq. The relevant part has been translated by Arthur Basil Cotè, Blessed Giovanni Dominici. Regula del governo di cura familiar, parte quarta. On the Education of Children (unpublished PhD dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1927); see also the discussion of Nirit ben Aryeh Debby, Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino di Siena (1380–1444) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). For women in late medieval Venice see Linda Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia nel XIV secolo: Uno studio sulla loro presenza nella societa e nella famiglia,” Studi Veneziani, n. s., vol. 35 (1998), 15–88; idem, Venezianische Vermächtnisse. Die soziale und wirtschaftliche Situazion von Frauen im Spiegel spätmittelalterlichen Testamente (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1998); Suzanne Winter, Donne a Venezia: Vicende femminili fra Trecento e Seicento (Rome: Edizioni di storia e literatura, 2004); Eva Gesine Baur and Thomas Klinger, Venedig, Stadt der Frauen. Liebe, Macht, und Intrige in der Serenissima (Munich: Knesebeck, 2005) and Tiziana Plebani, Storia di Venezia città delle donne. Guida ai tempi, luoghi, e prezenze feminili (Venice: Marsiglio, 2008). For women in San Giovanni Evangelista, Lorenza Pamato, “‘De dominabus mundanis in istis nostris scolis:’ La matricula femminile dei battuti di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia (sec. XIV),” Annali di studi religiosi 2 (2001), 439–501. 118 chapter six

In this intellectual construct the categories and operation of the larger body, the city, were distilled in the smaller unit, the household, so much so that either one could serve as a mirror of the other. Both were governed by a component with political power, the patricians in the republic and the husband in the family. In both, the running of that holistic unit had devolved to a figure specifically entrusted with that task and duty. In the household the agent was the wife. In the city at large, the typological equivalent of the lady of the house was the body of the elite cittadini. Without feminizing the citizen elite, that typology neatly delineated their position as managers and supervisors. And in both, there were ill, incapacitated components in need of attention. When a component of these fused and mutually representing bodies was not operational, it was the duty of the manager to see to it that that member was nursed back to health. The pitilessness of Nicolo’s wife was failure of management, relin- quishing of duty that jeopardized the well-being of the whole construct. While the accounts of the wife’s reaction can be discussed on many levels, the justification of misogyny, the stressing of female inability to rise up to the task, and the exclusion of women, which in San Giovanni’s occurred back in 1327, are not the gist of the episode. Within the political metaphor of the parallel city—the household—she had to fail: not because she was a woman but because she was a type, a sign of the role of a social component that was not performing. On the reverse surface of the polity- household complex within which she functioned, her coldness was an indication of societal failure to attend to the disadvantaged. Then, mutatis mutandi, a second agent, the husband, steps on the Mobius sheet that embodies the polity-household hybrid to gently correct, intervene, and nourish the incapacitated member back into functionality. Since there is no disentangling of the co-substantial bodies of household and society, the role of the husband is imminently reversible. In the household he stands for the political authority. In the polity, he represents the serving manager. Nicolo di Benvegnudo, the deacon of the scuola now defining itself as the provider of a specific kind of contribution to the commonwealth, social services, brought in the symbol of the confraternity, its other concentrated “self,” the Cross, to assert that where the household (in the narrow or wider meaning of family or polity) failed, the institution of the scuola with its elite cittadini leadership would fill the void. Not by coincidence the miracle features the healing of an incapacitated child in the time when the confraternity had taken the obligation to expand significantly its care-providing facilities. miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 119

All these meanings, if appositely reconstructed, hinge on the multiva- lent figure of the impeded child herself. A young child by definition is the embodiment of the need to care. That the child was a girl projected that need into the sphere of the legal and social ramifications that applied to women, extending it practically indefinitely into the future. Adding paralysis, blindness, and muteness transformed the girl into the ultimate incarnation of dependence, the expression of permanent impediment and inability to function. By the same logic of permeability between public and private, household and polity, which informed the meaning and function of her parents, the phenomenon of the impaired girl seeped into the public domain to connote the existence of the social component that needed tending and nursing. Then again, within the parameters of the miracle and the socio-political shift of the further closure of the ruling oligarchy through heredity, the girl signified something different. Female and incapacitated, she also denoted, through Nicolo’s personal misfortune, the circumscription of the future of his class that saw its agency in a major sphere of life, politics, cancelled. The intervention of the Cross that brought the girl back to functionality was a forceful assertion that the elite citizenship had found the means to overcome that impediment by defining its capabilities in a different, no less crucial sphere of social life. Significantly, it was through a girl, a future bride, that the cittadini that hosted the numinous agent assuaged their anxiety. Although in the case of Nicolo that does not seem to have worked out, from the early decades of the fifteenth century it was exclusively through their women- folk and their issue that the elite citizens could crack open the political ceiling imposed on them by the ruling oligarchy. Living links in the family alliances between cittadini and nobles and dowry-bearing brides, girls of upper citizen rank were also means of conspicuous expenditure that added honor to the family and signified the status of their fathers during their lifetime, a task boys could not accomplish. This much can be inferred from the intersection of the shifting fundamental social and political realities and the miracle narratives of the early 1400s. As the fifteenth century wore on, the trends implicitly present in the accounts solidified. At the turn of the century, as Giovanni Mansueti painted his visual cover of the miracle, several of them loomed even larger. Service, for example, had become such an indispensable component of the elite citizens’ identity that it generated anxieties, which in 1480 had to be allayed through another miracle. Another development is perhaps the reason for the subtle differences displayed in Mansueti’s artistic reconstruction 120 chapter six of the miracle in comparison to the textual versions. The painter’s aesthetics and artistic skills have already been discussed in the miracle of San Lio. Of interest here is the content of the scene he reconstructed. Mansueti chose to focus on the peak of the miracle, Nicolo’s prayer, and the girl’s sudden improvement. The domestic environment gave him a chance to elaborate lavishly on the architectural surroundings of what was in his time an upper-class dwelling. It is unclear with what information Mansueti had been provided. As apparent in Bastiani’s painting of the act of the donation and Bellini’s portrayal of the healing of Piero di Lodovico, the artists were aware of details not present in the incunabulum text. It would be expected of Bastiani to have observed closely the scuola’s headquarters to paint the proper façade of San Giovanni’s as it was in his time, but Bellini must have been intimately cognizant of the confraternity’s plans to construct a new church or chapel in the Renaissance fashion to execute it on his canvas. In the same vein, Mansueti’s depiction features, apart from Nicolo and his wife, four young females in close proximity to the impaired child, dressed in a similar fashion and reacting with identical gestures to the miraculous interventions. As was his habit, Mansueti populated the scene with a host of other personages, some of them mentioned in the texts, some being what would have been expected in a well-to-do household, such as pages in livery. The four young women of different age, however, are in concert with the number of daughters Nicolo is known to have had. Their clustering around the child at her moment of healing and their emotional response suggest an emotional link that amounts to more than that of domestic servants attending to their mistresses. Their dress, adornments, and coiffures are not that different from those of Nicolo’s wife. It is possible that Mansueti portrayed Nicolo’s four daughters, accounting for their different ages (one of them may have already been married), on information consistent with Nicolo’s will, untraceable today. With the possibility of such historical accuracy in mind, his deviation from the texts in the role of Nicolo’s spouse is telling. The marginalization of the wife in the text gave way to her positive involvement and affiliation with the divine in the painting. In Mansueti’s somewhat clumsy fashion the mother stretches her arm toward the suddenly erect child, cuddling and embracing her. More importantly, she clutches one of the candles that carried the numinous powers, while the kneeling and praying father in the foreground holds the other two. Deliberately or accidentally, Mansueti accounted for the increased importance of upper-class women in structuring their children’s destiny, under- cutting and limiting the impact of patriarchal authority. The trend has been observed on evidence of patrician women’s strategic uses of their miracle of the daughter of nicolo di benvegnudo 121 dowry resources.21 Mansueti’s portrayal accords with the shift in reference to cittadini women as well, as does anecdotal evidence from their wills. The father is still in the foreground, for so the story and the aesthetic conventions of the time required, to denote the higher status of the person or type thus presented. But the woman immediately behind him has stepped up from the indifference and lack of affection assigned to her in the textual versions to take her rightful place of dedicated and effective domestic manager. The Cross had verily accomplished a miracle, restoring social and domestic arrangements into the proper order, with the authority up front, the manager firmly in place, and society functional.

21 Stanley Chojnacki, “The most serious duty: motherhood, gender, and patrician culture in Renaissance Venice,” in Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari, eds., Refiguring Women: Gender Studies and the Italian Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 133–54.

chapter seven

The Miracle of Paolo Rabia: The Rise and Fall of Entrepreneurial Leadership

On the night of April 18, 1421, a Venice-bound cargo boat plied the waters of the Gulf of Quarnaro in the northeastern Adriatic. It was captained by Giacomo Frumento and came from Candia. The craft was Venetian and was on the return leg of its journey. On board there was a San Giovanni’s member, a merchant and manufacturer of woolens by the name of Paolo Rabia. Paolo was the junior partner in the Rabia woolens manufacturing company, headed at the time, and for a long time to come, by his father, Francesco Rabia. Judging from Paolo’s presence, the ship must have made the outbound run to Candia loaded with, among other things, woolen cloth, Venice’s principal export to the Levant. It was early in the navigational season and the first leg of the journey may have been completed the previous year. Candia would have been Paolo’s natural destination, for it was the Cretan entrepot for the Venetian trade in the Levant.1 The way stations on the route, Dalmatia, Venetian Greece, and Corfu, also consumed Venice-produced cloth but the Candian marked dwarfed them. Candia was also good for filling the hold on the way back, for Crete exported much sought-after malvasia and other sweet wines, as well as cheese and other products.2 The Rabia did not limit themselves to woolens. The vessel was following the standard course on the home journey, about to turn west-northwest from the north Dalmatian and Istrian shores and sail across the head of the Adriatic directly to Venice’s port. Around midnight, however, as the ship was negotiating the treacherous channels

1 On the Venetian commerce in woolens in the Eastern Mediterranean, Crete, and Corfu see Eliyahu Ashtor, “Exportation de textiles occidentaux dans les Proche Orient musulman au bas Moyen Age (1370–1517),” Studi in memoria di Federigo Molis, vol. 2 (Naples: Gianini, 1978); Silvio Borsari, “Il mercato di tessuti a Candia (1373–1375),” Archivio veneto, Ser. 5, 143 (1994), 5–30. 2 That’s what a Filomati ship on the Candia line was carrying in October 1420 on its home trip to Venice, see Andrea Nanetti, ed., Il Codice Morosini: Il mondo visto da Vene- zia 1094–1433 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’ alto medioevo, 2010), vol. 2, 878, # 898. See also Ugo Tucci, “Il commercio del vino nell’economia cretese,” in Gherado Ortalli, ed., Venezia e Creta (= Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Iraklion-Chanià, 30 settembre–5 ottobre 1997) (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1998), 183–206. 124 chapter seven of the Gulf, a storm broke out. It was a gale force onslaught that caused the sailors on the craft to despair. In hindsight, they should have known what they were in for at that time and in that place. The Gulf of Quarnaro is a fragmented and dangerous navigational zone between Istria and northern Dalmatia. Several maritime channels wind through the maze forming the archipelago of Quarnaro, with its four large and thirteen smaller islands and numerous islets, shoals, reefs, shallows, and other underwater obstacles. Despite its mild and comparatively warm climate, the area is buffeted by sudden outbursts of strong winds and frequent sea storms. The sea waters maintain an average annual temperature of three degrees Celsius higher than that of the air, and about that much higher, especially in winter, than the Adriatic and the lagoon waters at Venice. The difference is conducive to turbulence. The wind system too can be quite erratic. The most powerful air current is the already discussed bora. That dry, freezing blast that descends upon the Gulf from the north and northeast originates in the Velebit mountain chain, a segment of the Dinaric Alps, and is especially violent in winter and spring. From the mountain chain it falls unobstructed onto one of the principal navigational channels, the deep water corridor along the main islands of Krk (Veglia), Rab (Arbe), and Pago, known as Velebitski Canal (Canale della Morlacca) but appropriately nicknamed Canale del Maltempo. The bora is often preceded by two other northerlies, the tramontana and the borìn, a milder version of the bora. The maestrale, a light, steady current, blows landwards from the Adriatic. Besides the ubiquitous breeze, the picture is completed by the wet, warm sirocco, which brings scarce but substantial rains, especially in November, January, and March. The sirocco also tends to generate strong north-bound currents, which in the narrow channels of the archipelago reach up to three knots. To complicate matters, the principal air current, the bora, varies its direction. In the north of the Gulf it follows the axis of the canal between the archipelago and the mainland. In its central part it turns eastwards, and in the southern segment it returns to steady current from the north. In the absence of the bora, the southerly maestrale is steady and strong enough to power a sail from October to April but tends, like the sirocco, to carry heavy rain, especially in winter. Strong outbursts of southerlies, unlike the bora, tend to be of short duration, and subside quickly.3

3 After the excellent summary of Alberto Rizzi, Guida della Dalmazia: Arte, Storia, Portolano. Vol. 1. Dalmazia Settentrionale (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 2007), 71–81: “Il Golfo di Quarnero.” the miracle of paolo rabia 125

Frumento’s Venice-bound sailing ship in April 1421, therefore, would have travelled under the maestrale, and most likely got caught up in a short but violent blast of bora. It would have been in real danger if its course took it in the Canale della Morlacca, where the bora would have blown against it, occasionally with hurricane strength during its peak in October through March, but even a sudden surge of maestrale tailwind would have caused a short but dangerous spell of choppy seas and great swells. Fortunately, the danger was quickly averted. Paolo remembered San Giovanni’s relic and its capacity to calm stormy waters and deliver sailors in distress, as demonstrated back in 1370, and commended the vessel to the Cross. No sooner had he uttered the supplication than the Cross manifested its powers. It made itself visible in the dark nightly sky, and the storm subsided. In the Gulf of Quarnaro, in mid-April, such a sudden outburst and demise of stormy weather would not have necessarily been in need of numinous intervention as a causal agent. At home in Venice, however, the confraternity of San Giovanni’s urgently needed succor of a different kind. Like all great confraternities, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century San Giovanni began the expansion and beautification of its headquarters. After the contract with the Badoer in 1414, which gave them the entire building across the lane from the church of San Giovanni, for the next several years until 1422 the scuola’s major financial preoccupation was siphoning off funds for the renovation of its meeting rooms, for the honor of the confraternity and the increased devotion of its members.4 The commissioning of a painting program was the first step; in 1416 a commission for a wooden altar for the great meeting room was authorized.5 Two other circumstances, one an immediate occurrence and the other a longer-term trend, must have been on the confraternal officials’ minds at the time. The first is the arrival of yet another major relic in the city. In 1420, Venice took over Udine, the chief town in Friuli, after a protracted struggle with the emperor. There, in a monastery, the Gospel of St Mark was found, written by his own hand and only missing a few pages pur- loined by the patriarch of Aquileia. The gospel was brought to Venice with much ceremony and placed in the reliquary in San Marco.6 There is no doubt that for a time the new arrival seized popular attention. The second factor is the escalation of competition between the scuole grandi

4 Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 135–6. 5 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 140, f. 72. 6 Andrea Cornaro, Storia di Candia, Book 13, BNM, Ms. It. VI. 286 (5985), f. 26r–v. 126 chapter seven expressed in lavish expenditures that aesthetisized their respective headquarters. In that sense, the decision most relevant to the miracle was perhaps the decoration of the great meeting room with a cycle of scenes from Scripture. The project was authorized by a joint meeting of the banca and the General Chapter of forty men on April 6, 1421.7 Twelve days later, on April 18, the Cross duly manifested itself through the miracle. It was a timely intervention, since the expensive project was a serious strain on the corporation’s resources. Early in 1422, the banca approached the Council of Ten reporting that it might be necessary to draw on the scuola’s capital invested in the State Loans Office to finance the undertaking.8 The Ten demurred to authorize such a move and allowed the enrollment of fifteen extra brothers whose entrance fees were to make up for the deficiency. Even that proved insufficient, though, because in June 1422 another five hundred ducats had to be allocated for an elaborate coffered ceiling in the great meeting room. The hope was that most of these funds would come from voluntary subventions by deep-pocketed brothers lest the banca had to dip into the scuola’s capital reserves or liquidate bonds, which was quite undesirable.9 The miracle with Giacomo’s vessel (and Paolo’s cargo, one must assume) was an appropriate means to spur the brotherhood’s zeal and eagerness to donate. It guaranteed that the brothers’ contributions would be seen as stemming not just from the largely secular desire to increase the honor of their corporation but from true piety and devotion as well. All they needed was for Paolo to report the miraculous occurrence and for Giacomo to corroborate the account. The identity of Giacomo Frumento is somewhat of a mystery. He may have been a brother of San Giovanni’s given the fragmentary condition of the confraternal lists of the period, but there is no direct evidence. The Senate’s records contain the conferral of citizenship rights to a certain Giacomo Frumento, son of Giovanni, of San Cassian. Originally from Como, he was granted de intus status in 1394, after eight years of residence in Venice with the restriction of prohibition to trade with the Fondaco dei

7 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 100v; see Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 143; Pietro Paoletti, Raccolta di documenti inediti per servire alla storia della pittura veneziana nei secoli XV e XVI. vol. I. I Bellini (Padua: Prosperini, 1894), 9. Vasari, Lives of the Artists, III 151–2 attributed a series of scenes from the New Testament done by 1465 to Jacopo Bellini, assisted by Gentile and Giovanni; Carlo Ridolfi, Le meraviglie dell’arte, ed. D. von Hadeln (Rome: Somu, 1965), 53–54, argued they were all by Jacopo. Jacopo Bellini was a member of San Giovanni’s, see Guisto Matzeu, Jacopo Bellini (Milan: Propago, 1957), 53. 8 ASV Consiglio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 10, f. 39v; Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 212. 9 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 100v, 101. the miracle of paolo rabia 127

Tedeschi.10 Two circumstances allow for a tentative link of that man to the captain of the ship carrying Paolo Rabia. Residence in San Cassian was conducive to membership in San Giovanni’s; the scuola’s lists contain several members and officials located in the parish. Also, Giacomo was from Como, and thus a fellow-Lombard of Paolo’s; although the Rabia had been in the city for a while, they too stemmed from Lombardy. Giacomo must have obtained the full right of citizenship before 1420 if he was the patron of the ship that sailed to Candia. In the first half of the fifteenth century several Frumento women left wills, which are still extant. Two of them, Ginevra and Marietta Frumento, are connected to a certain Giacomo, but the wills make no positive identification.11 There was a large group of Frumento/Formenti in the city by the middle of the century, not necessarily related, some of them quite affluent.12 In the following century, a certain Giovanni Formento made it to the highest distinction of a cittadino, the office of Grand Chancellor of the republic.13 One of the Chancellor’s daughters married a member of a patrician clan whom we already met, Giacomo Vendramin.14 No matter the branch of the Formenti/Frumento/ Formento houses to which Giacomo belonged, in 1420 he was a well-off

10 See www.civesveneciarum.net under “Iacobus Frumento.” 11 Ginevra Formento, wife of Giacomo, made a will on April 19, 1411 with notary Giorgio Campisanto, ASV CIN, b. 55, filza 48, # 3; Marieta di Giacomo Formento made a will on November 22, 1478 with Filippo Teioli, ASV ANT, b. 974, # 236; and Cataruzza Frumento, widow of Pietro, of San Giuliano, made a will on September 28, 1410 with Gasparino Nani, ASV ANT, b. 720, c. 89v, # 113. There are no clues in any of these wills as to whether the testators can be related to Giacomo Frumento of the miracle. 12 Giuseppe Tassini, Curiosita Veneziane ovvero Origini delle denominazioni stradali a Venezia (repr., Venice: Filippi, 1990), 250: links the Formenti to Corte Formenta in Castello and thinks that and that the family came from Poveglia. India Formento, widow of Angelo Formento, daughter of a Florentine, made a will that listed several houses and quite substantial possessions, see ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, b. 25, # 1457, dated January 28, 1433. The Redecima of 1514 lists four Formento: Alvise q. Nicolo, Caterina, Giacomo q. Gia- como, and Vicenzo q. Francesco, ASV, Dieci Savi sopra le decime in Rialto, Redecima 1514, Inventario. A certain Jacomo Frumento, son of Mafeo of San Simeone Apostolo appears often in the acts of Oderico Tabarini during the 1430s see for example ASV CIN, b. 214, f. 143r, February 16, 1434, where he witnessed the sale of a slave. Two Frumento brothers, Giovanni and Giacomo, sons of Bartome, of whom Giovanni resided in San Nicolo, are recorded in 1428, ASV CIN, b. 132, notary Marciliano di Naresi, paper register, f. 59v. 13 Alessandro Zilioli, Le due corone della nobilta Viniziana, vol. 1, BNM Ms. It. VII. 4–5 (7925–6), 59 has a general note about the Frumenti, without provenance. They had been prominent in trade and in the humanities and in the sixteenth century had had a Grand Chancellor. Giovanni Frumento was Grand Chancellor of the republic from January 20, 1586 to May 1595, BNM Ms. It. VII. 1667 (8459), Elenco di tuti I ordinary, extraordinary, etc., f. 33v. 14 Tassini, Cittadini veneziani, f. 228–230. His stems on the Formento/Formenti start in the sixteenth century. 128 chapter seven citizen, with a ship under his captainship, and had relations of note, destined for distinction of service to the city. Whether a San Giovanni’s member or not, Giacomo Frumento benefitted from the miracle, as did all those on board ship, but the credit for the numinous intervention went to Paolo Rabia, and not by coincidence. By 1421 the Rabia had acquired a solid position among the upper-rank citizens of Venice. As noted, the family began as an offshoot of a Lombard clan. Paolo Rabia, Paolo’s grandfather, originally from Monza, moved to the city around the middle of the fourteenth century and obtained citizenship de intus sometime before 1362.15 Another Rabia, Stefano, was one of the two dozen or so masters in the Wool Guild and the owner of a workshop that employed seven workers, about the average for the industry, in 1359.16 The Rabia made the woolens manufacturing district of San Simeone Profeta their home. Some remained skilled artisans. Antonio Rabia, son of Mafeo, a fuller and a contemporary of Paolo of the miracle fame, was comfortably well-off but no by means rich. He had enough to bequeath to his family when he drew up his will in 1448 and chose as its executors, in addition to his wife Chiara, a vintner from Santa Margerita and a mason from Sant’ Agata. Masons were not on the list of the prestigious trades but vintners were usually men of substance and, if wholesalers, of higher social standing, as the profession did not require manual work. Two unrelated locals from San Simeone Profeta witnessed the document. A safe assumption of his circumstances would be that Antonio was a shop owner of middling status. Antonio was related to the rest of Paolo’s clan, but one would not have known that from the will. He did, however, do business with his more prosperous relations, another indication that he was not a mere worker.17 Antonio does not appear to have been on

15 For a record of a grazia conferring the citizenship, since he was not present at the time and the privilege had been cancelled, see www.civesveneciarum.net, “Paolo Rabia.” For the Rabia clan outside of Venice see also Patrizia Mainoni, Mercanti Lombardi tra Barcelona e Valencia nel basso medioevo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1982), passim. 16 On Stefano Rabia, Nella Fano, “Richerche sull Arte della Lana in Venezia nell’ XIII e XIV secolo,” Archivio Veneto, 5th ser., 18 (1936), 73–213, at 183–4, and Andrea Mozzato, La mariegola dell’ Arte della Lana di Venezia (1244–1595) (Venezia: Il Comitato, 2002), vol. 1, 69–70. Stefano is mentioned in reference to a provision of the guild’s consuls which, citing the lack of skilled personnel in Venice, especially carders and shearers, limited the number of such workers that could be lawfully employed. Stefano got to hire seven skilled workers, which was in concert with the industry’s average of eight qualified artisans per shop, apart from any unskilled hands. 17 Antonio’s will is in ASV ANT, b. 558b, dated September 20, 1448, notary Antonio Gambaro. Either Antonio or his father Mafeo was Francesco Rabia’s “nephew” mentioned in an act of April 20, 1432, CIN, b. 213, Oderico Tabarini, f. 93r. the miracle of paolo rabia 129

San Giovanni’s rosters as Francesco’s family was. Evidently, the elite citizens differentiated themselves on an individual and narrow family basis. The rising tide of their status did not lift the boat of the larger clan to which they belonged. Of all the Rabia it was Francesco, Paolo’s father and Paolo of Monza’s son, who excelled in the business of manufacturing and trading woolens and amassed a fortune.18 In 1382 Francesco was already a gastaldo of the woolens producers’ guild, and for several decades continued to serve and to represent the profession before the authorities. He is last mentioned in the guild’s records as still active in 1439.19 One of the earliest reports for his business activity, dated 1389, has him involved in a relatively modest deal worth about a hundred ducats, or about a month of an average shop’s output, with Nasimbene de Becio, massarius in the military recruitment office, and his son Giacobello.20 That, however, must have been a single case. As Francesco’s vow during the war of Chioggia suggests, even at that early stage of his career he was in command of substantial means. As an entrepreneur, Francesco engaged in both manufacturing and trade, a common practice in the profession, and branched out in the trade with foreign textiles as well. A deal with the nobleman Leonardo Vitturi made back in 1397 went sour on that count and Francesco’s partner went to the Giudici di petizion on March 17, 1403. The two had made a joint venture and Leonardo claimed that Francesco Rabia owed him 17 lire di grossi but lost the case.21 Besides industrial and mercantile enterprises, Francesco drew income from real estate. He owned commercial property in the parish of San Lio and rented it out. In October 1429, for example, he made out a two-year renewable lease to a Pisan cloth maker.22 Francesco’s solid economic standing was reflected in his social progress, cemented with affiliations and strategic marriages with nobles. In 1402 his daughter Giovanna married Marco Bellegno, son of Francesco, and in 1408 another unnamed

18 Francesco is referred to as “Paolo’s son” in the same act of Odorico Tabarini, CIN, b. 213, f. 93r. 19 Andrea Mozzato, La mariegola dell’ Arte della Lana, vol. 1, 116 for 1381–1382, 117 and 130 as gastaldo, 194 for Rabia as a member of a delegation representing the guild before the Senate in December 1423. He is last mentioned in the guild’s records on August 31, 1439, ibid., 253. 20 ASV CIN, b. 168, notary Marco de Rafanelli, parchment register for 1389, f. 57r, dated March 2, 1389. The sum involved was 11 lire di grossi, 7 soldi, and 9 denari. 21 ASV Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a Guistizia, Reg. 7, 36r. 22 ASV CIN, b. 132, notary Marceliano di Naresi, paper register, f. 61v–62r, dated October 6, 1429. The Pisan was a vellutario. 130 chapter seven daughter wed Pietro Soranzo.23 The branch of the Bellegno with which the Rabia allied, originally from Santa Fosca, had expanded in Francesco’s home parish, San Simeone Profeta, where woolens makers abounded, and the marriage may have been motivated by shared business interests.24 In the second marriage, Francesco most certainly had business in mind. The Soranzo were in the wool manufacturing industry themselves and owned draper shops.25 Francesco was also on good terms with a branch of the Sanudo family. Sometime before 1416 Giovanni Sanudo had appointed him principal executor of his will, which contained, among other provisions, the transfer of the sizeable bequest of 1000 ducats of gold to the monastery of San Andrea di Amiano.26 Two episodes from Francesco’s otherwise meagerly documented professional life have implications for the meaning encoded in the miracle. Perhaps emboldened by his social connections, he came to the attention of the authorities for some allegedly murky deals. In 1414 he was referred to the Ufficiali alle rason nuove by two of his fellow manufacturers, Marco

23 Francesco’s daughter Giovanna married Marco Bellegno, son of Francesco in 1402, and had a son, Marco, see Marco Barbaro, Libro de nozze patrizie, BNM Ms. It. VII 156 (8492), f. 16 left, without the bride’s name, and his Arbori, f. 299r, under “Bellegno” where he mentions Giovanna. “Donne non nobili venete entrate in case patritie,” in Notizie di famiglie patrizie, BNM, Ms. It. VII. 183 (8161), f. 76r, also gives her name and the name of her son. Giovanna appears as a legal person in her own right on March 22, 1429 when she made a promissory note in her name and the name of her heirs to Donato Barbaro, CIN, b. 213, Oderico Tabarini, filza 3, loose parchment sheet. The marriage to Piero Soranzo, son of Toma, is recorded by Barbaro, Libro, f. 403, left side, also without the name of Francesco’s daughter. Giovanna left a will dated May 11, 1449, ASV ANT, b. 1157 part II, # 170f, notary Benedetto dalle Croci. 24 On September 7, 1452 Alvise Bellegno, son of Antonio, then in Alexandria, sent home a short note to serve as his will and mentioned houses in San Simeone Profeta that were to go to his sisters Elizabetta and Marta were he not to return to Venice, ASV CIN, Miscel- lanea notai diversi, b. 26, # 2027. 25 Andrea Mozzato, “The Production of Woolens in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Venice,” in Paola Lanaro, ed., At the Centre of the Old World: Trade and Manufacture in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800 (Toronto: CMRS, 2006), 71–108, at 92: Bertuc- cio Soranzo owned a draper shop at Rialto in 1452. The conditions of the Venetian wool industry in the period are known thanks to the extensive study of Mozzato, see also his “Il mercato dei panni di lana a Venezia nel primo ventennio del XV secolo,” in Giovanni Fontana and Gérard Gayot, eds., Wool: Products and Markets (15th to 20th Century) / La laine: produits et marchés (XIIIe–XXe siècle) (Padua: Cleup, 2004), 1035–1065 and the version with the same title in Nuova Rivista Storica, 89/1 (2005), 165–202. I was not able to consult Dr. Mozzato’s dissertation on the woolens industry, defended at the University of Milan. 26 On January 30, 1416, Francesco duly released a third of the sum to the abbot of the foundation, Francesco Moro, who had a receipt drawn for the transfer and specified how the entire sum was to be made over, ASV CIN, b. 147, notary Manfredino de Ponte, f. 32r. On the monastery see Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae Torcellanae Antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratis. Pars tertia & ultima (Venice: Battista Pasquale, 1749), 327. the miracle of paolo rabia 131 de Nuova and Beltrame, who accused him of selling wool to cloth makers without registering the cases with the scribe of the Messetteria, the brokerage office in charge of collecting fees on commercial transactions. On the strength of the accusation, the Ufficialli imposed on Francesco the stiff fine of fifty lire di grossi. The fine was very high, and if it had been levied at the rate established by law five years later, 25 percent of the transaction, it would mean that Francesco had been acting as a wholesale supplier to a good part of the guild. Marco and Beltrame appear to have had an agenda, for they had unsettled accounts with Francesco, and the case was brought to the Avogadori di Comun, where it was determined that the two had made the accusation out of iniquity and with malicious intent. The lawyers voted on the case twice without reaching majority and, on November 23, 1414, finally absolved the accusers with the motion barely passing.27 Francesco clearly had some pull but it did not suffice. It worked on another occasion, in 1419, when the Senate granted him a grazia from punishment, whether on merit or for another reason, imposed for an irregular sale of four pieces of Venetian cloth, apparently his own product.28 Francesco Rabia was not just a shrewd and successful businessman, but a pious man and a generous donor as well. In the last quarter of the fourteenth century he had funded and supported a new cloister at the church of Corpus Domini, founded by Lucia Tiepolo, and expended significant sums on capital investment and its upkeep. His sponsorship neatly blended pious generosity and patriotism. During the war of Chioggia, he had vowed to have the wooden church rebuilt in stone if Venice prevailed. Venice won, and he kept his word. In an agreement of 1395 between him and the cloister, now reformed as a Dominican nunnery, he obligated his

27 ASV, Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a Giustizia, Reg. 25, f. 63r and ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe, Reg. 3646, II, f. 67v. The lawyers could not reach a simple majority two times, which may mean that Francesco had strong support. The fine corresponds to 500 ducats and is rather stiff. Andrea Muzzato, “Il mercato dei panni di lana,” Nuova Rivista Storica, 168 n. 13, who mentions the case, states that Francesco had sold cloth (the Avogaria record says that Francesco sold lana rather than panni) but does not discuss Francesco’s appeal and the voting. The fine that Francesco was supposed to pay, if he did, and there is no grazia on record absolving him, was higher than the dowry of his daughter-in-law, Maria Bondimiero, see note 45 below. 28 ASV Senato, Deliberazioni Miste, Reg. 52, f. 189v; the case is reported in Denis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 88. 132 chapter seven heirs and successors to continue the support of the foundation.29 Early on, while still young, he appears to have been particularly devoted to an image of the Virgin in the early foundation of Corpus Domini, and it was on behalf of that devotion that he offered donations that sustained the establishment’s first denizens. It was only later that his piety focused on the body of Christ.30 Francesco’s piety thus underwent a shift of focus similar to that of Andrea Vendramin, San Giovanni’s guardian, who too turned to the Virgin first when the frightening dream about the fire awoke him, and only later recalled the Cross and the agent presented through the relic. A few years before Francesco’s death, the monastery acquired its own fragment of the True Cross, donated in 1444 by Pantalon da Veglia.31 The foundation also attracted several Vendramin ladies, among other noblewomen.32 The parallel between the two guardians, both cittadini at the time of their experiences, one of them the founder of a patrician house of good standing in the 1440s, suggests the role of devotional focal points in their respective self-identification. The Rabia were connected to the Vendramin indirectly as well. At the turn of the century Francesca and Bondumiera Bondumier, Paolo’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law, took the veil in the monastery of San Lorenzo and left an estate to the monastery.

29 M.-T. Casella and G. Pozzi, eds., B. Giovanni Domenici OP: Lettere spirituali (Specile- gium Friburgense, 13) (Freiburg: The University Press, 1969), 321–50. The documents specify that Francesco had extended two thousand ducats for the foundation and continued to pay for its operation. The story of Francesco’s meeting with the pious virgin Lucia and the founding of Corpus Christi as well as his vow to have the monastery rebuilt in stone if the Venetians emerged victorious in the war of Chioggia mixes finely his devotion and his patriotism, see Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae. Decas Prima. (Venice: Giovanni Pasquali, 1799), 115–18, citing Bartolmea Riccoboni as the primary authority; Cristoforo Tentori, Sag- gio sulla storia civile, politica, ecclesiastica e sulla corografia e topografia degli stati della Reppublica di Venezia. Vol. VIII (Venice: Giacomo Storti, 1787), 24–7; and now Daniel Born- stein, ed. and trans., Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1436 by Bartolomea Riccoboni (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 28–9; Francesco Rabia was not a patrician as the editor states. 30 ASV Corpus Domini, Reg. 1, Notizie appartenenti alla fondazione del monasterio del Corpo di Christi, Ch. 5, f. 3v. 31 Ibid., a summary entitled Antichita Ravivata, 1683. The fragment was in a “icon worked in gold, with a precious piece of the Cross covered in crystal . . . and with two angels holding the relic.” The relic was placed on the altar and confronted by a suspicious nun, whereupon a voice came within her to assure her that it was, indeed, a fragment of the Cross on which not the feet or hands of Christ, but His proper body had leaned. The relic was taken out on processions, but did not work miracles. 32 See for example ASV Corpus Domini, Reg. 1, Catastico, listing their wills; Reg. 2, Catastico de testament di mansionarie, f. 7 for an extract of the will of Maria daughter of Antonio Vendramin, April 29, 1483; f. 15 for the bequest of Chiara Vendramin, January 19, 1506. the miracle of paolo rabia 133

The estate was managed by the household head, Leonardo. As noted, San Lorenzo was the foundation where Gianneta Vendramin retired and died after Andrea Vendramin’s death in 1382; their stays overlapped by several years.33 A man with such credentials was bound to be appreciated by any of the large confraternities, and Francesco would have had no problems joining the brotherhood of San Giovanni’s. His devotion to Corpus Domini made San Giovanni, the host of the relic on which the body of the Savior had hung and sedimented his personality, a particularly appealing choice. He must have joined before the turn of the century and brought his son along.34 In 1406 he was on the banca as a vicar (his residence was in the parish of San Simeone) and that might not have been his first term in office. In 1415 Francesco became guardian grande. In the same year Marco Rabia of San Simeone Profeta, a close relation of Francesco’s, possibly a younger brother, nephew, or cousin, joined the confraternity as well.35 Francesco was re-elected two more times, in 1423–1424 and again in 1429– 1430, reaching the legal limit for the office.36 After a long life, he died on December 4, 1447, and was buried in the foundation he had endowed, Corpus Domini.37 Paolo followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather in both business and devotion. We read of him working alongside Francesco in 1417, when he was wounded when an enraged German worker attacked his father in a dispute over wages and Paolo tried to help.38 He must have still been working with Francesco when the storm caught up with

33 For the Bondimier ladies in San Lorenzo, ASV CIN, b. 208, notary Pietro Tibertini, loose parchment leaf, # 14; and parchment register, no foliation, under dates February 4, 1405, July 17, 1406, and August 2, 1406. 34 The confraternal records of new admitted brothers before the 1390s are not extant and Reg. 71, which contains the lists beginning in 1394, lacks the folios prior to 1399. The early- to mid-fourteenth century rosters of the confraternity list a Leon Rabia in the parish of San Pantalon, ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 3, f. 35r. 35 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 71, f. 58v. There is a will by Elisabetta Rabia, wife of Marco Rabia, which lists her husband as “resident of Padua” and mentions a stepson, Pietro Rabia, as well, dated, July 15, 1439, ASV ANT, notary Federico Stefani, b. 1230, Nr. 170. 36 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 6, no pagination, compiled most likely in 1489–90, and then added to by other hands; see also Reg. 72, f. 19r for his service as guardian grande in 1423–1424. 37 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72 Registro banche, inventari, elenchi frateli, receveri, 1417–1465, f. 83r: “Francesco Rabia passo da questa vita a di 4 dicembre e fo sepolito a Corpus Domini.” Francesco must have been born c. 1360 at the latest to be able to get involved in the Corpus Domini building, which makes him c. 90 years old in 1447. 38 ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Raspe, R. 3647, f. 7v, case against Giovanni the German, dated December 5, 1417; also cited in Dennis Romano, Patricians and popolani, 89. 134 chapter seven

Frumento’s ship in 1421.39 Francesco had his hold on the family business, and the arrangement with Paolo serving as travelling agent and his father as sedentary partner was fairly typical for a family societas company. What is somewhat unusual is that Paolo remained junior partner until Francesco’s death. When cloth was the business, the Rabia did all of their deals together, Francesco making the decisions. On April 20, 1432, for example, he made a joint venture involving Paolo and his nephew, but called off the deal soon thereafter.40 As late as the 1440s Paolo still operated in a formal partnership with his father and endorsed business documents with him. In March 1443, Francesco and Paolo co-signed a receipt for 200 ducats of gold or 20 lire di grossi that a Milanese, Giovanni di Arsago, deposited with them for an unspecified business. The venture did not materialize and in August 1449 the Lombard went to court in Venice to demand his money from Paolo, claiming that he owed him both in his own right and as Francesco’s heir. The judges granted di Arsago’s request. Paolo was absent and his side was not represented.41 He lived for three more years and passed away in April 1452, to be buried alongside his father and his son Antonio (who had died while Francesco was still alive) in Corpus Domini.42 These decades left a relative lack of documentary evidence about the conditions of the woolens business in general, with a corresponding impact on any records he would have left as a man of affairs. In terms of private life, Paolo married at least once. His first (or only) mar-

39 The register for emancipation of sons and formation of fraternas in Santa Croce is preserved for 1414–1474 and has no evidence of Paolo’s coming of age and joining his father, ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, b. 33. They may not have recorded it, or Paolo may have separated from Francesco before 1414, or Francesco ran the business on his own all the time with Paolo as partner. 40 The already cited act of Tabarini in ASV CIN, b. 213, f. 93r is crossed over and a short note on the left margin says “cancelled” and refers to another page of the register, where, however, there is no act concerning the Rabia. 41 ASV, Giudici di petizion, Sentenze a guistizia, b. 109, f. 196v–197r, dated August 4, 1449. The deposit was made on March 10, 1443. Giovanni di Arsago was well informed and knew that Paolo was not just Francesco’s heir but the executor of his will as well. He noted explicitly in the petition that Paolo owed him in his own right, on the one hand, and both as executor of Francesco’s will and his heir, on the other. He enclosed evidence that both Francesco and Paolo had signed on the receipt for the deposit. Paolo was not there to defend himself. The judges obligated his movable and immovable possessions for the covering of the plaintiff’s claim. The case took place in August and Paolo may have been on the high seas if he still traveled personally at the time. 42 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 85v, “Polo Rabia paso di questa vita a di 14 Aprile e fo meso a Chorpo di Xristi.” An extensive targeted search in all types of documentation in Venice’s state archive likely to shed light on Paolo’s personal and professional life drew a blank. It is true that most of his life was spent in the shadow of his father, but it is also hoped that a random or systematic investigation of the period will eventually return some evidence. the miracle of paolo rabia 135 riage was to the noblewoman Maria Bondumier, and he is on record as the father of at least three sons and a daughter. The house of Bondumier had representatives on San Giovanni’s roster, and mingling with them in the confraternity might have provided opportunities to establish family alliances. The Bondumier were also residents of nearby San Toma, which facilitated contacts and business affiliation.43 In May 1416, for example, in a rare case of Paolo operating outside of his father’s shadow, Antonio Bondumier, Paolo’s brother-in-law, entrusted him and a partner, Marco Barbaro of Santa Fosca, with exercising bond options on his and his brother Nicolo’s behalf at the return of the Levantine galleys later that summer, depending on market conditions.44 The connection had been important enough for Paolo to have his first son baptized Antonio after the boy’s maternal uncle, with whom Maria must have been close, as she later appointed him executor of her will. Nonetheless, the size of Maria’s dowry indicates that she married into money while Paolo received the honor of wedding a noblewoman.45 Paolo and Maria’s daughter Helena wedded a patrician, Paolo Morosini, before 1442.46 The Morosini too had been San Giovanni’s members of long standing, perhaps from its inception, and there were Morosini residing in the parish of San Simeone Profeta to

43 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 6 lists Marco Bondumier, son of Nicolo of San Toma. Marco’s sons, Nicolo and Antonio also resided in the parish, ASV CIN, b. 57, notary Pietro de Canal, second parchment register, no original foliation, under July 16, 1414. 44 ASV CIN, b. 202, notary Pietro Tibertini, second parchment register, no foliation, under May 16, 1416. 45 Paolo’s wife, Maria, left a will dated 1413 and only mentions one son, Antonio, see ASV ANT, b. 1112, # 28 (15), notary Pietro Tibertini, where she left Antonio 300 ducats. Tomaso and Alvise have not yet been born or were sons of another wife. Maria’s bequest to Antonio came as follows: 200 from her dowry and 100 being the counter-gift from her father-in-law Francesco Rabia, for investment in the bonds office, until Antonio completes eighteen years when he could draw on the investment. He must have been quite young at the time and therefore the first son. The executors were her husband Paolo Rabia and Antonio Bondumier, her brother. She left to the poor of the parish of San Simeone 25 ducats for her soul and some money for Theodor the pievan of San Simeone Profeta for prayers for her soul. Further, she left to Bondomiera Bondumier, her sister, a nun in the monastery of San Lawrence in Venice some ducats, and to another sister of hers, Mauricia, nun in the monastery of Corpus Christi six ducats, again for prayers for her soul. There are various other small bequests to the women who would prepare her body for burial and watch over her, including a bequest to Tibertini for his labor; everything else of her movable and other property went to her son Antonio. 46 For the marriage of Helena Rabia to Paolo Morosini, see the summary of her will of February 7, 1442, in ASV Corpus Domini, Reg. 1, Catastico de testamenti perpetui, no foliation, where she makes a bequest to her brother Tomaso on the condition that he would have no claims on her late husband’s estate. 136 chapter seven act as go-betweens.47 Paolo Rabia must have been proud of the match. The Morosini, one of the most influential noble houses, were also among the largest wool cloth producers.48 Now his interests were their interests. At the time of the miracle, Paolo was a long-time member of San Giovanni’s as well, having joined in 1403 while still residing in the family abode in the parish of San Simeone Profeta.49 Just a year later, on March 1404, he was already on the banca as deacon for Santa Croce, and served again in the same office in 1412–1413.50 The year after the miracle he was again on the banca and served 1422–1423 as guardian da matin.51 In March 1427 he was elected vicar.52 Having made it through the better part of the confraternity’s cursus honorum, his term as guardian grande came in 1432.53 Unlike his father, Paolo served only once. As the miracle indicates, the family business required frequent travel that kept Paolo away for long stretches at a time, and until 1447 Francesco made sure the family was represented on the banca. As reinforcement, Paolo brought his sons into the confraternity as soon as they came of age just as his father had brought him in; he lived to see a grandson and possibly even a great-grandson join as well. His youngest son, Tomaso, enrolled in March 1444, while his grandfather Francesco was still alive.54 Tomaso served a term as a deacon for Cannaregio in 1445–1446, served as a deacon for Santa Croce in 1450– 1451, and was elected vicar in 1466–1467. He became guardian grande in 1474 and died in the office.55 His elder brother Antonio served as a deacon for Santa Croce in 1431–1432, again in 1437–1438, and stood for it one more time in 1443, but passed away in June 1444 before completing his term.

47 AVS SG SGE, Reg. 6, and for Morosini in San Simeone Profeta ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, b. 123. 48 Mozzato, “The Production of Woolens in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Venice,” passim: In 1413 the Ziossi-Morosini enterprise was producing four times as many pieces as the average workshop and Lodovico Morosini alone was employing 27 spinners while the number of artisans in an average shop was about eight. 49 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 71 Libro Stella I, Registro banche, elenchi fratelli morti, parti del Capitolo, riceveri, 1394–1417, fol. 53v, records his admission on March 18, 1403. 50 Idem, Reg. 71, f. 9r, f. 21r. 51 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, Registro banche, inventari, elenchi frateli, parti, riceveri, 1417– 1465, f. 18r. 52 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 23r. 53 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 6, no pagination; Reg. 72, f. 28r. 54 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 47, enrolment on March 15, 1444. 55 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 61 for Tomaso’s deaconship for Cannaregio in 1445–1446; Reg. 73 Registro di banche 1465–1690, f. 89r as the deaconship for Santa Croce, f. 3r for his term as a vicar, and f. 10 as Guardian Grande, with a note on f. 11, explaining that he had passed away. the miracle of paolo rabia 137

He was laid to rest in the family foundation of Corpus Domini where his grandfather Francesco rested.56 The family relationships and the sequence of the male Rabia become unclear at this point, but another member of the family, Alvise, either Paolo’s son from another marriage or his grandson, was admitted into San Giovanni’s in 1428. Yet another Rabia, Alo, either Paolo’s or Alvise’s son, was elected deacon for Santa Croce in 1458–1459, did two half-year terms as deacon for San Marco and Castello in the early 1460s, and served as guardian da matin in 1469–1470.57 Alo passed away sometime before April 1474.58 In less than a century, therefore, no less than three generations of the Rabia clan had joined San Giovanni’s and had served on the banca, a tribute to their piety, financial skill, and managerial acumen. They saw their industrial and commercial fortunes rise and they rode the tide until their wealth eventually evaporated. In 1444 at least five male Rabia were members of the confraternity, distinguished by service and by Antonio’s place on the banca. In the 1420s and 1430s Francesco and Paolo alternated years in office. In the 1430s the pattern was repeated by Paolo and Antonio and in the 1450s through the 1470s by Tomaso and Alo. But the Rabia ascendance ended with Tomaso’s partial term and death in 1474. After that, the Rabia disappeared from San Giovanni’s banca and lost a venue for status assertion. The confraternal lists of the later fifteenth century are incomplete, but there are no surviving signs of them in the brotherhood either.59 It is perhaps not a coincidence that there was no painting commissioned

56 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 59r, elections on March 24, 1443. Antonio Rabia was elected and his name entered, but as he did not complete his office, another brother who would later benefit from the Cross’s intervention, Piero di Lodovico of San Salvador stepped in, and Antonio’s name was crossed. For the date of Antonio’s death see Reg. 72, f. 81r. Antonio was the oldest son of Paolo for he was the only one mentioned in the will of his mother. 57 Idem, Reg. 73 f. 5; and Reg. 72, f. 39v for Alvise’s enrolment. Antonio and Alvise are identified as sons of Paolo in the Reg. 6, Elenco fratelli, no pagination, in the original hand of a later compilation dating most likely from 1489–1490, but the identification is problematic. If Alvise was admitted in 1428 he must have been born before 1413, and should have been mentioned by Maria Rabia in her will, unless he was a son of Paolo’s from another marriage. That, however, would make his life unusually long, for he was still alive in 1492, see the next note. For Alo’s deaconships, see Reg. 72, f. 98r, 241v, and 242r. Antonio, Alvise, and Alo Rabia are listed in the Redecima of 1514, see ASV Dieci Savi sopra le Decime in Rialto, cards 106–107. 58 He was deceased by April 27, 1474 when his spouse Angela recorded her will, ASV ANT, b. 1229, # 317, notary Christoforo Rizzo. The will was first recorded on April 27, by Bartolomeo Grassolario, and Rizzo entered it in the records of the Cancelleria Inferiore in September, possible indication that Agnola had passed away. 59 See, for example the lists in ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 13 and 14, both with lists from the last decade of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries. 138 chapter seven on the miracle with Paolo Rabia in the cycle executed in the late 1490s and the early 1500s. There might have been no one left to lobby on the Rabia’s behalf when the confraternity discussed the project. By way of comparison, one of the Vendramin’s canvases by the hand of Perugino, that on the miracle with the oil ships, was re-painted in 1558 by Vicentino after burning in a fire. The Vendramin had a clear interest in preserving their legacy, the clout to ask for the restitution, and the money to pay for it. It is likely that in the Rabia’s case none of these conditions had applied at the time when the cycle was designed and ordered in the 1490s. Two factors played a role in the Rabia family’s inability to maintain a presence in San Giovanni’s. The first is an accident of the bloodline for which they cannot be blamed. When the third generation of Rabia in the confraternity died out in 1474, Alvise, Alo’s son, born sometime after 1454, was not yet twenty years old.60 His mother’s and his mentor’s loyalties lay elsewhere. Alo had married a step down from his father (or grandfather), to Agnola Fioravante, a pious lady with a particular devotion to the nuns of Santa Croce in Giudeca.61 The Fioravante, themselves with roots in the woolens business and originally from Bologna, though not nobles, were eminent cittadini originarii at the time. They participated in the Venetian long-distance trade on the Constantinople—Black Sea line. In 1449, a family member, Alvise Fioravante, was either stationed in Tana or was there on business.62 Alo’s brother-in-law, Benedetto, appointed as mentor to his son by Agnola after Alo passed away, served three terms as guardian grande of another of the great confraternities, Santa Maria della Misericordia, by the turn of the century. His son Gian Pietro served as extraordinario and then secretary of the Cancelleria inferiore in the late 1490s.63 When he came of age, Alvise married a certain Agnesina, whose family affiliation is uncertain. By 1490, when she had her will drawn up, they had two daughters, Lucrezia and Elizabetta, but no male offspring, though Agnesina was hopeful that she would have more children.64 As Alvise had been a minor during the time his elders were waning from

60 In her will Agnola stipulated that Alvise was to receive all her possessions when he completed 20 years of age. 61 She willed to be buried in the foundation and made a condition that all her chattels and real estate were to pass to the monastery if Alvise failed to produce legitimate heirs born of a legitimate marriage, see above. 62 ASV CIN, b. 148, notary Pietro Palacan, paper register, no foliation, act dated September 3, 1449. 63 Tassini, Cittadinanze venete, 219–20. 64 ASV ANT, b. 41, # 5, dated August 20, 1490, notary Francesco Bonamico. the miracle of paolo rabia 139

San Giovanni’s and for a long time (if not his entire life) was without a male heir, several decades passed without a Rabia on the confraternity’s lists and executive bodies.65 The tradition that had tied his family to San Giovanni’s was broken, and the future did not bode well for its restoration. The second factor that may have affected the Rabia is conjecture, but the argument can be made. Genealogical issues notwithstanding, the Rabia did not manage to cement their citizenship status. Unlike their Fioravante in-laws they appear not to have branched out into civil service. Agnesina had the notary address her husband as egregious vir, but the Senate’s scribe who recorded Alvise Rabia’s request for a tax reprieve in 1515 referred to him as “prudente citadin nostro” rather than “civis originarius,” and Sanudo mentions him in 1509 as “citadin popular.” By comparison, the status of Giovanni Rabia, Alvise’s great-uncle once removed, had been termed “cives noster originarius” upon scrutiny for a governmental position back in the 1460s.66 The main branch of the clan appears to have taken no stock in service and stayed focused on manufacture and trade. They failed to promote clan members into the institutional domain managed by the cittadini originarii to cushion the effect of market vagaries. By the second decade of the 1500s that brought them to an effective economic demise. Indeed, there are signs that after the mid-1470s the family may have lost some of its luster. The Rabia continued the relation with Corpus Domini but it may not have been as cordial as before.67 In 1492, a dispute arose between Alvise and the nuns of the monastery over a terrain and a garden adjacent to his house and the monastic complex. The issue was brought before the procurators but ended in a compromise.68 There is no evidence that the later Rabia bequeathed property or state bonds to the establishment.69 The decline must have been relative. When Alvise’s daughter Elizabetta married in 1509, she too took for a husband a fellow cittadino, Alvise Tomasini, son of Fazio, rather than wedding a patrician as had

65 The Redecima of 1514 lists an Alo Rabia in the register but he is not mentioned in Alvise’s condizione. 66 For Giovanni Rabia, son of Marco, civis noster originarius, and his subjection to a prova as an applicant for the position of scribe in April 1468 see ASV Collegio, Notatorio, Reg. 11, 1467–1474, f. 21r (entry 82). 67 Agnesina, Alvise’s wife, willed to be buried in Corpus Domini, see her will above. 68 ASV Corpus Domini, Reg. 1, Catastico degli aquisti delle case, f. 3v–r. 69 There are no Rabia on the list of state bonds’ grantors and perpetual endowments culled from various wills in the seventeenth century, see ASV, Corpus Domini, Reg. 3, separate filza. I did not find any trace of the family’s presence in the period in the foundation’s archive. 140 chapter seven been the custom during the days of Francesco and Paolo’s prominence. Nonetheless, Fazio Tomasini was an elite citizen and a long-time state employee himself, prominent enough to apply for the position of Grand Chancellor of the Republic in 1517. The Rabia were still aiming high. The marriage ceremony was held in Cannaregio and its parties were visible enough to merit a note of Marin Sanudo’s, who seldom condescended to mention commoners, but attended personally.70 Later, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Alvise fell on tough times. The family status in the period was not what it had been in the middle of the previous century. Among other things, the war of the League of Cambrai and the devasta- tion after the rout of Agnadello may have impacted them negatively. If Alvise was still fully vested in the manufacturing of woolen cloth, he witnessed severe shortages of raw materials and disrupted distribution networks. In the tax register of the Redecima of 1514, which lists him, as well as a certain Alesio and another Rabia, Antonio, son of Bernardino, Alvise declared only two modest houses used as residences and partially rented, no workshop or other properties.71 The next year he was behind on his dues and had to petition the Senate for a postponement. On December 4, 1515, the Senate considered the request and granted him a two-year reprieve.72 The fact that he was unable to pay his dues and needed a grazia and that his real estate tax as recorded in 1516 did not amount to a lira di grossi illustrate his finances. Antonio Rabia listed more properties but claimed that he was ruined, and his tax was lower than that of Alvise’s. There is a vague reference dating to 1536 that the family was extinct by

70 Marino Sanudo, Diarii, vol. VII, ed. Fulin (Venice, 1882), c. 756; Elizabetta Rabia married the son of Fazio Tomasini on Sunday, February 18, 1509. For Fazio Tomasini see Tassini’s genealogy in BMC, Ms. P.D. c 4/ 5, 38; for his application to the position of Grand Chancellor Sanudo, Diarii, vol. XXXIII, cal. 495, under January 19, 1517. He did not get the job. 71 ASV Redecima of 1514, San Simeone Profeta, Alvise Rabia q. Alo, Reg. 1470, Condiz- ione Nr. 80; and idem, San Simeone Profeta, Antonio Rabia q. Bernardino, Condizione Nr. 81. The declarations were made and received in the office in 1516. Alvise’s assessment was £ 0, s. 9, d. 10, lire piccoli 12; Antonio’s was just 38 soldi. I would like to thank Reinhold Mueller for the quick clarification of the money of account in the period. 72 ASV Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra, Reg. 19, f. 58v, December 4, 1515: “Per la supplica- zion hora lecta: questo Conseglio ha inteso quanto humilmente domanda et supplica el prudente citadin nostro Alvise Rabia: per questo essendo conveniente usar etiaz verso lui de la grazia et clemenzia che e solita usar la Signoria nostra verso molti altri et per tanto. L’andera parte: che per Auctorita de questo Conseglio tuti i debiti chel prefato Alvise Rabia ha cum la Signoria nostra, siano suspesi per anni do proximi future si come ad altri per questo Conseglio, esta concession. De parte: 168; De non: 11; Non fin: 0.” The case is mentioned in Marino Sanudo, Diarii, vol. XXI, ed. Fulin (Venice, 1887), c. 348. the miracle of paolo rabia 141 that time.73 They do not feature in the Redecima of 1582 and no evidence has come to light about them after 1516. The hereditary presence of the Rabia in San Giovanni’s, while it lasted, neatly fits the trend displayed by leading citizen families who, despite the state’s policy to determine the officialdom in all quarters on the base of merit, saw no reason to forgo heredity and by the late fifteenth century swamped the state offices with requests to enroll their sons in the positions they had held. To the clan’s credit, they did not limit themselves to the scuola. Marco and his son Giovanni took the path of public service by mid-century and displayed the same tendency. The clan’s main family’s status strategy, however, was tied up in maintaining a long-term hold on the management of San Giovanni’s. With such a presence, they must have been able to command considerable influence on confraternal policies. The projects for the beautification of the confraternal headquarters in the 1410s and 1420s, and the decisive orientation toward long-term social service, were conceived and executed while Francesco guided the scuola, directly as a guardian grande or indirectly, sitting on the boni homini committees. The projects in the early 1440s were set in motion while Antonio and Tomaso did their turns on the banca. The commissions were of course means of competition for social prestige that rubbed off on the Rabia and, besides putting them in the divinity’s good books, cemented their status vis-à-vis their fellow-cittadini within the confraternity, citywide among the leadership of the other brotherhoods, and, ultimately, in comparison to the social groups below and above them, the popolani and the patricians. But the Rabia’s ascendance was precarious. Neither the marriages with the nobility, nor the family foundation, nor the connections they had within the scuola shielded the Rabia from the harsh economic realities that determined their only livelihood. They appear to have depended entirely on one factor, the economic fortunes of the woolens business. On that count, even without the trouble of maintaining their bloodline, their

73 The Rabia are noted as an ancient and distinguished citizen family in a list of 1536 preserved in a later copy in BMC, Cod. Gradenigo 192, Cittadini veneti, f. 100, but the note also says that they were no longer so since 1480. The families under the heading, among them the Rabia, were there for “Commemorazione di alcune case nobili di questo ordine che sono estinte,” see f. 98r. “Nobili” here is in relation of those families’ standing within the commoners, not affiliation with the patriciate. Rather than going extinct however, which they clearly were not in 1480 and perhaps even in 1536, the Rabia might have devolved in status. The index of cittadini originarii preserved in the Avogaria di Comun does not contain a reference to them, ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Reg. 440, Cittadinaze originarie, Indice 1569–1801. The index lists acknowledgements of citizenship both according to the law of 1569 and according to “ancient custom.” 142 chapter seven waning from the ranks of the citizen elite that ran San Giovanni’s was determined by other structural forces. The trajectory of the Rabia’s ascent and decline dovetails with the dynamics of their business, the manufacturing and trade of woolens. By the time the Cross arrived in Venice, the Venetian woolen industry, represented by the professional guild, Arte della Lana, had begun a gradual recovery from its mid-fourteenth century slump. It should be recalled that the elder Vendramin is first on record in 1356 for suffering a steep loss on a shipment of woolens to southern Italy that perhaps caused him to give up on branching out in this business for good. In the last quarter of the century the improvement accelerated. The profession entered the 1400s with optimism, in no small part due to the decline of the competing centers to the west and south, in Lombardy and Tuscany, and the substantial and steady import of high quality English and Flemish wool and woolens for refinishing. The growth was further stimulated in the first two decades of the century by the influx of the competitively priced, medium quality, blank Lombard textiles from Milan, Brescia, and Bergamo, which were finished and dyed in Venice, and by the subject territories in the terraferma bringing more raw materials from Padua, Vicenza, and Verona. The industry saw a setback in the 1430s, but recovered in the 1450s and continued to perform well until a prolonged crisis set in around 1485. In other words, wool manufacturing reached its fifteenth-century peak while Francesco and Paolo Rabia were in charge, and saw the beginning of a decline in the next generation, at the time when the Cross’s miracles ceased.74 Apart from purely economic conditions, the fortunes of the industry depended on state policies. For most of the period the government practiced a balanced approach, vacillating between the patrician urge to open the market for imports and re-exports, and the authorities’ concern for ensuring the high quality of the textiles and securing jobs in the business for the popolani. In that sense, most of the interventions amounted to tinkering, measures tuned to the economic cycles in which the wool industry was enmeshed, and retrenchment when circumstances changed. There was one major exception to that pattern, an intervention that amounted to an attempt at a serious overhaul of the woolens industry and the trade in woolens, the legislation of June 8, 1419. The law of 1419,

74 The summary in these two paragraphs relies on Nella Fino, “Richerche,” and Andrea Muzzato “Manufacturing and Trade of Woolens,” in Lanaro, At the Center of the Old World, 71–108. the miracle of paolo rabia 143 which was to take effect on March 1, 1420, arose after several decades of hands-off policy, and in the wake of the invasion of Lombard cloth, woolens from Brescia under the Malatesta leading the list.75 The Senate, which passed the measure, justified it in its opening paragraph by stating that “as everyone knows, the wool cloth production here in Venice is completely destroyed.”76 It was an exaggeration, but a contemporary observer agreed that there was no producer that was not a refinisher at the same time, referring to the heavy dependence on imported primary materials that suppressed employment in production-from-scratch operations. In formulating the law, the Senate aimed to secure jobs, particularly for low- skilled workers, ensure fair treatment of the hired hands by the masters and industrialists, guarantee uniform high quality of the woolens, especially the wholly domestic luxury cloth, and crack down on both forgery and the evasion of customs and dues. The regulations were not without precedent, but there had been almost four decades since the government had last aggressively intervened in the field and they must have felt novel. Their impact, although mitigated by the nine-month grace period given to producers and traders to comply, must have jolted the men in these intertwined businesses. Apart from the reform of the industry, the law took aim at the trade in woolens as well. Three of its provisions were particularly onerous and amounted to a momentary rupture in the business as usually practiced in the preceding four decades: the almost complete ban on retailing Lombard cloth in the city’s staple woolens market; the ban on re-exporting completely finished imported woolens outside of the Adriatic except aboard armed galleys; and the measures reinforcing the collection of the state’s dues. Beginning March 1, 1420, no Brescian or Milanese cloth was to change hands in retail at Rialto. The fines for skipping the state brokerage office, the Messeteria, and the other fee collecting magistracies went up to 25 percent of the value of the merchandise involved.77 The ban that went into force in March 1420 must have been distressing news to the Venetian woolens producers. The removal of dues for locally produced wool helped mitigate the shock, but the input was not up to the industry’s capacity. Production halved between 1423 and 1433, when

75 Eduardo Demo, “De Brescia se traze panni fini e altre sorte de panni de manco precio: L’esportazione dei prodotti tessili bresciani nel’ 400,” Annali Queriniani 6 (2005), 101–130; and Muzzato, “Il mercato di panni,” Nuova Rivista Storica, passim. 76 Muzzato, “Mariegola,” 1, 170. 77 Ibid., 180–82, and Muzzato’s article in its two versions, passim. 144 chapter seven the wool guild remonstrated to the authorities and the restrictions were relaxed. By the later date the conquest of the terraferma was advancing too, bringing more Lombard products under the category of “homemade,” and manufacturers rebounded strongly. But back in 1420, the issue with procuring fairly priced raw material, whether wool or semi-finished woolens, was a concern. And then there was the requirement to export luxury imported woolens only aboard state galleys, adding to the costs and cutting down the opportunities to skip customs and fees where possible to beat the competition on the Levantine markets by sailing out at one’s will. Given Francesco Rabia’s history as a habitual offender, the law’s tight- ening of control must have been a disturbing development for him. It might have been even more damaging in its restrictions on the import of Lombard half-finished products. As producers, the Rabia may have relied on local supplies. As refinishers and exporters, they had to get their material from somewhere and needed consumers. Brescian cloth was the best choice as material for refinishing, but the extant evidence is silent on the Rabia’s involvement. A large trove of information involving transactions with woolens in the first two decades of the fifteenth century has recently come to light. It features several merchants from Lombardy working with proxies in the Rabia’s parish, San Simeone Profeta, and was recorded by Domenico di Filosofi, a scribe with the Ufficio di Ministero and a notary with the Cancelleria Inferiore and the Messeteria.78 Domenico was a member of San Giovanni’s and in 1404–1405 served as deacon for Dorsoduro (he resided in San Aponal) at the same time that Paolo did his first turn for Santa Croce.79 They must have known each other well, yet there is no trace of the Rabia in Domenico’s large register. Other evidence of Brescian imports, highly desirable in Venice due to their medium quality, fair price, and potential for refinishing and re-export from Venice for a hefty profit margin, does not feature the Rabia either.80 Arguing from lack of evidence is never a good exercise, but given the relatively large amount of information on these two counts, unless new data comes to light one must conclude either that the Rabia were focused on cloth produced entirely from domestic or imported high-quality wool, or they were not working with Brescian importers; and if they refinished, it was English and French cloth, which they could have obtained directly from the wholesale importers

78 For Domenico and his register see Muzzato, “Il mercato,” passim. 79 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 71, f. 10r. 80 Demo, “De Brescia se traze panni,” passim. the miracle of paolo rabia 145 from these markets. The latter kind of deals usually did not go through a notary and rested on private agreements between merchants and manufacturers who formed “societies,” or agreements of the kind that Francesco and Leonardo Vitturi had made in 1397. This brings us back to the family’s Lombard roots. As already noted the Rabia worked with Milanese businessmen and were entrusted with their money long-term. They also had distant cousins in Milan, Modena, and Monza who ran medium-sized industrial and commercial compa- nies in the woolens business. The Milanese were active in the middle of the fifteenth century especially in the direction of Spain, but they traded in Venetian cloth as well. There is no indication of whether the Rabia branches were in touch but they must have known about each other. They were not too far removed as relatives. The Milanese Rabia exhibit the same name register as that of Paolo’s sons and grandsons, Antonio and Alvise being the most visible Lombard Rabia alongside a certain Stefano, suggesting close affiliation.81 Pietro Rabia of Modena had been active in Venice before 1390, when he passed away and the executors of his will, both Modenese citizens residing in Venice, took care of his affairs.82 Traders and producers from the Rabia’s old hometown, Monza, showed up for business on the Rialto and took up long-term residence in the city. One of them, another Pietro or Petrolo Rabia, represented merchants from Monza on the Rialto in 1390. It is likely that it was he again trading in cloth on behalf of other Lombards years later, in 1410 and 1413.83 As late as 1427 Pietro, still identified as a citizen of Monza and a resident of the parish of Santa Maria Mater Domini in Venice, conducted business with a Milanese.84 The Lombard Rabia are known to have procured raw wool in Valencia and to have cleared their accounts in Venice.85 As far as overland business was concerned, the Rabia could have been dealing

81 On the Lombard Rabia see Patrizia Mainoni, Mercanti lombardi tra Barcellona e Valenza nel basso Medioevo (Bologna, Cappelli, 1982), 74–5 and passim; idem, “Un mercante Milanese del primo Quattrocento: Marco Serraineri,” Nouva Revista Storica lxi (1975), 331–77 at 351–2. 82 ASV CIN, b. 168, notary Marco de Rafanelli, parchment register for 1389 (m.v.), f. 105v, dated January 22, 1390. 83 Patricia Mainoni, “Un mercante milanese,” 352, n. 88; Mozzato, “Il mercato,” Nuova Rivista Storica, 195, 197: Pietro Rabia, a woolmaker from Monza, in company with other foreigners, and Jacopo Ziazo from Pavia, procured cloth for another Pavian, Pietro Paolo Gosenexio and a merchant from Mantua, on September 13, 1410 and April 16, 1413. 84 ASV CIN, b. 132, notary Marciliano di Naresi, parchment register, f. 116r, dated April 21, 1427. 85 Mainoni, Mercanti Lombardi, 74–5. 146 chapter seven through Milan and Monza and procuring unfinished textiles directly from overseas. But this must have been a secondary market. The thrust of their business and the miracle accounts point to the Levant. High-end woolens were primed for the deep-pocketed Venetian consumer first, but the bulk went to the Levantine markets, from where Paolo was returning when the miracle occurred. Allowing for the state of the industry and trade in woolens in 1420–1421 and those conjectures, the impact of the law on the Rabia’s business ought to have been stressful but ambiguous. It was a serious shakeup, enforcing fees and dues and high standards for the domestically made luxury woolens, but it may have compensated the Rabia with opportunities. If the Rabia were affected negatively by the ban on importing Lombard half-finished textiles, which is not necessarily the case, the impact was partially offset by the duty-free import of wool from the subject territories and by their ability, as manufacturers, to reach out to the Cretan market with high-end cloth of their own making or luxury imports refinished by them. The trip may have been neither the first nor the last for Paolo. That he was homebound in early April 1421 suggests that he had likely undertaken the outward leg of the journey after the law of 1419 took effect. He may well have taken off with the intention to undercut the competition of woolens dealers who were based exclusively on exchange of finished foreign products, and who were now constrained to the rigid schedule of the armed galleys to the entrepot of Candia and for further distribution in the Levant. Either way, at the average rate of producing or refinishing wool cloth of 55 pieces per year, the Rabia had had enough time to crank up the volume to justify Paolo’s travel and the leasing of lading space on a vessel such as that of fellow Lombard Giacomo Frumento.86 Candia was very important for the Rabia and they strove to have a permanent and, if possible, personal presence on its markets. Some years later, as Paolo got involved in the affairs of San Giovanni’s that precluded long absences, local businessmen had to represent them. In August 1427, for example, when Paolo was tied up in the office of vicar for the confraternity and could not sail himself, he and Francesco engaged the Candian man of

86 The acts of several Candian notaries cover the period of 1420–1421: ASV Archivio Notarile, Notai di Candia, Andrea Cocco (1373–1423), b. 23; Gasparino Cocco (1416–1439), b. 26; Andrea Galterio (1417–1425), b. 102; Marco de Ugolini (1418–1451), b. 279; Georgio Candacini (1398–1451), b. 25; Gerolamo Zusto (1402–1454). Their registers may contain a reference to Paolo’s business in 1421, but searching for that particular act is a study in its own right. A targeted search did not return any reference. the miracle of paolo rabia 147 affairs Thoma Bascio, who had relatives in Venice, with the powers to buy, sell, barter, bank, and stand for them in court, in short, to do everything on behalf of their business.87 The appointment of a proxy for such a reason is highly indicative of the importance of the confraternal affiliation and its material and immaterial contributions to the Rabia’s social standing. The family’s status base was primarily economic, vested in their production and long-distance trade businesses. They were willing, however, to make a potentially harmful concession and operate vicariously in what was their most important market in order to maintain their presence in and increase their hold on the confraternal leadership. Francesco and Paolo may have well felt that this was more than a prestige-based strategy, though prestige undoubtedly contributed to their position in the city. Control of the confraternity gave them the power of management and guidance of a segment of the public sphere, a characteristic crucial for their definition as socially superior to the manual operators of the trade that was their living. Management and control were largely accomplished through the harnessing of the output of the spiritual and devotional impulses of their fellow Venetians from all walks of life, patricians included. The power that accrued to the Rabia and the confraternal officialdom in general was buttressed by the conceptual proximity to the numinous in a manner that they would not have been able to enjoy as individual devotees. The Church or Christ and God Himself were present “where two or three of you gather together in [His] name” (Matthew, 18:20), as the Gospel’s dictum went. As confraternal leaders, the Rabia and the elite citizens of their standing controlled a congregation of faithful that, although discrete, mirrored the church and state, a typological equivalent, if not a higher order, of the political and ecclesiastical control exercised by the patrician oligarchy. Then again, in 1420–1421 a large-scale development took place that may have provided another structural foil for the miracle. Its association with the miracle and the Rabia’s business is tenuous, but it cannot be over- looked. On the one hand, it unfolded at the time of Frumento’s ship’s home-bound journey. On the other, it is in synch with Francesco Rabia’s tendency to link Venetian foreign politics with his personal predilections. That Giacomo Frumento’s ship made it through the Gulf on a miracle

87 ASV CIN, b. 132, notary Marciliano di Naresi, parchment register, f. 127r, dated August 31, 1427. For Bascio located in the parish of San Mauricio in Venice see ASV CIN, b. 62, notary Constantino de Constantini, parchment register, f. 9r–10r, dated July 19, 1436. 148 chapter seven was taken as a sign of divine favor. Coincidentally, it occurred at a time when the Venetian ship of state was equally blessed. For the battered vessel had sailed in the wake of a Venetian fleet that had just accomplished a major feat: the absorption of Dalmatia into the body politic of the Republic. Although long connected to Venice, the cities on the eastern Adriatic coast had had tumultuous relations with the lords of their hinterland, with the nearby major power, Hungary, and with various Italian powers. By the third quarter of the fourteenth century, Dalmatia had been all but lost to the republic. The Adriatic shoreline, which was vital for traffic with the Levant, fell into hostile hands for a long spell. At the turn of the fifteenth century, however, the commercial classes in the small Dalmatian polities drew increasingly closer to Venice. Aloof at the onset, the Serenissima had preferred to secure its hold of southern Greece and Albania first, ensuring a string of ports supporting its convoys’ entry into the Ionian and Aegean Seas. In the early 1400s, the Dalmatian adventure of Ladislav of Naples prepared the ground for a Venetian commitment. In 1409 the Republic purchased Zara from him, along with Pago, Aurana, and Novigrad. Ostroviza and Sibenik acknowledged Venetian supremacy in 1411 and 1412, respectively. The progress was interrupted by a short but bitter war with Emperor Sigismund, and by a five-year treaty that suspended Venetian expansion till 1418. When the truce expired in that year, Venice’s first task was to clear Friuli and Istria of imperial holdovers; this took its captains two years. In 1420, Dalmatia’s turn came. On May 12, an armada under Pietro Loredan set sail from Venice and made its way down the central and southern Dalmatian coast, forcing or receiving the submission of the local cities as it went. Loredan had stopped briefly in Zara to make sure his intentions were clear. The Hungarian garrison in Trogir (Traù) chose to resist and was quickly subdued. In June, Spalato, which had resumed its free government in 1413, submitted without opposition. In September and October Curzola and Brazza followed suit. Loredan win- tered on the coast, and in early March 1421 he continued south, accepting the submission of Lesina. In mid-March, he reached Cataro (Kotor), and was gladly received, the city having made its offer to surrender already in February of the preceding year. By late March 1421, all major Dalmatian ports from Istria to Albania were flying the banner of San Marco. Venice secured its hold of the eastern Adriatic for centuries to come.88 For all we

88 On the general political conditions in the Adriatic in the fifteenth century see Ber- nard Doumerc, “Il dominio del mare,” in Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, eds., Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Vol. IV. Il Rinascimento. Politica e cul- the miracle of paolo rabia 149 know, Giacomo Frumento’s ship and Paolo Rabia may have been among the first private witnesses to bring the good tidings home. Two circumstances come to bear on the issue of how much all of this might have been on the mind of the contemporaries and whether it might have been perceived as important enough to warrant the conjecture that the incorporation of Dalmatia provides another layer of associations for the miracle. As the episode with Francesco Rabia’s endowment of Corpus Domini suggests, he was apt to connect patriotic sentiment to divine intervention, but in this case there is more to it. The first is that Paolo’s journey is unlikely to have been the first one, and even if it were, the Rabia must have been familiar with the specifics of shipping goods on the lines to the East without the availability of the Dalmatian bases. The nearly three hundred or so commercial vessels that cleared Venice’s ports every year in the fifteenth century were mostly in the employ of commoners. The armed convoys of state galleys were mainly for patrician use. Commoners did ship goods on them, but their lading space was significantly smaller.89 Securing Dalmatia was a major step toward safer journeys of unarmed vessels, given the permanent threat of piracy along the coast, especially in the Gulf of Quarnaro, and the contemporary and no less dangerous operations of a Genoese corsair fleet under Giovanni Ambroggio Spinola. Second, two weeks after Paolo must have been safely back home to tell the tale, on April 25, Corpus Christi’s day, news reached Venice that Balsha, the Albanian potentate who had been a thorn in the side of the republic for a while, had just died. His territories, with Budua, Antivari, Dolzino, Andrievasto, and Alesio, rich in olive oil, wine, salt, and cattle, were immediately acquired by Venice. This development was pub- licized in the city and caused great celebrations in Dalmatia.90 The elite citizens vested in the international trade had thus been well cognizant of the developments in southern Dalmatia and Albania and had reasons to rejoice. Therein, perhaps, lie the core meanings of the miracle of the ship carrying Paolo home. The accounts are laconic and relate only the overall tura (Rome: Enciclopedia, 1996), 113–80 and idem, “L’Adriatique du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle,” in Pierre Cabanes, ed., Histoire de l’Adriatique, with a preface by Jacques le Goff (Paris: Seoul, 2001), 203–312. For a short summary of Loredan’s expedition in 1420–21, see Giuseppe Praga, History of Dalmatia (Pisa: Giardini, 1993), 145–7. 89 For private shipping in the beginning of the fifteenth century see Eleanor A. Congdon, “Private Venetian Ships and Shipping c. 1400,” Al-Masaq, 10 (1998), 57–71 and for its end, Claire Judde de Larivière, Naviguer, commercer, gouverner. Èconomie maritime et pouvoirs à Venise (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 90 Nanetti, Il Codice Morosini, vol. 2, 887–889. 150 chapter seven structure. There had been a good trip, then a sudden, dangerous storm, and, after a supplication, an even more sudden delivery from peril. The structural implication is of a short-lived problem swiftly resolved. Time being a contextual phenomenon, “short-lived” is a relative notion. On one level, a typological equivalency with the Rabia’s business is suggested. The family had good fortune in wool manufacturing and trade, in their ascendance at San Giovanni’s, and in their family connections, and they continued to enjoy the proceeds. Business-wise, the law of 1419 may have seemed like a dark cloud on the horizon, but there are no signs that it affected the Rabia economically. There had also been brushes with the law, but these had been weathered without serious consequences. It would be useful to know more about the Rabia private life in 1419–1420, but evidence is lacking. A circumstantial clue is Tomaso Rabia’s enrollment in San Giovanni’s. If the tradition to have sons join as soon as they reached the eligible age of 20 or 25 was preserved in his case, he may have been born precisely in that period. And if the reshuffling of the Rabia’s economic base by the government had been an unsettling shake-up, the future looked bright. In terms of their progressive rise in San Giovanni’s, the confraternity’s prestige, and the status of the next two generations of Rabia, that was certainly true. From a broader temporal perspective, another context applies, that of long-term political and economic developments. If the Rabia were representative of the entrepreneur-merchant elite of the cittadini class vested in the Levantine economy, the acquisition of Dalmatia, the last episode of the securing of the eastern Adriatic after the period of Hungarian dominance, fits just as well into the background of the miracle as do the fluctuations in the Rabia’s private fortunes in the years 1419–1421. Inserted in such social-political and economic realities, the miracle with Paolo Rabia acquires a very concrete meaning. It embodied the tenuous standing of the family, squeezed between pressures on the part of the patrician state upon which they had no control on one side and a fragile and politically- determined market infrastructure within which they earned their living on the other, suspended between a desire for a liberal market economy and the need for governmental support. It was a hard balance to maintain and the Rabia bore the brunt of the fluctuations which affected it. Too much intervention on the part of the state carried the potential to upset their business and consign them to economic and social oblivion. Too little support and they would perish as economic agents. Small wonder that the Rabia existed in a state of permanent anxiety that lead them to see, in any event that tipped the balance their way, the visible hand of the divine. Chapter Eight

The Merchant of Brescia: Incorporating the terraferma in the Miracle of the Son of Giacomo de Salis

As was the custom in Venice, on April 25, the feast day of San Marco, the brothers of San Giovanni Evangelista took the True Cross to the piazza, where, together with all of the city’s confraternities and other civic bod ies, they honored Venice’s patron saint with a solemn procession. It was a festive occasion and another opportunity to display the brotherhood’s precious relic in a setting that highlighted the Cross as an essential part of the republic’s treasury of blessings. The ritualized demonstrations of civic pride involved government and citizenry in a show of unity and cohesion under supernatural protection, and offered a grand spectacle to foreign visitors, from political dignitaries to men of affairs attending to business in the city. In the first decades of the fifteenth century, as the Cross proved its reputation time and again, the government had come to see it not just as a confraternal relic but as a communal possession, “our Cross,” as the Council of Ten put it in one of their rulings in regard to the custody of the relic. During the procession of 1443, among the crowd witnessing the cele brations was a citizen of Brescia, an honorable merchant of substantial means, by the name of Giacomo de Salis. Giacomo was much too upset to enjoy the spectacle and join in the festive mood. The night before, on the eve of the feast, he had received distressing news from back home. His young son, while running in the piazza della loggia in the newly recon structed civic centre, had collided with a corner of a stone balustrade and injured his head. The impact fractured his skull, from which pieces of bone had to be extracted. The grim news had shaken the unfortunate father. Seized by despair, he numbly attended to the festivities. That is, until the procession carrying the Cross reached him. Remembering the miracles he had heard talked about, he threw himself on his knees before the relic as it was paraded and prayed for his son’s recovery. Sure enough, on the next day the doctors attending to the boy lifted the poultice on his head and found the tissue underneath clean, sound, and healing. As soon as he found out about this, the relieved Giacomo relayed the news to the scuola’s guardian, Francesco di Argoiosi, and pledged to have his 152 chapter eight son come to the confraternity to thank the True Cross in person. Another grandissimo miracolo, worthy of the Cross’s growing dossier of interven tions on behalf of desperate supplicants, was recorded for posterity. Intriguingly, it was a miracle wrought on behalf of a foreigner. Thus far in its career, the relic had intervened only on behalf of Venetians and naturalized citizens, protecting their foreign counterparts in the process— possibly Vendramin’s sailors and the ship with Paolo Rabia—and would later protect from the fury of the Adriatic a native citizen travelling on a Candia-bound Cretan vessel. Giacomo, however, was a Brescian, and although he must have had Venetian citizenship de intus by default, he was still an outsider rather than a resident of the city. This enlargement of the relic’s field of action to cover a denizen of the terraferma, and not just any but a Brescian, came at a time when the republic was pushing its territorial expansion westward to its limits, and suggests that the inter vention on behalf of Giacomo was not accidental. By all indications, the miracle was part and parcel of Venice’s strategy of building its territorial domain and provides a range of insights into the complicated nature of the process in the 1440s. In the early 1440s, Brescia and its contado were a vital component of Venice’s territorial empire, but the connections between the Lombard city and the metropolis on the Adriatic coast went back centuries. Located about 160 miles due west from Venice, Brescia was crucial for the political and economic expansion of the city in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen turies. It sat astride the main commercial arteries linking Venetian trade to Milan and the Alpine passes to northwestern Europe. It was in control of a large, well-populated, and prosperous district, rich in metals, miner als, wool, agricultural products, and lumber from the Alpine valleys, all of great import for Venetian trade both at home and abroad, and critical for Venice’s lifeblood, the shipbuilding industry. As the republic tangled with the dukes of Milan in the early fifteenth century, Brescia increased in strategic importance, constituting the mightiest Venetian hold against the Milanese drive eastward. The Bresciano was a good market for the Venetian staple monopoly, salt, and furthermore provided a steady inflow of skilled immigrant labor. By the first quarter of the fifteenth century Brescian industrial products, especially the moderate-quality, adequately priced woolen fabrics, supplied a substantial segment of the Venetian woolens market and exports.1 In return, Brescians acquired a variety of

1 Conclusions of Andrea Mozzato, “Il mercato dei panni di lana a Venezia nel primo ventennio del XV secolo,” in Giovanni Fontana and Gérard Gayot, eds., Wool: Products the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 153 commodities from Venice. As the Venetian government began to extract an array of direct and indirect taxes on its subject territories, by the end of the fifteenth century the Bresciano alone provided about a quarter of the revenues the Serenissima derived from the terraferma. Small wonder Brescia was considered worth “almost a kingdom” to Venice, as a Venetian official later remarked, and the most precious jewel in the republic’s terri torial domain.2 Administering that domain presented the Venetian ruling class with opportunities for service that were indispensable for political careers back home, and afforded ecclesiastical benefices for noblemen and commoners alike. The benefits of close connection to, and later possession of, Brescia and the Bresciano was not lost on Venice, but the government on the lagoon treaded lightly in drawing the Lombard city into its areas of con trol. It was not until Brescia entered the era of the signori as a subject of Milan that separate commercial pacts were concluded with the city, the first in 1339. Even as the Venetian expansion was stepped up in the early 1400s, the Serenissima held back from taking over, preferring a loosely allied, friendly buffer regime to direct possession. That position encouraged stronger Milanese presence, which backfired, highlighting for the Brescians the drawbacks of the exacting and at times harsh Visconti regime in comparison to the benign policies of Venice. By the 1420s, as the Venetian-Milanese confrontation heated up, the Brescians made their choice. Under the leadership of a prominent noble, Pietro Avogadro, on October 26, 1426, 300 prominent Brescian citizens threw off the Visconti rule and swore fealty to the Venetian republic, receiving an array of con cessions in return. From that point on and for nearly a century afterwards, Brixia magnipotens established itself as Venice’s “most loyal city.” Bres cians remained faithful to the Serenissima, even during the turmoil of the second quarter of the fifteenth century. In 1438–1440 they passed a major test, resisting a debilitating Milanese onslaught that held the city under siege for two years. The heroic defense of Brescia under the leadership of its Venetian provveditore, the humanist Francesco Barbaro, became an

and Markets (13th–20th Century) (Padua: Cleup, 2004), 1035–66; and the Italian version “Il mercato dei panni di lana a Venezia nel primo ventennio del sec. XV,” Nuova Rivista Storica, 89/1 (2005), 165–202. 2 On the different aspects of the importance of the terraferma for fifteenth-century Venice see the survey of Gian Maria Varanini, “La Terraferma veneta nel Quattrocento e le tendenze recenti della storiographia,” in Guiseppe dell Torre and Alfredo Viggiano, eds., 1509–2009. L’ombra di Agnadello: Venezia e la terraferma (Venezia: Ateneo Veneto, 2010) (= Ateneo Veneto, third series, cxcvii, 9/1 (2010), 13–64. 154 chapter eight essential component of the city’s—and Venice’s—political ideology and brought about another round of concessions, conferred with Doge Fos cari’s new privilege of 1440. Venice held other cities on the terraferma, some for a much longer time, but in terms of practical benefits and sym bolic value none measured up to Brescia. If any of the Venetian territorial possessions deserved to be commended and held up as the benchmark for the proper political relationship informing the myth of Venice, it was Brescia. It is not a surprise, therefore, to see no other subject from Venice’s territorial domain but a Brescian citizen, in the person of Giacomo, hon ored by the intervention of the Cross. What the miracle accentuates is that Brescian loyalty and Venetian commitment were only tenuously present in the administrative structures and practical mechanisms of governance that Venice had put in place in the 1440s. In civic centers with a strong sense of local identity and long- standing economic, political, and cultural ties with other overlords, such as Brescia, mutual interests were the real foundation of the relationship, which could and often did experience serious tensions. It was an arrange ment fraught with shortcomings, a reflection of the need for flexibility in conditions of multiple agencies inherent in the annexed areas. As recent scholarship has demonstrated, the connective tissue of Venice’s territorial empire was embodied in metaphorical discourses—rituals, ceremonies, literary production, art, architecture, and religious symbolism—as much as it was expressed in economic dependence, military protection, social engineering, patronage ties on personal and group levels, and access to lower levels of the governance system. The miracle performed by the True Cross on behalf of Giacomo’s son articulated a reality embodying that metaphoric interaction, mapping out disparate, often contradictory dimensions of the Venetian imperial edifice and reducing frictions to weld them together into an ideological whole. As a lived actuality that took place on March 25, 1443, as a narrative(s) composed soon thereafter, and as a visual “cover” of the event, the miracle stands for a totality that sub sumed competing agencies under the Venetian myth. The event on piazza San Marco where Venice engaged Giacomo the Brescian through one of its cherished supernatural artifacts positioned the dialogue in which Venice and Brescia were engaged within the broad domain of the transcendental. Unlike the miracle of 1414, when Nicolo di Benvegnudo, who was a member of San Giovanni’s, only turned to the relic after other options failed, Giacomo, who may have been unaware of the thaumaturgical powers of the Cross, sought its intercession while the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 155 his son was still under medical attention.3 Perhaps he needed not have been so anxious. The news from back home was that the youngster had been treated, which in itself was already a good sign. Contemporary doc tors, surgeons and physicians alike, approached their cases with a very pragmatic attitude. If there were symptoms that the patient would not make it, they made their diagnosis clear and walked away. The line that the medical practitioners drew enabled them to insulate their profession from the domain of religion and operate unperturbed by suspicions that they were encroaching on the domain of God.4 It also allowed them to safeguard their reputations in situations where they could do nothing to save the patient. Late medieval and early Renaissance doctors knew the limitations of their profession; the field of cranial surgery was a major area where they treaded lightly. In medieval medical treatises, injuries to the head were detailed as distinct from all other bone fractures. Italian surgeons, such as Bruno da Langoburgo in 1252, echoed Galen’s observa tion that “fractures of the skull are different from other fractures, because when the bones of the cranium are disrupted, usually by violence, they will not fall back together” by themselves.5 As the famed Milanese surgeon Lanfranco (1250–1306) put it, the good surgeon would not get involved in hopeless cases. If a man is injured on the head, he wrote, “and if I see that the symptoms indicate a deadly outcome, I stay away.” He would return to treat the patient if the symptoms changed.6 The primary text book authority of the early Renaissance, Guy de Chauliac, while declar ing that he preferred to follow closely the time-tested practice of Galen, based his treatment on that of his compatriot, Henri de Mondeville, and operated or medicated in most circumstances. His reference to Galen’s

3 On medicine in Brescia during the period see the general overview in “Medici in Brescia” in Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, gen. ed., Storia di Brescia. Vol. 3. La dominazione veneta (1576–1797) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1964), 1026–61, and the extensive literature in Luigi Maione, ed., Gli statute del collegio medico chirurgico di Brescia, secoli XIV–XVIII. Edizione critica (Brescia: Universita degli Studi, 2000). 4 Giovanni Levi, L’eredita’ immateriale: carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del Seicento (Torino: Einaudi, 1985), Introduction. 5 Mario Tabanelli, The Surgery of Bruno da Langoburgo, An Italian Surgeon of the Thir- teenth Century, trans. by Leonard Rosenman (Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing, 2003), 30. Teodoric repeated this injunction, see Mario Tabanelli, La chirurgia italiana nell’alto medioevo. Ruggero–Rolando–Teodorico (Florence: Olschinski, 1965), 293. 6 Mario Tabanelli, ed., La chirurgia italiana nell’alto medioevo. Guglielmo–Lanfranco (Florence: Olschinski, 1965), 905. See also Robert von Fleischhacker, The Surgery of Lan- franchi of Milan, trans. Leonard Rosenman (Washington: Xlibris, 2003). His advice is echoed by Teodoric, see Tabanelli, La chirurgia italiana, Teodorico, 285. 156 chapter eight dictum that he is a bad captain whose carelessness loses his ship is indica tive of his positive approach and emphasis on the skill of the surgeon as the decisive factor.7 If that was the practice of the time, the news that Giacomo’s son had been operated on, and that the standard procedure of placing a dressing on the wound (usually linen cloth saturated in a mixture of rose oil and honey, or other antiseptics) had been followed, as it became known later, indicates that the case was not hopeless to begin with. Lanfranco was willing to operate on fractures as bad as that of the injured boy, and get involved as far as extricating bone fragments that had pierced the dura mater beneath the cranium, as long as he did not discern indications that the injury was of the deadly sort.8 In the absence of such dire indications, there was always hope, and it did not take long to see improvement. By April 26, the day the doctors lifted up the dressing on the boy’s skull to check the wound, it must have been several days since the trauma occurred. Surgeons advocated waiting a day or so before oper ating, although in cases of fragmented bone it was advisable to remove the pieces at once.9 Then, once placed, the dressing had to be allowed to work its effects for a day or two before being inspected and changed.10 Relaying the news to Giacomo should have taken a few more days as well. If the lesion had not been accompanied by complications, the time lag between injury and inspection, within which the supplication to the Cross occurred, would have been sufficient for the wound to begin heal ing. In medical terms, what mattered was the absence of inflammation. The rest was routine, and the case may have unfolded without numinous intervention. All the same, by the standards of contemporary medicine, Giacomo had reasons to worry. Apart from the natural emotional response of a father confronted with such news, all he knew on San Marco’s day was that his son had been so badly injured that broken bone had to be extracted from his fractured cranium. That latter part was particularly disconcerting.

7 Leonard D. Rosenman, trans., The Major Surgery of Guy de Chauliac, Surgeon and Master of Medicine of the University of Montpellier, Written in 1363, etc. (Washington: Xlibris, 2007), 315–28. 8 Tabanelli, ed., Lanfranco, 904. 9 Tabanelli, Bruno da Longoburgo, 32; and Ruggero in Tabanelli, La chirurgia italiana nell’alto medioevo, Ruggero, 28 who insisted on immediate removal in case the wound was not bleeding profusely. Teodoric, ibid., 294, adds that the extraction should be performed urgently to remove the causes of possible infection and allow whatever poisonous fluid had accumulated to be drained away or absorbed by the dressing. 10 Tabanelli, Bruno da Longoburgo, 34. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 157

As surgeons knew, bone particles separated from the cranium or depressed into the brain tissue through violent impact could perforate the upper membrane of dura mater or even the inner meningeal layer of pia mater. The outcome of such injuries was inflammation of the membranes and almost certain if not immediate death.11 It was a case of grave concern, even after the particles had been removed. Contemporary medicine had no efficient medications to counter brain infections, and even modern medical science experiences difficulties in treating acute cases. Small wonder Lanfranco writes that before beginning to operate, and even after reading the fracture and anticipating positive results, he called on God for assistance so that the Lord might work through his hand as with His own instrument and save those who otherwise would die.12 His approach is crucial for understanding the meaning of the miracle; more on this later. It can be argued therefore that it was logical for Giacomo to hedge his bets and appeal to whatever agent of the divine he happened upon, wher ever he happened to be at the time. On principle, however, his supplica tion to San Giovanni’s True Cross amounted to acknowledging Venetian supremacy in the domain of religion. It flew in the face of the well- established Brescian tradition of local civic religiosity. Since the miracle is a Venetian narrative, that is perhaps to be expected. Nonetheless, it suggests that the state of affairs of religion in Brescia at the time was not particularly conducive to efficacious action. And since it was Venice who dominated the field, it implied a practical failure of governance as much as it acknowledged authority on principle. To begin with, in 1443 there was no titular ecclesiastical authority in Brescia. The Serenissima had imposed its choice of bishop after the take over in 1426, but the incumbent of 1443, the Roman Francesco Marerio (1416–1442), left the city before the siege of 1438–1440, never to return to his see. The Venetian government had to approve the temporary measure of appointing four Brescians to manage the affairs of the bishopric. The Brescians lobbied for a native son to succeed Marerio. The Senate agreed, but the last word was with the pope, who appointed a Venetian, Pietro del

11 Tabenelli, Lanfranco, 903; idem, Ruggero–Rolando–Teodorico, 127 for Rolando of Parma’s opinion that perforation of pia mater led to death either in three-four days or at most at the first full moon when all humidity is drawn up by the moon which pulls up earthly humors that gather in the brain and infect the open wound. Teodoric, who is rarely original, concurred, see ibid., 285. 12 Tabenelli, Lanfranco, 908, 910; idem, Ruggero–Rolando–Teodorico, 27 for Ruggero’s opinion, who gave the patient so injured until the first full moon or hundred days maximum. 158 chapter eight

Monte (1442–1457), a long-time papal servant of cittadino origins. To the Brescians, the appointment of a commoner was an affront to the honor of their city. Wary of the Brescian resentment, del Monte bided his time tak ing over the bishopric and, after a tumultuous entry in 1445 and the quick alienation of the influential citizen association of the lay confraternity of San Domenic and the Consortium of Santo Spirito, which he attempted to dominate, did not set foot in Brescia again, preferring to govern from afar.13 Protesting the appointment of del Monte may have been precisely the issue that brought Giacomo de Salis to Venice, because in March 1443 the Senate heard a Brescian complaint on the appointment and responded that the choice had been with the pope and the government would pre fer not to irk the pontiff.14 Bellini’s depiction of the scene of the miracle, were it not so late, would have provided another clue about the official reasoning behind Giacomo’s presence in the capital, for he had Giacomo dressed in the red ceremonial garb of a Venetian senator (and Brescian Great Council member). The problematic predicament of the Brescian status quo, reconciling acknowledgement of religious authority with the reluctant acceptance of the men and institutions that embodied it, was amplified by the state of the regular clergy in the city. Studded with monastic establishments, Bres cia of the 1440s witnessed mounting pressure for reform, resulting from a variety of failures on the part of the regulars. Itinerant preachers and civic authorities stepped in for deficient episcopal supervision, castigated the religious, particularly the members of the mendicant orders, and pressed for stricter observance. The drive for reform had begun in the 1420s and intensified during the papacy of the Venetian pontiff Eugene IV (1431–1446), during the era of the strongest reformist spirit of pre-Tridentine Catholi cism. In the 1440s, the Brescian city council, supported by the Venetian

13 This is contrary to the assertions of the local history authority, Helia Capriolo, who claims that del Monte was a fine man and was accepted with great joy when he entered the city, see Helia Capriolo, Delle Historie Bresciane Libri Dodeci (Brescia: Marchatti, 1585), 222. For del Monte’s attempt to put the lay confraternity of San Domenic and the Consor tium of Santo Spirito of the Dom under his direct authority see Franco Robecchi, Spedali civili in Brescia. Mezzo millenio de carita’ e di assitenza sanitaria, vol. 1 (Brescia: Ediment, 2000), 76sq. 14 ASV Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra, Reg. 1, f. 88r, March 2, 1443. The Senate did not discuss any other Brescia-related business after that throughout the spring. On the other hand, Brescian cloth merchants were ubiquitous in the capital; one of them, Bertolus de Coradelis, was in Venice on July 16, 1443, when he arranged for other Brescians to represent him in the city after his departure, ASV CIN, b. 149, notary Vettor Pumino, paper register 1443–1445, no foliation, at date. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 159 authorities, advanced the campaign against the religious laxity. Perhaps more than any other time period, the decade that followed was punctu ated by constant reminders that institutionalized religion in the city was lacking in faith and that the clergy was in urgent need of improvement. In 1440, the council issued strong rebukes to the Dominican friars of San Barnabà and the nuns of Santa Chiara. The nuns were admonished to turn to observance to avert bringing down on the city the wrath of God. In 1446 the council ruled against the Carmelites and again against the Benedic tines at San Cosmas. In 1447 it legislated against the Umiliati, and in 1449 repeated its injunctions against the Carmelites. For a city of about 16,000 souls, as the Venetian Senate lamented in 1440, seventy churches and fifty monasteries were more of a burden than a blessing. The overall impres sion, strengthened by the fulminations of Franciscan preachers such as Bernardino da Siena in 1422, in the beginning of the reformist drive, and Alberto da Sarteano in the mid-1440s, is that of an institutionally overbur dened establishment lacking the true foundation of religion, faith, and piety, and given over to vice.15 The situation invited anxiety over possible retribution from on high, a danger explicitly noted in the city council’s reproach of the denizens of Santa Chiara’s, likely generated doubts about the value of the local clergy’s supplication of the divine, and indicated a disturbing spiritual void in the city. Such a sad condition would not have been reassuring for those seek ing spiritual assistance from Brescian sacred entities in the early 1440s. In Giacomo’s case, even the revered repositories of the numinous, the city’s sacred relics, were not adequate to his predicament. Brescia’s patron saints, Faustino and Giovita, were civic and military leaders of the second century; they were not viewed as thaumaturgical figures, at least at the time of the miracle. Their most notable appearance in modern times had been in December 1438 during the siege of Brescia when, dressed in full battle array, they appeared on a city tower to bolster the spirits of the defenders. But their remains were not uncovered and properly exposed until 1455. Only after the translation of their relics, in which Giacomo was instrumental, did they confirm their authenticity with two healing interventions, one on a young boy.16 The saints’ first manifestation, the

15 Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, gen. ed., Storia di Brescia, vol. 2 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1961), 399–408 and Stephen D. Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia (Cambridge, Mass., and London: England: Harvard University Press, 2010), 112–13. 16 The two miracles of the Brescian saints are recorded in a late fifteenth-century collec tion from the monastery of San Faustino, Letture per l’officiatura di santi martiri bresciani, 160 chapter eight healing of Abbot Bernardo Marcello, a Venetian, suggests that Brescians sought theological expressions that underscored their part in the relation ship with the capital. The relics of the thirty-two sainted Brescian bishops, their successors, became available for direct supplication even later in the century. Furthermore, during the Malatesta, Scaligeri, and Visconti rule most Brescians did not have access to their two cathedrals, the city’s chief repositories of relics, as they were surrounded by the walls of the citadel. Once Venice took over, the Brescians requested admittance to the cathe drals for all, arguing that that would also help reunite the citizen body and cut down on territorial factionalism. The request was turned down for the time being, likely for military reasons, but the denial of access meant fewer people could benefit from the proximity to grace offered by the relics.17 For those looking for a more potent and universal healing power beyond local figures, there were the two holy crosses, a Lombard cross of the field, and a counterpart of San Giovanni’s relic, another fragment of the True Cross. Both, however, even though they routinely dispensed cures to faithful souls who sought their intercession, tended toward a spe cialty in averting bad weather and keeping the city free from harm in general. The trend to limit the crosses in such a way existed from early on and intensified after the Venetian takeover, when the relics were encased in a tabernacle, a special chapel was dedicated to them, and annual pro cessions were instituted. Brescia of the early 1440s was therefore a civic body struggling to put in order its ecclesiastical house, its leadership and its institutions, and to enhance the efficacy of the charisma-carrying vessels of devotion that united its citizenry. The persistence of the authorities in issuing reform injunctions, by their very forcefulness, highlighted the dire condition of piety in the city. The reform drive also underscores in a compelling way the separation between formalized institutions and proper, faith-based spirituality that was supposed to provide them with authority. This latter

Brescia, Biblioteca Queriniana, MS C.VII.29, ff. 31r–33r, at 33r. The saints cured Abbot Ber nardo Marcello, a Venetian much devoted to their cult, and a citizen’s ailing son. I would like to thank Stephen Bowd for bringing this work to my attention. See also Antonio Niero, “Culto dei santi militari nel veneto,” in Armi e cultura nel bresciano, 1420–1870 (Brescia: Ateneo di Brescia, 1981), 225–72. 17 Agostino Zanelli, Delle condizioni interne a Brescia dal 1426 a 1644 e del moto della borghesia contro la nobilta (Brescia: Tipografia Editrice, 1898), 72–3; the request was made in 1426. See also Giammaria Mazzuchelli, Raccolta di Privilegi, ducali, giudici, termonazioni e decreti publici . . . concernenti la città di Brescia (Brescia, 1732), and Danielle Montanari, Quelle terre di là di Mincio: Brescia e il contado in età Veneta (Brescia: Grafo, 2005), 187sq; and now Stephen Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City, 87. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 161 dichotomy can be reduced to a general discrepancy between form and content, in this case institutionalized authority lacking true devoutness. It is the major thread running through the complicated web of Venetian- Brescian entanglement. The lack or void of spiritualism afflicting the Brescian religious estab lishment may well have conditioned Giacomo’s state of mind. Deprived of spiritual support, he wandered around the festive square depressed and with a heavy heart, molto melincolico e pien di afano as the incunabulum put it. He had reasons to worry—his son’s survival was at stake—but the definition of his mental state as melancholy puts the incident in a context that departs from the purely emotional and psychological stress Giacomo was under at the moment. Melancholy was an ancient condition, and its etiologies, medical and nonmedical, had long been a subject of extensive, steadily evolving discourse. Medically, melancholy was expounded within the humoral theory. It resulted from an excess of black bile, a humor that was to play an important role in the next miracle of the 1440s, the healing of Piero di Lodovico. Black bile itself was associated with one of the four primary elements, earth, and displayed its propensities of coldness and dryness. The Brescian, a quintessential terraferma dweller, in the middle of San Marco was a subtle embodiment of an overabundance of earth at the fulcrum of Venice’s watery world, suggesting disorder in the finely balanced Venetian body politic. Excessive bile could result from a vari ety of causes, among them the physical workings of the body, celestial influences, or intervention of diabolic agents. In the fifteenth century, the still fundamentally physiological etiology of melancholy shifted towards causality grounded in emotional and psychological factors. As the con temporary authority, Marsiglio Ficino, explained in detail, melancholy was commonly caused by agitation of the mind. It dried up the brain and extinguished its heat. The brain became dry and cold, resulting in a melancholic state. Any severe psychological pressure could trigger the process; grief counted high on the list. In general, melancholy involved states of fear and sadness, a sense of futility and, significantly, despair.18 The latter matters in our case, since the link between melancholy and

18 This summary is indebted to Jennifer Radden, ed., The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Introduction. For Marsiglio Ficino’s etiology of melancholy see ibid., excerpt from his Three Books of Life. The main work on melancholy is still Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofski, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (New York: Kraus Reprints, 1979). 162 chapter eight despair was a leap into the domain of theology, and a dangerous one at that. In the theological framework within which the miracle operated, despair suggested loss of hope in deliverance and, ultimately, salvation. Despair put a person outside God’s mercy. Melancholy thus bordered on sin and lack of faith, since it doubted or denied God’s omnipotent and unlimited agency. As later theory would put it, melancholy as despair was an affectation of the soul that separated it from the body and consigned either one, or both, to perdition. Unlike other miracles in the cycle, here the narratives avoid defining the actor’s state as despair.19 Milder, more complex, and perhaps more fitting to the underlying anxieties informing the miracle, the category of melancholy was evidently more discursively pertinent. A distressed mind unable to connect to the outpour of public piety in the middle of San Marco, on the saint’s feast day, surrounded by ceremonial processions, suggested a perturbed soul and a momentary lapse of piety rather than deviation and deficiency of faith. It was thus easier for the True Cross, once supplicated, to remedy the situation by healing the boy and subsequently alleviating the grief, sadness, fear, and, most importantly, despair of the father. The Venetian relic repaired the disconnect between outer and inner, between institutionalized author ity and the personal crisis plaguing the Brescian merchant. What the Brescian authorities were trying to do by administrative injunctions, to infuse their religion with piety, the Cross of San Giovanni accomplished through efficacious action. The surgeons attempted to return the young patient to physical health by extracting bone fragments from his head; the Cross tended to the spiritual health of the boy’s father, removing fear from his heart. There are reasons to think that the injury, the condition it triggered, and the successive intervention of human and divine agents have deep-running social and political associations. The man whom the Cross honored was worthy of the attention. Giacomo de Salis was no ordinary citizen. He belonged to an established Brescian family residing in the quarter of San Faustino. The de Salis were urban notables, most likely an offshoot of a noble family that throughout the Middle Ages had been involved in most events that shaped Brescian local history and political orientation.20 The Brescian political elite of

19 On despair, I follow Susan Snyder, “The Left Hand of God: Despair in Medieval and Renaissance Tradition,” Studies in the Renaissance, 12 (1965), 18–59. 20 Angelo Baronio, “Una famiglia capitaneale bresciana: I ‘de Salis’ signori fondiari e protagonsti della politica communale cittadina,” in Giovanni Archetti, ed., Famiglie di Franciacorte nel Medioevo (Brescia: Centro Artistico Culturale, 2000), 83–137. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 163 the first half of the fifteenth century was not yet a clear-cut and closed group, but the de Salis were officially acknowledged as urban nobility.21 The ranking family member at the time of the miracle was Pietro de Salis, Giacomo’s father. Pietro was a member of Brescia’s great council and sat regularly on its special or executive council. In 1437 he was elected one of its two ragionators, a two-year position that dealt with matters of financial oversight.22 The clan had other members on the council, Pietro’s cousins Galeotto and Guilielmo, but he was foremost in his civic commitment. In 1438 he was on the small body appointed for the biannual revision of the council.23 Besides strong local roots, his career might have been bolstered by Brescia’s alignment with Venice. When the Serenissima’s troops had appeared on the horizon back in the 1420s, Pietro had been among Ven ice’s strongest partisans. He was instrumental in the defense of the city in the long Venetian-Milanese confrontation of the 1420s–1440s, and espe cially during the siege of 1438–1440. In May 1438 he was one of the Magis- tri della Guerra and he did his part by arming soldiers and paying laborers on the city fortifications out of his own pocket and representing the city to the Venetian authorities.24 In 1440, with the siege over, he joined the Brescian delegation that came to Venice to renew the city’s allegiance and request and receive the new set of privileges.25 Later that year, Pietro served as Brescia’s provveditore for the community of Riviera del Garda.26 Pietro was also socially and devotionally committed. Since the 1430s he had been a member of one of the largest and most influential Brescian lay confraternities, the Congregation of the Lay Brothers of San Dominic and the Consortium of the Santo Spirito. The association had been providing aid to old and sick persons and was later responsible for the building of the Ospedale Maggiore, Brescia’s exemplary medical facility.27

21 Although official records sometimes refer to Pietro de Salis, Giacomo’s father, with the title dominus, sometimes without it, he is explicitly marked as a noble in a provision of the Brescian special or executive council, ASC Brescia, b. 489, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 14v, February 15, 1438. 22 ASC Brescia, Provvisioni del Consiglio, b. 488, f. 1v, December 31, 1437. 23 ASC Brescia, b. 489, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 14v. 24 ASC Brescia, b. 489, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 25, April 1438; f. 39r, May 7, 1438; f. 129r, November 17, 1438. 25 ASC Brescia, b. 491, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 22r, and Montanari, Quelle terre di là di Mincio, 187. 26 Roberto Predelli, I libri commemoriali dela Republica di Venezia. Regesti. Vol. 4 (Mon- umenti Storici Publicati dalla Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria. Seria Prima, Documenti. Vol. 8) (Venice, 1896), 240. 27 On the origins of the confraternity and the hospital see Robecchi, Spedali civili in Brescia, 1, 9–168. Pietro and his cousin Galeotto joined in 1436; Galetto served until his 164 chapter eight

Giacomo, identified as Pietro’s son in several provisions of the city’s executive council, was just as active in civic affairs as his father Pietro and his relatives Galeotto, Marsiglio, and Gaspare.28 He appears on the special council in 1440 and, like Pietro, his uncle Galeotto, and his unidentified relative Guilielmo, he sat regularly on its sessions.29 After that, in keeping with the rule of one member of a family on the council, Giacomo repre sented the family when his father was unable to attend. Giacomo must have been at least 30 years old when he made his first appearance to meet the age qualification but was likely not yet the head of a separate house hold, for he had to alternate with Pietro on the special council. In the years of the siege he was involved in military tasks such as erecting forti fications, collecting war materiel, defending the citadel, billeting Venetian troops, and serving as registrator for the council.30 After the siege, he is well documented in the council’s proceedings in the years leading up to the miracle, and the record allows for some conjectures. In 1440 when his father was away as envoy and then as podestà, Giacomo took his father’s place in representing the family.31 In 1441, he was constantly on the council’s committees and occasionally took responsibility for his quadra. Pietro did not attend the entire year and only appeared on December 7; in his absence Giacomo and his brother Obertino represented the family.

death some time between 1454 and 1459 but Pietro had to leave in 1440 to take up other duties. For the roster on which the de Salis cousins appear see ASC Brescia, Ospedale Maggiore di Brescia, Provvigioni, Liber 1412–1440, f. 67r. Several of the members are listed as dominus or magister, Petro and Galeotto do not have such designations. Galeottto was son of Marco, ASC Brescia, Ospedale Maggiore, Liber 1451–1454, f. 93v. For Pietro’s leaving see ibid., Liber 1446, f. 33r. 28 The first reference is in ASC Brescia, b. 492, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 20r, January 31, 1442. Another one is idem, b. 493, Provvisioni del Consiglio, fol. 6v, January 11, 1444, and there several more right up to the last time Jacopo is mentioned on the council. Marsilio appears in February 1445, ibid., f. 103v, 105r, etc. 29 ASC Brescia, b. 491, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 17v, March 17, 1440, is Jacopo’s first appearance, under “Jacob. de Salis q. d. Petri.” The Council’s records are not always record ing Pietro’s and Giacomo’s status. In many of the lists the members of the acknowledged nobility, such as Gambaro, Soldo, etc., are preceded by the title dominus, while the rest of the councilmen are not so designated, see for example ASC, b. 492, f. 24r. On other lists, all of the attendees are preceded by dominus. Such a usage suggests a subtle distinguishing between the territorial, titled nobility and the city patricians, which was nevertheless not always indicated in official documents. 30 ASC Brescia, b. 489, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 65r–v, 74v, 83v, 104v, 121r, 147v, 223r. 31 ASC Brescia, b. 492, Provvisioni del Consiglio, taking responsibility for the quadra, f. 41r, f. 74v, and b. 491, f. 103r, December 1, 1440, for Giacomo’s explicitly noted as “sub stitute” for his father who as provveditore was away and unable to attend. Giacomo and Obertino are identified as brothers and Pietro’s sons in ASC, b. 496, f. 109r, June 11, 1453. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 165

In 1442, a year when Pietro attended regularly, Giacomo’s presence was minimal. He appeared for the first time on January 31, as a substitute for his father, who was elected but for some reason could not attend. After that he appears three more times, each time when his father was not attending, covering the family’s ground on the council.32 The records for 1443 are missing, but there is no doubt that the family continued to serve. Pietro disappeared in the last two months of 1442, and then after March 1444, which may indicate either his passing away or his absence from active civic duties. In the following years, 1444–1446, Giacomo appears on almost every committee for such occasions and served in the elected office of rationator as his father had been almost a decade earlier along side the other two ad-hoc committee officials, the computabile and the gonfalonier.33 He must have been on his own soon after 1442, since at times he appeared alongside Pietro. Occasionally, he disappeared for sev eral months in a row, as he did in 1452. On May 30, 1457 his name came up at the elections for the podestaria of Palazzolo, one of the smaller Bres cian dependencies, but he declined.34 His last appearance on the special council is on November 7, 1457. There are reasons to think he must have died shortly thereafter.35 Pietro and Giacomo managed to accomplish all this service with rela tively modest financial circumstances. In the absence of direct evidence for their professional activities, the clues come from the Brescian estimos, or tax assessments. The assessment cannot serve as indication of gross wealth but they do shed light on the de Salis’ conditions over time and vis-à-vis their contemporaries. Pietro de Salis’ household was located in the second quadra of the neighborhood of San Faustino and Giacomo was part of it at least until 1442.36 Computed as they were with a coefficient of

32 ASC Brescia, b. 492, Provisioni del Consiglio, f. 20r for January 31, 1442: Pietro de Salis is recorded, then stricken through, and a note is added to the right, “Giacomo de Salis, his son, instead.” Giacomo appears also on f. 88r, May 4, 1442; f. 110v, July 20, 1442; and f. 148v, December 7, 1442. 33 ASC Brescia, b. 493, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 21r and f. 24r from March 24, 1444, for Pietro de Salis’ last appearance; the same record includes Galeotto de Salis, who begins to make regular appearances from then on, ibid., f. 26r, 28v, 29r–v, 30r–v, 32r, etc. Giacomo is invariably rationator, see for example, ibid., f. 115r for May 7, 1445 where he is listed alongside the other committee officials. 34 ASC Brescia, b. 497, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 21v, May 30, 1457. 35 ASC Brescia, b. 497, Provvisioni del Consiglio, f. 48v, November 7, 1457. 36 The earliest description of the quadra is by Giovanni da Lezze, Il catastico bresciano di Giovanni da Lezze (1609–1610) (Brescia: Apolonia, 1969), 236–238. The quarter featured c. 1820 souls at the time, of them 420 adults, and spanned two parishes, San Faustino and San Georgio. Later estimos locate a certain Giacomo (Jacopo) de Salis, notary, first in 166 chapter eight

28 lire planete (worth two Venetian lire) and not really capturing wealth proportionately, the assessments offer a very vague sense of the family fortune.37 Pietro de Salis, son of Giacomo, figures in the estimo of 1416 as a resident of the second quadra, assessed at one soldo, one and ¼ denarii, and one terzo.38 This indicates a household on solid footing, especially given that Pietro’s likely father Giacomo, a merchant of moderate means, was assessed at one soldo and one terzo. Pietro continued to reside in the same second quadra and was assessed at much less, at nine denarii and three terzi in 1430. In 1434, his tax estimate was one of the highest in the neighborhood, at eleven denarii and one terzo.39 In the estimo of 1442, at nine denarii and two terzi he was still among the highest payers. The list records two other members of the family, Marsiglio and Galeotto, Pietro’s cousins.40 Throughout the period, Pietro was assessed at a rate that would put him in the upper middle segment of the quarter’s residents. Pietro is not on the estimo of 1459, but the census lists certain Obertino, his son, as well as Marco and Salarino as his brothers and heirs, as well as the heirs of Giacomo, son of Pietro de Salis, all recorded in the same second quadra of San Faustino.41 Both Pietro and Giacomo had therefore passed away before 1459. Galeotto does not figure in that estimo and Marsiglio is listed the citadel and then in the third quadra of San Faustino; he is clearly not identical with Giacomo of the miracle but may have been a relation as well. The name does not appear in the list of Brescian notaries, but the list is incomplete. He is still listed in the third quadra, assessed at one denarius and two terzi in the estimo of 1459, where Jacopo and Pietro are not listed and their heirs are assessed. 37 On Brescian tax practices see Andrea Apostoli, “Scelte fiscali a Brescia all’inizio del periodo veneto,” in Patrizia Mainoni, Politiche finanziarie e fiscali nell’Italia settentrionale (secoli XIII–XV), (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), 345–407. I would to thank Dr. Fererico Bauce, who is currently preparing a substantial study on Brescia, for bringing Apostoli’s work to my attention, explaining the meaning of rovenzarolus, as well as kindly sharing with me several bits and pieces of his extensive expertise on Brescia in the Venetian period that allowed me to locate further information about Giacomo de Salis. 38 ASC Brescia, b. 434/2, estimo of 1416, f. 72r, “Jacobus de Salis, ronenzarolus;” f. 83r, “Pietro de Jacobi de Salis.” The estimo of 1416, records Giacomo de Salis, rovenzarolus or retail vendor, in the first quadra of San Faustino, to the west of the fortress and north of the future new civic center, the piazza della loggia, and records the tax on his worth at one soldo and three denarii. It is not clear whether that person was Pietro’s father, since the occupational definition does not really fit the de Salis status. On the other hand, Pietro’s father was named Giacomo, and his son was Giacomo too, so the father-son connection cannot be ruled out. The older Giacomo does not figure in the subsequent estimos of 1430 and 1434 and must have passed away before 1430. 39 ASC Brescia, b. 444, f. 2r for the estimo of 1430, fol. 48r for the estimo for 1438. 40 ASC Brescia, b. 444, f. 95v for Pietro and Marsilio; fol. 96r for “Jacobus de Salis, notaio,” in the third quadra of San Faustino; f. 103r for Galeotto de Salis, assessed at 0-4-0. 41 Obertino is identified as a son of Pietro de Salis in ASC, Ospedale Maggiore, Liber Primus, 1459–1471, f. 4r of May 14, 1459. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 167 among the heirs of Bonagerious de Nigolinis, assessed at one soldo, two denarii, and two terzi.42 None of the preserved estimos identify Giacomo of the miracle as the head of a separate household, which indicates that if he had separated from his father he did it between the estimos of 1442 and 1459, and thus there is no evidence as to his relative worth. The estimo of 1459, which does not identify his heirs by name and is closest to Giacomo’s death, sets their tax at three denarii and three terzi, relatively low. That of 1469, which gives their names, Augustino and Geronimo, indicates simi lar gross worth, taxed at three denarii and two terzi. In 1475 they were assessed again at three denarii and three terzi.43 Another family member, Filippo de Salis, who may have been Giacomo’s oldest son and lived with his brothers in 1459 but was on his own in 1469, was assessed at only two terzi; he was better off in 1475, when his tax was one denarius and three terzi, but that included the worth of his nephew Giovita as well.44 Giacomo’s will and those of his descendants appear to have been lost, except that of Geronimo, dated 1494. His circumstances appear to have been in the same range.45 In sum, in terms of economic background, for four generations Giacomo’s family featured in the upper middle segment of their peers in the quadra and in comparison with the rest of the clan. In terms of rank, status, occupation and affinities, they were the Brescian equivalent of the Venetian elite cittadini. They did indeed have some decision-making power in the city and its contado, but exercised it under the supervision and direction of the Venetian patrician magistrates as the cittadini in the capital did. They qualified as urban nobility, but did not have the rank of the titled territorial aristocracy. The council’s records regularly eschewed the title dominus for the Brescian urban patriciate, the de Salis included, when it listed titled nobility alongside them. They were involved in the major confraternal organization dealing with social services. From the point of view of an elite Venetian commoner, their nobility was of a kind

42 ASC Brescia, b. 445, estimo of 1459: f. 2, the second quadra of San Faustino, for Ober tino, Marco, and Salarino, as well as the heirs of Jacopo; f. 2v for Marsiglio and Jacopo de Salis, notary. 43 ASC Brescia, b. 445, Estimos of 1459, 1469, and 1475: (foliation by Roman numerals) f. IIr for 1459, and for 1469; f. IIIv for 1475. 44 ASC Brescia, b. 445, f. II for 1469, and f. IIIv for 1475. Only one de Salis, Marsiglio, managed better, with assessment in 1475 of one soldo, six denarii, and three terzi, ibid., but he had had an inheritance from his wife’s side already in 1459, when his assessment was one soldo, two denarii, and two terzi. 45 ASC Brescia, Notai di Brescia, Vincenzo Aquagni, filza 142, August 16, 1494. I would like to thank Federigo Bauce for bringing the will to my attention. 168 chapter eight with the cittadini’s designation as a “noble order” that became current by the end of the century. Given Giacomo’s involvement in the city councils, the frequency of his attendance may suggest periods of his presence in Brescia and, con versely, absences from the city. In 1441, for example, he disappeared in early April and returned on May 10. After a few sessions, he left in late May and returned on June 16. Then there is long absence during the summer months, with Giacomo not on the committees between early July and September 29. In 1444, he appears in January, and then in May through September. The spring absences may well be explained with busi ness travel precisely at the time that the miracle of 1443 records him as present in Venice.46 He may have been in Venice before 1443, and pre cisely in April, but the evidence is inconclusive.47 The cessation of hostili ties between Milan and Venice in the early 1440s was conducive to travel, as were the privileges granted in 1440. With the ducale of April 9, Brescian merchants received exemption from all dues, customs, and personal pay ments, as were other terraferma subjects of the republic; the right to freely buy, sell, contract, and traffic in a number of commodities, specifically woolens, as if they were produced in Venice; and the right to a seat in Venice where to reside and store their merchandise while on business there. Exactly with what Giacomo dealt as a merchant is unclear, but the woolens market is a fair conjecture. Brescian cloth was much sought after in Venice, and at least two de Salis, one of whom was Filippo de Salis, Giacomo’s close relative if not presumed son, were vested in the com merce with wool and woolens already during Giacomo’s lifetime.48

46 In the winter Giacomo appears on January 30, 1444, ASC Brescia, b. 493, Provvisioni, f. 11v–12r, and then again on May 29, ibid., f. 44r, and from June 22 is on almost every pro vision of the Council through October 26, see for example fol. 48r–v, f. 50v, 51r, 52r, 53r–v, 57r, 58r, 60v, 62r–v, 63r–v, 65v, 67v, 69r, 70r–v, 72r, 79v, 84r. After a few months hiatus, he reappears on December 1, ibid., f. 88r–v, and continues to serve through January of the following years, ibid., f. 97r, f. 98r–v, 100r, 101r, etc. 47 On April 19, 1433, three Brescians, namely Giovanin Averoldo, a man from Iseo, and a certain Giacomo [Jacopo] “de Cali de Brixia,” mentioned twice, made a deal for woolen cloth with a Venetian draper, ASV CIN, b. 214, f. 63r, Paper register, notary Odorico Tabar ini. The name “de Cali” does not identify a known Brescian family of note, and Giacomo must have been such a person since his company were urban and titled nobility; also the first letter of Giacomo’s family name is written in a way that allows for reading as “s.” Then again, the final “s” of the patronym is missing. 48 ASB Cancelleria Pretoria, Atti, Reg. 13, no foliation, August 13, 1458 for Filippo de Salis importing wool from Venice; Guilielmo de Salis traded in woolen cloth in the 1430s and 1440s, ASB Notai, filza 35, f. 46r, March 3, 1431, notary Lanfranco Calzavacche and filza 97, act of 1449, notary Francesco Aquagni. I owe the references to Dr. Bauce and I would like the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 169

Giacomo’s civic commitments in Brescia, business interests, and Vene tian connections may have made him an excellent choice for the interven tion of the Cross. An embodiment of the fusion of civic virtue and practical piety, he exemplified one of the main Brescian preoccupations. His piety must have had a somewhat learned ring to it as well, if the names of his sons, Geronimo and Augustino, the two great figures of Church history prominent for their intellectual legacies, are any clue. Following the epi sode with the miracle, Giacomo’s encounter with and favorable treatment by the divine power present in San Giovanni’s relic likely fortified his rep utation in Brescia as a man qualified to handle numinous artifacts. On November 18, 1455, the city council elected him, along with thirteen other citizens, to a committee that was to assist Bishop del Monte’s vicar and the abbot of the monastery of San Faustino in the matter of examining, transferring, and arranging properly for the relics of San Faustino and San Giovita, after their bodies were discovered by accident in the church of San Faustino Maggiore.49 The work of the committee opened the process of actively asserting the importance of local charisma—in the persons of its sainted bishops—in Brescia’s image as a sacred community. Signifi cantly, however, the conclusion of the ceremonies around the arrange ments made for the city’s two chief patron saints included a procession in the square of the duomo where an offering was made in the presence of the Brescian relic of the True Cross, at which the committee, other citizens, and the Venetian rectors were present.50 Giacomo’s devout com mitments stand in contrast to his marked absence from the association dedicated to providing medical assistance to ailing and indigent Brescians, the confraternity of the Congregation of San Dominic and the Consortium of Santo Spirito, where his father had been a member for a while and where his uncle Galeotto served until his death. Giacomo only joined the association in 1457.51 Since he does not appear on the city Council after

to use the occasion to thank him. Filippo is attested by Venetian sources. On July 5, 1442, he brought an unspecified quantity of Brescian cloths to Venice and authorized a Vene tian, Giovanni Gualsceno, to sell them, ASV CIN, b. 149, notary Vettor Pomino, parchment register 1439–1442, no foliation, at date. 49 ASC Brescia, b. 497, f. 81r, and further on f. 86r–v and 88r. I owe this reference to Ste phen Bowd (private correspondence from May 25, 2011), and I use the occasion to express my gratitude. 50 Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City, 93–4. 51 He is listed in a later addition of twelve men to the confraternal roster of 1446, added on an unspecified day of 1457, ASC Ospedale Maggiore, Liber 1446, marked as “Jacobus qd. d. Petri de Salis,” and there is a cross before and after his name, which indicates he had passed away as well, but the insertion of the crosses cannot be dated. 170 chapter eight

1457, and only his heirs are on the estimo of 1459, he must have joined the association just before passing away that same year.52 Obertino, his brother, joined in 1459 and his tenure too must have been short. One is tempted to conclude that the miracle with Giacomo’s son shook his trust in the medical profession and intensified his pious convictions. Giacomo was therefore a figure associated with the task of resolving the disconnect plaguing the Brescian religious establishment. Given that background, and Giacomo’s (and his family’s) involvement with Venice, it is logical to ask whether the bizarre accident and the intervention of San Giovanni’s Cross did not address the presence of a similar conceptual tension between outer and inner, structural edifice and genuine commit ment, in the political and symbolic field of Brescia’s incorporation into the Venetian state. The narrative logic of the accounts and a variety of clues on Brescian sentiments about Venice in the 1440s warrant such an interpretation. In metaphoric terms the episode can be read as an allegory of the Brescian condition of the immediate past, the siege of 1438–1440 and its outcome. The city of Brescia, the head and most important part of the young body of additions to the Venetian dominion, had been afflicted by the debilitating siege of 1438–1440. The violent impact of the war had been a grave injury to that body; its heavily damaged head was in need of inter vention for realignment and healing. The concessions granted in 1440 did just that, assuring the Brescians of a recovery that they could not accom plish by themselves. The traumatic experiences of the war and the siege were fresh in 1443, and continued to reverberate through the Brescian and Venetian political mythology for decades and even centuries later. The miracle plots a sequence of symbolic associations that mirror the struc tural developments through which Brescia went during the years of the war, and forcefully asserts the decisive role of Venice, here embodied in the Cross’ intervention. The representation of the Brescian-Venetian engage ment as a son-parent relationship, frequently employed in contemporary political discourse, reinforces such a figural reading.53 The danger pro voked anxiety, but not despair. The Brescians kept fighting while calling for help from outside. Succor eventually came. Venetian troops helped

52 The Council’s provisions of 1458 do not list him any longer; a Giovanni de Salis, always referred to as dominus and advocatus, took over as regular on the committees, see ASC Brescia, b. 498, Provvisioni di Consiglio, f. 1r, January 5, 1458, and passim. Two other de Salis, Marsiglio and Guilielmo, appear as well, and Guilielmo was also a councilor for the Ospedale, ibid., f. 2v, January 5, 1458, f. 3v, January 27, 1458 and passim. 53 See Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City, 40. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 171 lift the siege, and the grateful Brescians arrived in the capital to renew their allegiance with new demonstrations of loyalty. On the other hand, while the experiences of the siege were fresh in 1443, the miracle occurred three years later. If it was indeed patterned on the typological outline of the siege, the arrival of the Brescian delegation in 1440 and the renewed pact with Venice of that year were a much better occasion to construct a metaphoric narrative subsuming the two parties’ relations within the Venetian myth. Perhaps more important, if the siege was the principal referent of the miracle, the miracle’s value as a metaphoric discourse is lodged in contestation. The Brescian version was that the supernatural factor was homegrown, the appearance of the native saints Faustino and Giovita. The miracle account, on the contrary, asserted the decisive role of a Venetian-linked agent. There are considerations, however, which suggest that while the miracle may have referred to the war and siege of 1438–1440, it alluded to another layer of meaning as well. Within the paradigm of disconnect between content and form, the latter encompasses two dimensions. The first is the already familiar matter of fundraising. Its outer shell is that in 1443 the scuola began a new reconstruction and beautification project. Back in 1441, the confraternity had began planning the embellishment of a chapel it was using in the church of San Giovanni, and opened a discussion of the legal matter of transfer of rights with the prior, Marco Badoer. In Octo ber the General Chapter authorized the guardian grande to proceed with further discussion.54 The negotiations did not proceed smoothly, but the project involved funding. With the same decision, the Chapter earmarked five hundred ducats for the undertaking, specifying that the brothers were expected to raise the sum through donations and refrain from touching, at that point, a fund specially designated for the purpose.55 Then the project was stalled by a quarrel between the scuola and the Badoer family, notably the two Badoer, Marco and Nicolo, the former the prior of the church of San Giovanni, over the use of the church by the confraternity. The quarrel dates to 1441 and was temporarily mitigated in 1443 with a compromise, the Badoer allowing the confraternity to use the church, but with restric tions, provoking new calumnies.56 Among other things, therefore, the miracle provided publicity to attract the financial means that the scuola

54 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 38, f. 86–87; Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 199. 55 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 140, f. 138v–139; Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 208. 56 ASV SG SGE Reg. 34, Catastico 1323–1495 (compiled 1550) f. 291v–292r–v. For the 1443 calming of the situation see ASV GS SGE, Reg. 72, f. 190r, decision to proceed of October 1443, and Badoer’s consent dated November 12, 1443. 172 chapter eight needed and shore up its case against the Badoer. The confraternity must have felt pressured by other relic-rich bodies in the city as well, for they had no monopoly on fragments of the Cross even though theirs was the one that performed the most miracles. More important, perhaps, is the second dimension of the paradigm of content and form. The intervening years had brought to the surface fissures between Venice and Brescia that had to be engaged. Political exigencies forced Venice to actions the Brescians resented; it was left to metaphoric discourses to obfuscate the tensions that such measures engendered. In that regard, the setting of the accident is indicative. It took place in the newly constructed piazza, rather than in the old city center with the joint churches that made Brescia’s cathedral precinct, to which the fortified and towered town hall, the broletto, abutted. In the 1440s, the broletto was the residence of the second-ranking Venetian official, the captain. Still, the piazza, now Piazza Paolo VI, and the buildings adjoining it marked the distinctive fulcrum of Brescian civic identity since the communal era, which continued through the signorial period. By contrast, the foremost figure that stood for the Venetian authority, the podestà, had appropriated in 1432 the former palace of the count of Carmagnola, and presided there over the meetings of the Brescian council until the proceedings were moved to the new, monumental palace in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The new piazza della loggia was a Venetian project, the architec tural brainchild of the podestà Marco Foscari.57 It reconfigured Brescian civic space and impressed a Venetian-like feeling on it. The outlook and layout of the arcades on the eastern and southern sides with the loggetta, which was completed in 1435, and the underpass resemble the enclosed San Marco with its underpass on the east and the arcades of the procura- torie flanking it. The new palace with the loggia to the west reinforces the association, its roof mirroring the upturned ship keel shape characterizing the civic buildings in Padua and Verona. In 1443, when the loggetta had been completed, the clock tower was in the making, and the great palazzo della loggia was still in planning stage, the piazza had acquired its basic outline (and the steep southern steps leading to the loggia, as they do today, presented a tricky moving ground, especially for smaller folks).58

57 Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City, 87. 58 On the construction of the civic center see Vasco Frati, Ida Gianfranceschi, and Franco Robecchi, La Loggia di Brescia e la sua piazza. Vol. 1. Dal aperture della piazza alla pose della prima pietra del Palazzo della Loggia (1433–1492) (Brescia: Grafo, 1993), 35–41, “La prima Loggia.” the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 173

The youth rushing into the new piazza did not only enter a construction site. He transitioned from the seat of former Brescian authority to the new, Venetian-dominated center of power and civic identity. The move proved fraught with danger. In such a reading, the miracle distills the Serenissima’s spatial and architectural reformulation of Bres cian identity into a traumatic and potentially fatal arrangement that jeop ardized the city’s very future, encoded in the youthfulness of a prominent citizen’s son. The fact that the account was Venetian-generated demon strates that the Serenissima was not oblivious that its presence in Brescia had produced significant tensions that required addressing. The nature of the Venetian-Brescian relations and the experiences of their entangl ing precluded the kind of straightforward political action that would have been considered appropriate. There had been simmering Ghibelline opposition to the Venetian takeover, dating back to the 1420s and proba bly linked to the Gambara clan, which intensified in the late 1430s and the early 1440s. The siege of 1438–1440 and Brescia’s heroic sacrifice did little to obliterate these sentiments. In 1439, damning words against the Vene tian rectors were scribbled on the wall of one of the city’s gates.59 Such cautious expressions of discontent were taken seriously in Venice, where a similar occasion earlier in the century resulted in the swift imposition of a 1,000 lire fine on the offenders, even though they were never caught.60 In January 1442, Venice imposed on the city the hefty annual exaction of 24,000 ducats: an action which must have produced resentment given Brescia’s poor condition after the debilitating siege. In 1443, the Venetian rectors went against the privilege of 1440 and tried to force the citizens of Brescia to pay the full expenses of the ongoing war.61 The city council protested vociferously on both occasions and in the course of 1442–1444 sent three successive embassies to the capital, but the effort was to no avail. With a pedigree like his, Giacomo may well have participated. Little wonder then that a new inscription appeared later in 1442, this time on the freshly built loggia’s walls, suggesting that love of one’s lord was of no use.62 While officially condemning such outbursts of hostility, the city council apparently condoned them; the city fathers clearly did consider a

59 Bowd, Ibid., 54. On the Venetian-Brescian relations to 1430 see Giuseppe dell Torre, Venezia e la terraferma dopo la Guerra di Cambrai: Fiscalita e amministrazione (1515–1530) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1986). 60 Ruggiero, Violence, 129. 61 ASC Brescia, Registri del territorio ex-Veneto, Reg. 9, col. 9–13 and Reg. 2, col. 67. 62 Bowd, ibid. 174 chapter eight depiction of a gang of Brescians fleecing the Venetian lion quite proper for the ceremonial codex containing their statutes.63 In the same vein, after 1440 there was increasing stress on the intercession of local saints, no doubt connected with the assertion of Brescian identity in the face of powers linked to Venice.64 Clearly, across the city’s social and politi cal divisions sentiments of resistance and self-assertion were simmering under the surface of the official expressions of loyalty and steadfast adher ence to the Venetian overlords. An observer well attuned to Brescian conditions in the 1440s—and the Venetian rectors in Brescia were required to be attentive to such mat ters—would not have missed such clues. No records are preserved from the rectors in 1443, the podestà Lorenzo Minio and the captain, Gherardo Dandolo, but they no doubt reported regularly to the Senate. Both were men with significant experience in the city and its region.65 In addition, the presence of the Brescian delegations in the capital for months on end, as well as the sojourns of Brescian men of affairs, must have conveyed at least hints of these sentiments to the general public in Venice too. Against that background, the typological sequence constructed in the miracle may rather have been the Venetian response to the souring moods in Brescia in the early 1440s than an attempt to appropriate the discursive representation of the Brescian resistance in 1438–40. The Brescian layer in it, condensed in the young boy’s traumatic experience, allows for a much less problematic commingling of agencies. The treatment undertaken by Brescian physicians and the intervention of the Venetian True Cross go hand in hand, while the happy outcome acknowledges the superiority of the numinous artifact, just as a cautious surgeon would have done any way. The recognition went farther than the relieved father’s gratitude. As he conveyed to the guardian grande, Giacomo took the obligation to bring his son to worship the Cross. In the terms of the discourse within which

63 Bowd, ibid., 30. 64 Bowd, 93. 65 Lorenzo Minio was certainly well informed what was going in the city and its envi rons, since he served in the region for more than a decade, as provveditore, podestà, and captain. In 1448, Minio, then captain of Brescia with the podestà Pietro Pisani, reported to the Council of Ten that he had found a man who was ready to assassinate Francesco Sforza in the name of peace between Venice and Milan. The Ten agreed but before the plan was put into execution, Sforza aligned himself with the Milanese commune and the would-be- assassin withdrew his offer; see ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 18, f. 106. For his part, Gherardo Dandolo was provveditore seven times between 1435 and 1453. For a list of Venetian rectors in Brescia in the 1440s see Amelio Tagliaferri, Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma. IX. Podesteria e capitanato di Brescia (Milan: Giuffrè, 1978), li–liii. the miracle of the son of giacomo de salis 175 the narrative operates, the pledge embodies a range of significances, from worship to oblate to homage, and extends these links into the future as it formalizes them.66 And the future of Brescia, despite temporary traumatic experiences, was with the Serenissima. Despite muted opposition, Brescia lived up to its image of Venice’s “most loyal” city on the terraferma. After the 1440s, the main theme in the relationship was smoothing the path to complete political incorporation and economic integration, combined with sensitivity to and upholding of local identity. These foundational principles of the Venetian-Brescian relationship, a norm for most of the Serenissima’s territorial domain, are played succinctly in the miracle of 1443. In structural logic, the miracle serves as a matrix of interwoven com petition and co-operation by acknowledged agents operating on different categorical levels but nonetheless resulting in long-term incorporation of an open-ended, syncretic nature. That type of conceptualization of the miracle would have been implicit for the Brescians who maintained close contacts with the capital, migrated to Venice in the course of the fifteenth century, and had a designated headquarters there, casa Bresciana, in its last decades. The miracle must have resonated even more powerfully for those who joined San Giovanni’s, and there were scores of them by the turn of the century and thereafter.67 It would have captured similarly well the untheorized sentiments of the elite cittadini leadership of the con fraternity. To them too, the increased presence of terraferma denizens was an ambiguous development, increasing commercial opportunities and strengthening San Giovanni’s financially, but generating tensions on

66 The scuola’s guardian, Francesco di Argoiosi, the man who verified the miracle, had been a member of long standing. He was admitted in 1409, was elected the scuola’s deacon for San Marco in 1412, and had already served a turn as a guardian grande in 1433; see ASV SGE, Reg. 71, f. 21 for his serving as deacon for San Marco in 1412, elected on March 20; f. 55v for the date of his admittance; and ASV SGE, Reg. 6, no pagination, listed as guardian grande in 1433. 67 For Brescians in San Giovanni see: ASV SG SGE, Reg. 5, no foliation, has a Bres cian member before 1387, when the list was compiled; ASV SG SGE, Reg. 13, dated likely 1537–39, no foliation, has several Brescians, under 1501, Giovanni Piero di Brescia; 1508, Giacomo di Piero di Brescia; 1528, Steffano di Bertelli da Brescia, etc.; ASV SG SGE, Reg. 14, compiled in 1545 with handwritten additions lists several men of Brescian provenance, of all walks of life, established in the city: f. 23r (1535) Andrea de Agnolo, bressan, tintor; f. 23v (1542) Alberto di Fabri da Brescia; f. 24r (1521) Batista de Giovani da Bressa; f. 22r (1513) Antonio de Giovanni da Bressa, barcaruol; f. 24v (1535) Batista de Agnolo Bressan; f. 24v (1536) Batolomeo da Armano bressan; f. 25r (1528) Cristofalo bressan barcaruol; ASV SG SGE, Testamenti, II. Reg. 131 (1500–1678): f. 7: will of the Brescian physician Alvise Mucii, son of magister Pietro of Brescia, dated July 19, 1503 who made generous bequests to the confraternity. 176 chapter eight the level of local administration in which the cittadini were involved and in terms of economic competition. The narrative logic of the accounts featured the mutually reinforcing interaction of God and the physicians, an optimistic outlook, ultimately projecting a future emphasis on affilia tion and co-optation. Whatever meanings its details and general aesthetic may suggest, the same structural logic underscores the visual cover of the miracle crafted by Gentile Bellini. The great procession of the purposely arranged, cittadini-led confraternities in piazza San Marco, on the saint’s feast day, with San Giovanni’s lineup in the foreground, claims, appro priates, and incorporates not only the political and ceremonial space of the republic as it encloses aimlessly wandering patricians and relegates the ducal cortege to a marginal, barely recognizable position. It also encompasses the supplicating figure of Giacomo de Salis, the merchant of Brescia, in the same forceful message of inclusion and absorption of components that may appear alien in form but are nonetheless compat ible and welcome in terms of content, for they are animated by the same spirit that warrants belonging. Chapter Nine

The Body Feverish and the Body Politic: Medicine, Politics, and Religion in the Healing of Piero de Lodovico

In the summer of 1447, Piero de Lodovico, a Venetian of the parish of San Salvador and a member of the scuola of San Giovanni, contracted quartan fever. As he remembered it several months later, it happened on August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of the Virgin. Suffering greatly, he betook himself to Padua, “because of the mortality,” as the incunabulum explains. There he was treated by doctors, most notably by Bartolo- meo da Santa Sofia, as the same account specifies again, but to no effect. Despairing of recovering his health, after two months’ stay Piero returned to Venice for Christmas. On the first Sunday of January he went to the scuola and, after performing his devotions, picked up a candle, offered a heartfelt prayer to the Cross, and touched the crystal casing of the relic. Later that night, preparing for the usual onslaught of the fever with the candle in hand and a prayer on his lips, he only experienced a mild bout of chills. The quartan did not attack that night, nor did it return afterwards. Piero’s fervent prayer and faith in the relic’s power had paid off. The Cross had healed him. The accounts sum up Piero’s recollection of his sickness and the eventual healing in a broadly similar vein, but differ considerably in form and occasionally in content. The incunabulum describes in the precise terms of a medical diagnosis the symptoms of Piero’s disease, but refrains from specifying its causes. Its account follows in the already established dossier- like model of narrating the miracles of the Cross and offers more detail in comparison to the later text. The early printed version is a first-person letter in Piero’s name. It skips some of the first print’s elaborations but adds facts missing there and has a noticeable judgmental slant to it. Most markedly, perhaps, it does specify the cause of Piero’s ailment: as he reports, the fever resulted from a strenuous horse ride. Such naturalistic causality accords well with the caption statement that Piero was miraculously cured after having been “abandoned” by doctors. It forgoes the heuristic vagueness of the earlier account as to the causes of the ailment, which may have seemed too suggestive by late sixteenth-century standards. A natural explanation linking the fever to overexertion also eliminates the 178 chapter nine possibility of connecting the ailment to the Virgin, and it perhaps suggests that Piero may have somehow been responsible for what befell him. It was a purely physical sickness, for which Piero quite naturally sought medical advice and treatment. Such indeed was the standard procedure of the time when a person was afflicted by illness. Only when the medics failed did his faith and devotion to the Cross step in to work the miracle of the cure. Despite the more circumstantial character of the earlier text, the differences between the narratives cannot be explained by the later account shortening the text of the incunabulum. The edition of 1590 contains information that is missing in the early text, such as Piero’s return to Venice on December 20, 1447. Furthermore, in the description of the bouts of fever the later edition indicates that when it came it lasted hore sei, whereas the incunabulum states that it durava hore 5. This discrepancy, which indicates a misreading of a digit by the later author, as well as other differences between the texts, can only be explained by the existence of a common prototype, Piero’s personal deposition, which the editors consulted independently. The incunabulum digested it while the editor of 1590 went for an almost-verbatim reproduction. As the evidence has it, Piero de Lodovico must have been a high-ranking citizen to take office on the banca, and he must have possessed enough means to leave Venice for months on end during the epidemic of 1447 and seek the services of a doctor of Santa Sofia reputation. His absence from the city for such a period suggests that he was not governmentally employed. The accounts’ clue about the strenuous horse ride on the mainland—either for pleasure or for business—implies a man of social weight. Indeed, Piero belonged to a well-off citizen merchant family. His uncle and father, the brothers Antonio and Lodovico di Piero of San Salvador, were eminent mercers. The scope of Antonio’s operations is unclear and he may have ceased activity soon after 1430 when he gave plenipotentiary powers to his brother Lodovico to represent him in the business.1 Lodovico di Piero, however, was clearly a wholesaler vested in Vene- tian seaborne commerce who operated on the Venice-Constantinople- Black Sea line. In the 1430s, he had interests in Corfu, Coron, Modon, Constantinople, and Tana, chartered private ships, and took part in the

1 ASV CIN, b. 148, notary Pietro Palacan, paper register, no foliation, act dated August 29, 1430. The act follows a standard formula and offers no details about Antonio’s business. On the prominence of many of San Salvador’s population in the late 1500s see Annalisa Bruni, “Mobilità sociale e mobilità geographica nella Venezia di fine ‘500: la parrochia di San Salvador,” Annali Veneti. Società, cultura, istituzioni, 2: 2 (1985), 75–83. the healing of piero de lodovico 179 galleys’ auctions. Among other merchandise, Tana was a prime supplier of slaves for the Venetian market. Lodovico was involved in the traffic and made good profits from it. In February 1434 for example he is on record for selling a young Circassian girl to a Paduan merchant for the handsome sum of forty-eight gold ducats. Lodovico does not seem to have operated on the mainland but is documented in the same decade as dealing with Florentine merchants, one of whom owed him money in 1435. On April 8, 1435, Lodovico made Piero his principal representative in the business, authorizing him to deal independently with or without documentation and act with the power of attorney before any legal authorities.2 The other bit of solid information about the family in Piero’s time is their presence in San Giovanni’s. It is unclear whether it was Piero or, more likely, his grandfather of the same name who enrolled in the confraternity in 1418. Besides Piero, a Lodovico di Piero of San Salvador was admitted into the scuola on March 23, 1427; that is the only record of him, for he did not serve on the banca.3 The name and the date pose the question of whether Piero was related to a de Lodovici family, some of whose members were located in the Dorsoduro parish of Santa Margarita, and whose members are much better attested for both in the records of the scuola and independently. In the 1490s, the family consisted of two brothers, Antonio and Lodovico, sons of Piero, and a sister, Helena. Lodovico did not leave a tes- tamentary trace remaining to indicate his parish. Helena’s and Antonio’s wills are extant. It is worth summing them up, as they illustrate how concentration of wealth occurred within a close family and a collateral kin and how the outcome played out within the confraternity. Helena had her last will drawn up in 1503. She was childless, had lost her husband, Georgio Siano, and after making the mandatory pious distributions left her possessions to her brother Lodovico’s two children, mostly to Piero, whom she made co-executor of her will, and his sister Marieta. Besides unspecified movables and real estate, Piero received cash and bonds in

2 ASV CIN, b. 149, notary Vettor Pomino, paper register, f. 18r, dated April 8, 1435 for Lodovico authorizing Piero and describing his commercial engagements; idem, paper register 1434–1438, f. 1r, February 3, 1434, for selling a 14-year old Circassian girl to Benedetto Trevisan of Padua for 48 ducats of gold; and idem, f. 7r, for authorizing Leonardo Marco Bartelo, a merchant of Florence, to act as his plenipotentiary representative, collect his money, and settle his accounts with Mateo Luci di Lancisi of Florence, against whom Lodovoco must have had a legal claim. 3 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 34v, list of newly enrolled members dated March 18, 1418. There is no other Piero di Lodovico admitted before the date of the miracle. A certain Lodovico di Piero of San Salvador was admitted on March 23, 1427 and is clearly related to Piero, see ibid., 38r. 180 chapter nine the State Loans Office.4 The Lodovici’s alliance with the Siano was not accidental, and speaks well about Piero’s standing. The Siano were a substantial family, abounding in wealth, piety, and status. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century Nicolo Siano, piovan of San Basilio, restored the church with his own means. Nicolo’s brother, Paolo, was in the woolens manufacturing business and endowed a chapel in San Pantalon together with a family tomb. He was a San Giovanni’s member and in 1514 became guardian grande.5 If Giorgio was Nicolo’s and Paolo’s brother, as seems likely, Helena joined a family of means and prestige, but if she was Piero de Lodovico’s daughter she was of no mean stock herself. She was still alive in 1512 when her other brother, Antonio di Lodovico, son of Piero, made his will. Antonio, who does not appear to have been connected to San Giovanni’s, was very well off and spent freely on charity and care for his soul. He also had hundreds of ducats in debts to collect, did business with nobles, among them Andrea Molin, and was vested in the State Loans Office in the Monte Vecchio and the Monte Nouvo. He too, was without children, and lavished all of his wealth on charity and alms to Lodovico’s children and Helena. Lodovico had had three more sons in the meantime, Nicolo, Daniele, and Giorgo, and another daughter, Chiara. Each of them got a share of their uncle’s wealth, and Antonio even paid for masses for the souls of his brother, deceased at the time, and his brother-in-law Geor- gio Siano.6 Lodovico de Lodovichi himself, possibly Piero’s third offspring, sat on the banca as deacon for Dorsoduro in 1481 and served four more times, raising from scribe to guardian da matin to vicar, to die in 1503 or early 1504 in office, just shy of the chance to become guardian grande. The subtle change in Lodovico’s cognomen suggests that his grandfather had been the founder of the family, or at least the stem to which Piero and Lodovico belonged, and was an assertion of heredity that proclaimed long roots and legitimacy. The next generation built up on that as well as on the wealth that was pouring in from the older relatives, and went on to achieve what Lodovico had barely missed. After a brief hiatus, which would have been long enough for either of Lodovico’s sons to assert themselves in the confraternity, Piero de Lodovichi became deacon for Dorsoduro in 1512; two years later, under the guardianship of their maternal uncle Paolo Siano, Nicolo de Lodovichi took up the same office. Nicolo served a

4 ASV ANT, b. 66, # 130, dated June 7, 1503, notary Priame Busenello. 5 Tassini, Notizie storiche, f. 234, and ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 73, Elenco banche 1465–1690, n. f., elections 1514. 6 ASV ANT, b. 66, # 391, dated July 1, 1512, notary Priame Busenello. the healing of piero de lodovico 181 few times and disappeared from the record in 1526, but Piero duplicated his father’s ascendance by serving in consecutively higher positions. In 1535 he rose to become guardian grande.7 By that time, the guardian was addressed as “magnifico,” and Helena’s, Antonio’s and Nicolo’s share of the family wealth had devolved unto him, in addition to what he had inherited from his father. The assumption of the title may have to do with the devaluation of social sobriquets as the elite citizens drew closer to the nobility, but Piero had something to shore it up with, for since 1523 he had not only been on the banca but rotated in and out of the special twelve-man permanent committee that was joined to the officers with a decision of the Council of Ten. Throughout the period, no one else served so many terms and with such frequency as the younger Piero, and no family had such a hold on the executive body as the de Lodovichi. Clearly, Piero was a ranking member of the citizenry and his status was reflected in his confraternity rank and service. The older Piero de Lodovico’s economic circumstances are only vaguely suggested in the miracle accounts, but the younger Piero’s prosperity is undisputable. The family carried with zest the trend for hereditary involvement and leadership of the scuola that had been practiced by the Rabia a century earlier, and buttressed it with wealth that paved the way to the officialdom. In Piero’s case its source was commercial operations, but in the time of Antonio and the younger Piero at least some of it was tied up in deals with the republic’s political leaders and in the state’s financial fortunes. That opened a status horizon closely linked to state policies for the de Lodovici to get involved in and

7 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 73, Elenco banche 1465–1690: f. 15r March 25, 1481, Lodovico de Lodovichi deacon for Dorsoduro; f. 24r March 1488 Lodovico de Lodovichi deacon for Cas- tello; f. 26v–27r August 1490, Lodovico de Lodovichi becomes scrivan; f. 33r March 1497 Lodovico de Lodovichi guardian da matin; f. 38v March 1503 Lodovico de Lodovichi is vicar and most likely died in office since in 1504 the new vicar substituted for Marin Carlo, not for Lodovico. He could have been born any time around 1430 or later so his life span is normal; n. f. March 13, 1512 Piero di Lodovisi appears as deacon for Dorsoduro; n. f. March 1514 Nicolo di Lodovichi appears as deacon for Dorsoduro; n. f. March 1518 Piero di Lodovici, scrivan; n. f. March 1521 Nicolo di Lodovici deacon for San Marco; n. f. March 1522 Piero di Lodovici guardian da matin; n. f. March 1523 Piero di Lodovici on the committee of 12 men added to the banca with the decision of the Council of Ten; n. f. March 1526 Nicolo de Lodovici deacon, no parish (they stop recording parishes); n. f. March 1527 Piero di Lodovichi is again on the twelve men committee; n. f. March 1529 Piero di Lodovici vicar and on the twelve men committee; n. f. March 1532 Piero di Lodivici again on the twelve men committee; n. f. March 1534 Piero di Lodovici deacon; n. f. March 1535 Piero di Lodovici guardian grande; n. f. March 1536 Piero di Lodovici on the twelve men committee; n. f. March 1538 Piero di Lodovici on the twelve men committee. 182 chapter nine become anxious about. As we shall see, that is precisely what the miracle accounts seems to intimate. The de Lodovichi disappear after the younger Piero and the bloodline of the family branch connected to San Giovanni’s may have faltered.8 Their ascendance must have had to do with reasons other than devotion pure and simple, although, were it not for the Cross, they may have already waned by the time of the elder Piero. By the middle of the fifteenth century Piero’s affliction, quartan fever, was a familiar and easily diagnosed disease, but its etiology baffled the contemporaries. Intense and relapsing fevers could be the result of malaria, typhoid fever, hepatitis A, or influ- enza. The quartan as the narratives have it had a highly regular periodicity and unmistakable accompanying clinical symptoms. The bouts came every 72 hours with a predictable regularity and alternating paroxysm and chills, plus nausea on full or empty stomach and several secondary effects. Italian medics knew the symptoms quite well for they followed in the steps of a long tradition. Fevers as a separate category of ailment had already been described in the Hippocratic corpus. Roman professionals, who describe fevers in more detail, were aware that quartan fever, as well as the more dangerous tertian and quotidian varieties, was linked to certain locations. There were healthy places and there were pestilent ones. Roman writers also knew that all periodic fever varieties occurred seasonally, most notably during the “dog days” of high summer. Rising temperatures heated the bad localities, emitting a heavy and pestilent air, the alleged cause of the fevers that often became epidemic. In line with Roman pragmatism, however, writers on agricultural matters proved more perceptive than medical practitioners and theorists. Marcus Teren- tius Varro (116–27 BC) and Lucius Columela (4–70 AD), both authors of encyclopedic works on agriculture, identified mosquitoes as the carriers of the epidemics generated in swampy areas.9 Their insight was lost to

8 The de Lodovichi are listed as extinct in the same roster of cittadino families from c. 1540 that refers to the Rabia, BMC, Cod. Gradenigo 192, Cittadini veneti, f. 100r. The Redecima of 1514 would have shed light on the younger Piero’s circumstances but there is no entry for the Lodovichi in the assessment. The condizioni are being currently digitalized and once ready and searchable may provide some clues through a related family. 9 Laura D. Lane, “Malaria: Medicine and Magic in the Roman World,” in David Soren and Noelle Soren, eds., A Roman villa and a late Roman infant cemetery. Excavations at Pog- gio Gramignano Lugnano in Teverina (“l’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1999), 633–61, at 637. the healing of piero de lodovico 183 posterity, possibly because there were many parts of Italy where infesta- tion with Anopheles mosquitoes did not result in malaria.10 Even though the fifteenth-century medical profession had not identified either its agents or vectors of transmission or the modes of its efficient treatment, it was commonly assumed in Piero’s time that the quartan fever, as well as a host of other epidemics, resulted from exposure to miasmatic air, or “mal’aeria.” The “mal’aeria” arose from putrid organic waste left to accumulate in the city, as well as in wetlands and stagnant waters, especially in the heat of summer. Spurred by the plague to develop some rudimentary institutions to deal with epidemics, the Great Council had established in 1348 the office of the Savi alla sanità. In September 1413, the Council passed a law punishing the dumping of organic refuse in the city, for it emitted fetid odors and was the source of the “mal’aria” carrying diseases.11 The compound term itself was first recorded by Marco Cornaro in his Scritture sulla laguna, published earlier in the decade, in 1440, and became standard for the next several centuries until it was fused in “malaria” around 1838.12 The incunabulum account offers few specifics but it mentions that Piero was in Padua because of a certain “mortalita” ravaging Venice in 1447. The nature of the epidemic that hit Venice that summer is difficult to pinpoint, but it was thought to spread out via miasmatic air, the primary carrier of contagion according to contemporary medical lore. As had been the tradition since 1348, the population organized processions around the city’s churches. Fires were set up to burn incense and aromatics in several locations throughout the city to purge the air.13 However, the lack of clear connection between that “mortalita” and Piero’s condition in the incunabulum, as well as the almost clinical description of its symptoms, suggests that the author perceived his illness as unrelated to the epidemic and of a different etiology. The 1590 text follows in the same vein as it seeks the cause of the disease in physical overexertion. The quartan’s causes may

10 As observed by Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 45. 11 Here quoted after Ivone Cacciavillani, La Mal’aria: Ecologia ambientale nell’ordinamento della Serenissima (Venice: Corbo e Fiore, 2008), doc. 1 & 2. 12 Giuseppe Pavanello, ed., Marco Cornaro, Scritture sulla laguna (Venice: Ferrari, 1919). 13 Cronaca Erizzo, BNM, Ms. It. VII. 56 (8636); Sanudo, in Angela Caracciolo Aricò, ed., Marin Sanudo il Giovane, Le vite dei dogi: 1423–1474. Vol. I (1423–1457) (Venice: La Malcon- tenta, 1999), 427–28, confirms the account. See also Alfonso Corradi, Annali delle epidemie occorse in Italia dale prime memorie fino al 1850 compilati con varie note e dichiarazioni, vol. 1 (Bologna, 1865), 280–81. 184 chapter nine have been unclear, but both authors were certain that it was an illness sui generis. Be that as it may, the incunabulum’s specificity in detailing the fever’s symptoms and vagueness in terms of causality offer a better background to the nature of Piero’s ailment than the later text. Causality lodged in ardu- ous exertion does not conform to the known etiology of quartan fever. As identified and described already in classical antiquity, the quartan was a primary syndrome of malaria. The circumstances of Piero’s infection and its symptoms leave no doubt about that. In fact, the disease was caused by infection with a mosquito-carried pathogen know as the genus Plasmodium, four of whose species attack humans. All malaria cases share the characteristic periodicity of intense fever recurring every day (quotidian), on the second day (in the case of tertian) or on the third day, in the case of the quartan fever. The immune system of the person affected by the pathogen attempts to bring the infection under control by prompting a febrile paroxysm that kills the parasites. The type of fever depends on which of the Plasmodium species has caused the infection. The parasitic protozoa, the agents of the disease, reproduce in unique temporal cycles specific to the genus and attack the red blood cells in periodic releases of new agents. The quartan fever results from infection with Plasmodium malarie, a much less dangerous agent than the P. vivax tertian or the P. falciparum, the malignant tertian fever, which could send people to their graves in two attack cycles. Both the periodicity and the duration of the quartan lasted longer than the other varieties, but by the same token indicated that the affliction would be much milder and not life-threatening. Since the first century AD Roman authors (notably Celsus, and the entire tradition after him peaking with Galen) stressed the mildness of quartan fever, although modern medical science has identified a number of side effects that could, in time, lead to fatality. Some recorded cases even attest that infection with P. malariae could persist over a lifetime.14 The principal vector of transmission of all malarial pathogens in Italy before the modern eradication campaigns was a complex of mosquitoes known as Anopheles maculipennis.15 Nine of its species have been traced in Europe and most can safely be assumed to have been present there since at least fifth century BC. Three of these, A. labranchiae, A. sacharovi, and A. atroparvus, were common in Italy.

14 The summary is after Sallares, Malaria and Rome, passim. 15 Belonging to the subgenus Anopheles of the genus Anopheles. the healing of piero de lodovico 185

These species stand apart from the rest of Anopheles for their preference for breeding in saltier, brackish waters near the coast rather than in fresh water inland pools, which was the typical breeding ground for the main cluster of A. maculipennis. This is especially important for A. sacharovi, the species that displays the highest tolerance and indeed preference for a higher salinity level and sea waters. The preference assured A. sacharovi of the ecological niche of a breeding site safe from competition with the zoophilic species of Anoph- eles, which were harmless to humans. Venice’s marshy coastal areas and the lagoon thus provided excellent conditions for the active vectors of human malaria. Historically, A. sacharovi tended to cluster in the areas immediately around Venice while the secondary and zoophilic vectors A. atropagus and A. maculipennis s.s. prevailed to the north of the city and in the Po delta. Finally, A. sacharovi in the area has a tendency to carry the pathogens of P. malariae more often than other Plasmodium species, serving as the main vector of quartan fever. Such observations dovetail well with the hydrological conditions favored as breeding grounds by the malaria-carrying mosquitoes, once they extended their presence by colonizing the northern areas of the peninsula in the central and late medieval centuries. Since the early decades of the fifteenth century, Venetian authorities kept commenting on the mixing of salty and fresh water in the lagoon as one of the chief causes of the infested “mal’aiere.” A parte of the Great Council dated March 24, 1437, noted that it was the influx of fresh waters around Fusina that caused “novel kinds of fevers” in the city, which “killed people in a few days,” although the connection between the mosquito bite and the disease had not yet been made.16 Marco Cornaro comments specifically on an epidemic of fevers in Venice in 1440, noting that the mal’aiere that caused them was thought of as resulting from the fresh waters entering the lagoon after Brenta broke through its dams a few years earlier, in 1432.17 The special commission

16 Quoted after Bernardino Zendrini, Memorie storiche dello stato antico e moderno delle lagune di Venezia e di que’fiumi che restarono divertiti per la conservazione delle medesime, vol. 1 (Padua: Seminario, 1811,) 92. Parti with the same assertion were issued in 1442, ibid., 100, and 1452, ibid., 107. 17 Pavanello, Cornaro, Scritture sulla laguna, 81–82: “Per la qual cosa del MCCCCXXXII la Brenta rompè a chao del Volpago e fece una gran rota, la qual è longa al presente 1200 passi e mete cavo in verso sancto Anzolo de la Concordia. Per la qual rota el ramo de la Taiadella è aterrado et streto molto forte. Et cusì scorse le cose senza alcuna provision per fina al 1440 del qual anno el fu molte fievre in Venesia in modo chel se diceva che acque dolce conduseva questo mal aiere . . .” 186 chapter nine that inspected the water conditions after the breach consulted the city’s physicians as well. They were unanimous that the brackish waters corrupted the air and caused “infirmities” in the city. The breach was not yet repaired in 1452. Later historians, such as Andrea Morosini, concurred.18 Moreover, there is direct evidence that 1447 had been particularly bad in this regard. In September 1447, Doge Francesco Foscari lodged a supplication before the Council of Ten, requesting permission for his son Jacopo to return from exile in Treviso. Among other reasons, the doge cited the “terrible fever” raging at the time on the mainland around Mestre. Jacopo’s wife and four of his children had been sick and so were other members of his household.19 Since Piero di Lodovico thought that the disease resulted from a strenuous ride, he must have spent time on the mainland, and must have passed through the close-by areas indicated by the doge as having been heavily infested by the fever. Piero’s sickness and its clinical history accord well with a case of malaria infection by P. malariae transmitted by A. sacharovi. His first bout occurred on August 15, the importance of the date, the feast of the Virgin, making it easier to remember. Mid-fifteenth century temperature averages for Ven- ice or Padua cannot be estimated, but at the current overnight average of 23º Celsius it would take about 20 days for the sporogony of malarial parasites inside the mosquito to develop. This puts the pathogen’s development and Piero’s infection during the hottest “dog days” of summer, since it would take weeks for P. malariae to progress from infection to the first attack of fever. Although the quartan is longer-lasting than the more acute tertian and quotidian or combined fevers, its incubation period is not known to last as long as that of some P. vivax or P. falciparum strands. The perfectly regular periodicity of the attacks and the short febrile paroxysms indicate that Piero had been infected only with P. malariae and had been spared multiple infections, which would have resulted in quotidian fever or irregular bouts.20 The account’s stress on his suffering appears to

18 See the excerpt from Morosini’s history, in Zendrini, Memorie storiche, 93, and the report of the inspection after the breach of the Brenta, ibid., 99. 19 Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 208, citing Concilio di Dieci, Misti, reg. 13, f. 83r, dated September 13, 1447. 20 The duration of paroxysms in quartan fever is an average of nine hours, which is 50% longer than the hore sei indicated in Piero’s case, but tertian and mixed fevers bouts last considerably longer, between twelve and forty hours. A quotidian of three parallel generations of P. malariae would have fitted the six-hour duration, but the record is adamant that Piero’s fever was quartan. The only explanation is that Piero or his doctor timed the paroxysms according to a different time scale. Late medieval hours were traditionally 1/12 the healing of piero de lodovico 187 be a rhetorical exaggeration since clear-cut cases of quartan were quite mild, so much so that in Roman times patients were praying for it when afflicted with the much more malicious, debilitating, and very often fatal tertian fever.21 Whether he contracted the quartan in Venice or on the mainland, Piero’s ailment was not life-threatening. The disease was dangerous for young children, pregnant women, and the elderly, but a strong- bodied adult was likely to overcome the quartan, even after a prolonged period, and recover fully. In 1447, Piero must have been at most middle- aged and he was also healthy enough to subject himself to a strenuous horse ride in the first place. He served on the banca as deacon for Santa Croce as a substitute for Antonio Rabia, who passed away in 1444, thus stepping in for a member of a family that had already been the beneficiary of a miracle.22 Furthermore, he must have recovered quite well, since in March 1449 he was elected to the banca again, this time as deacon for San Marco.23 If a later note made around 1489–90 is correct, he lived until 1471.24 The quartan, though noxious, should have been no problem for a man in his prime. The medical profession of the time, resting solidly on classical science, explained quartan fever within two relatively clear conceptualizations of disease. Both are essential for outlining the parameters within which Piero’s ailment and cure held meaning for his contemporaries. In classical theory, diseases were perceived as nosological entities varying over space and time (therefore culturally and socially conditioned) and

of the day or night, the beginning of each measured by the presence or absence of daylight. Piero’s fever came at night and therefore the hours were calculated as “night” hours. In mid-winter the night is at its longest and a 1/12 of it would correspond to seven or eight hours chronological time, since the tolling of Venice’s clock was arranged around two fixed times, midday and midnight, and around two movable points, sunrise and sunset. For medieval time reckoning see Gerhard Dohr van-Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), esp. 207–9. For the average duration of malarial paroxisms see Chester Cunha and Burke Cunha, “Brief History of the Clinical Diagnosis of Malaria, from Hippocrates to Osler,” Journal of Vector Borne Diseases 45 (September 2008), 196. 21 Sallares, Malaria in Rome, 218. 22 For Piero’s deaconship for Santa Croce in 1444 see Reg. 72, f. 59. 23 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 88r. 24 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 6, has the entry “Piero de Lodovicho San Salvador” in the part of the codex written by a neat hand that had compiled a list of guardians as well. The list ends with Antonio Sereni, GG in 1489, and another hand, much sloppier, picks up from there. Perhaps the same later hand placed a cross next to Piero’s name, a mark that appears before the names of many brothers who had passed away, and a date, 1471. The date is confirmed by the list of brother compiled in 1478, where Piero does not figure, see ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 12. 188 chapter nine were considered models for the explication of relevant realities. In terms of etiology, diseases were explained by the concept of humors. Defined succinctly by Polybus, Hippocrates’ son-in-law, in his On the Nature of Man around 410 BC, the humoral theory asserted that the principal elements, that is, fire, water, earth, and air, combined in the body to produce four fundamental “humors” on whose balance the health of the body was predicated. Disease, in such terms, was an imbalance or perturbation (dyskrasia) of the four humors, phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. Hippocratic texts sought the pathogenesis of disequilibrium in defective flow of air through the body, caused by outside natural agents affecting the humors, either inappropriate diet or inhalation of corrupted air. In the vein of Aristotelian theorizing, Hippocratic physicians understood disease as motion and process rather than an entity or a condition. Thinking fully within this interpretative framework, Galen contributed the position that the disequilibrium could result as much from excess of a humor as from its putrefaction, caused in turn either by too much relaxation or by excessive tension, as well as from excess of one of the four elementary qualities, that is water, air, fire, or earth. Such was the theory that medieval and early Renaissance physicians received and faithfully perpetuated, with one important transformation. Scholastic doctors of the “realist” school gradually imposed the notion that disease was an ontological entity that had a “real” and objective existence outside the person; the sick body was just a particular, individual instantiation of that objective reality.25 Scho- lasticism moralized disease, entwining the ontological conceptualization with the ancients’ naturalistic, progressive, and dynamic understanding rather than supplanting the latter. Against this background, the Hippocratic corpus explained quartan fever as the product of dyskrasia affecting black bile, the most viscous of humors and the one related to the element of earth and generated in the spleen (it is worth noting that superfluous black bile caused the condition or temperament of melancholy as well, from the Greek melas “black” and chole “bile”).26 The empirical side of Hippocratic piretology was the blueprint of all later fever theories, but two of its implications were of utmost importance in the context of its Christianization in the

25 Mirko Grmek, “The Concept of Disease,” in Mirko Grmek, ed., Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 241–58. 26 William F. Bynum and Roy Porter, Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medi- cine, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1993), 391. the healing of piero de lodovico 189

Middle Ages. First, Hippocratic lore suggests that fever is a tool through which the body works on alien matter by “cooking” it to prepare it for removal. In an alternative understanding that gained ground in the later medieval centuries, fever was generated by the “derailment” or the failure of a body component to perform its proper functions. Either way, fever was a conservative force that restored the original harmony in the organism through the neutralizing of harmful substances. Second, the Hippo- cratic concept of fever was vested in an understanding of the functioning of the human body as a micro-cosmos directly and causally reflecting the functioning of the macro-cosmos. Through fever, the creative cosmic forces that keep the universe with all of its realities warm and in balance manifested themselves in the individual human body.27 The feverish body thus indicates not just a discrepancy between the organism and the outside realities but a possible disequilibrium in outside reality itself. Galen’s voluminous works, especially his De febrium differentiis, did not change that conceptualization, for he limited himself to the statement that fever was caused by the genus of heat contrary to nature, having already found its source in excess or decay of humoral matter. His Ara- bic commentators, most notably al-Rhazi, Avicenna, and Averroes, whose writings were standard reading for practitioners and in university courses, elaborated on, but did not alter, his basic postulates. Details need not concern us here; it suffices to offer the outline of their theories. Since the natural state of the body was rest and health, fever as disease was though of as caused by “heat contrary to nature” or “unnatural,” “preternatural,” or “febrile” heat, an extraneous substance that either took over and sup- planted, or fused with, the natural heat of the body to cause the hot, extra heat expressed as fever. The physician’s task was to find ways to remove the excess heat while keeping the natural heat of the patient. This much had been devised already by the late 1300s by Pietro d’Abano, a prominent physician whose teaching, as we shall see, may have been relevant to Piero di Lodovico’s case. As for the type of fever so generated, it depended on the humor affected or on distinctions within the genus of “preternatural heat.” Galen had not distinguished the intermittent fevers as a separate kind. In keeping with his theory of excess or decay of the humors, he described them as variations within the genus of “putrid humoral fevers.” His medieval successors concurred. The puzzling periodicity of the intermittents,

27 The concepts are defined by Thomas Külken, Fieberkonzepte in der Geschichte der Medizin (Heidelberg: Fischer Verlag, 1985), esp. 26–7 and 98–101. 190 chapter nine quartan among them, was explained either by an “occult cause” or by direct influence of celestial bodies.28 Ancient authorities advocated a roster of treatments for the quartan fever, ranging from medical procedures to magical practices to herbal remedies. Physicians typically prescribed rest and dietary therapies, opportunely given food ranking high on the list. The Hippocratic corpus focused on deprivation: a very light diet, normally barley gruel and barley water, with some honey and vinegar. Roman writers concurred. The treatment has merit, since the half-starved body depleted iron and this inhibited the growth of the parasites until the immune system developed its defenses and the disease ran its course. At that point, stronger food was recommended. Baffled by their persistent failure to cure the quartan fever but knowing that a stronger body had the potential to overcome the disease by itself, practitioners had intuitively found ways to strengthen patients’ immune defenses and then return them to health.29 Medieval and early Renaissance theorists and practitioners built on the ancients and expanded the list of drug remedies and procedures, but the essence remained the same. Effective treatment was a combination of methods to evacuate the putrid matter (phlebotomy, purging, clysters), combat the extra heat with cooling agents, and put the patient on an appropriate diet to facilitate the first two tasks and then strengthen the body debilitated by the onslaughts of fever. Such was the medical theory and practice that must have informed the treatment imposed on Piero by the doctor he sought out in Padua, the fountainhead of the medical professionals working in Venice.30 The incunabulum gives us his name, Bartolomeo; the 1590 text skips it, only recording in the headline of the miracle that Piero was cured by the Cross after having been “abandoned,” presumably as incurable, by the doctors. The identification of the doctor is somewhat of a puzzle since in the late months of 1447 there were two men of the Santa Sofia family with that

28 I base this summary on Iain M. Lonie, “Fever Pathology in the Sixteenth Century: Tradition and Innovation,” in William F. Bynum and V. Nuitton, eds., Theories of Fever from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Medical History, Supplement 1) (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1981), 19–44, here 19–21. 29 Bynum and Porter, Companion Encyclopedia, 390; Jennifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ix–x. 30 For an overview of the medical profession see Giuseppe Trebbi, “Le professioni liberali,” in Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, eds., Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Vol. IV. Il Rinascimento. Politica e cultura (Rome: Enciclopedia, 1996), 465–528. the healing of piero de lodovico 191 name at the University of Padua, both doctors, and both well attested by contemporary evidence. The elder Bartolomeo fits better the incunabulum description, “solenissimo medico.” According to later, antiquarian statements, he held the pride of place among Italian doctors of his generation. He must have been born in the early 1360s, and his career began in 1383, first as a student of medicine, becoming doctor in 1390, and then as professor of practical medicine at the university from 1392 to 1437, where he also taught philosophy, being well versed in the liberal arts as well as medicine. He was still active in the 1440s, since in 1442 he penned a treatise against the plague intended as advice to Doge Francesco Foscari. Moreover, he was known in Venice at least cursorily, for in 1405 he participated in the delegation that offered the city to Venice after the fall of the Carrara lords. Several of his medical treatises are extant. One of them, De febribus (1412), deals specifically with fevers. In this, he followed not only the tradition of the medical profession of the time but a family tradition as well. The first known Santa Sofia on the university’s medical faculty, a certain Niccolò (?–post-1351) was Bartolomeo’s great- grandfather. He wrote two books on fevers, now lost. Bartolomeo’s uncle, Marsiglio (c. 1338–1405), had his own contribution, Tractatus de febribus, a popular work published in Venice in 1514 and 1517. Fever was also the subject of a short treatise by Bartolomeo’s brother, Galeazzo, once a court physician in Vienna, who returned to Padua in 1407 and taught at the university until his death in 1427. Bartolomeo’s own work is not known in print but was circulated and evidently consulted elsewhere in Italy (Flor- ence, Milan) and outside the peninsula.31 In addition, Bartolomeo had in his possession Gentile da Foligno’s De febribus, yet another work of one of the premier physicians and theorists of the preceding generation.32 It appears that Gentile had known his ancestor, Niccolò, who had also been a pupil of Pietro d’Abano. The book may well have been in the family for generations, and there is little doubt that Bartolomeo must have known Marsiglio’s and Galeazzo’s writings on fever.33 Condensing the experience of generations of illustrious doctors specifically dealing with fevers, among other things, Bartolomeo was the best authority Piero could have

31 Tiziana Pesenti, Professori e promotori di medicina nello Studio di Padova dal 1405 al 1509: Repetorio bio-bibliographico (Padua: LINT, 1984), 178. 32 Gustavo Tanfani, “Una illustre famiglia di medici Padovani nel Medio Evo,” Rivista di storia delle scienze mediche e naturali 25 (1933), 97–112, at 108–9. 33 The connection between Gentile and Niccolo is suggested by Roger French, Canoni- cal Medicine: Gentile da Foligno and Scholasticism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), 49. 192 chapter nine hoped for. But Bartolomeo was old in 1447. He must have been in his mid- or late eighties and perhaps unable to attend to business any longer. The conclusion can be inferred from his consent to an act of sale, dated May 11, 1447, by which his son, also named Bartolomeo, handed over three medical books (one of them Gentile da Foligno’s De febribus) as partial payment toward the purchase of a house.34 A year later, in 1448 (or 1450 at the latest) Bartolomeo was not among the living.35 This leaves us with the second option, the younger Bartolomeo. In the fall of 1447, he was already an established practitioner. His medical career began in 1435, when his father and another prominent doctor, Antonio Cermisone, sponsored him. In 1446, he was already teaching at the university, where he stayed until 1464. He was lauded by the antiquarian scholars of Paduan medicine as an excellently educated youth, but whether this warrants the incunabulum’s praise of “solenissimo medico” is difficult to say. The above mentioned sale of medical books to another doctor just a few months before Piero sought his (or his father’s) help suggests that the younger Bartolomeo was less of a bibliophile than his father. Since he drew a good hundred ducats as a yearly stipend from his teaching appointment, he might not have practiced, or perhaps Gentile’s work was no longer indispensable for either his practicing or teaching. Given the derivative state of the account preserved in the incunabulum, it is not impossible that the compiler conflated the two Bartolomeos, ascribing to the son the fame of his father. Whichever the doctor, we can surmise the nature of the treatment fairly closely, taking our clues from the elder Bartolomeo’s treatise, as well as from the books on the subject he owned. Gentile da Foligno’s De febribus outlines the traditional approach. The treatise is an extended commentary on the first fen of the Fourth Book of Avicenna’s Canon and follows faithfully the Galenic model with the addition of several later authorities and Gentile’s own contributions. De febribus considers three kinds of fevers, ephemeral, putrid, and pestilential. All of them are cases of extraneous heat ascending into the heart and then spreading through the body via veins and arteries. Gentile has no special section on intermittents; he

34 Gustavo Tanfani, “Medizinische Bücher im Mittelalter (Beitrag zur Geschichte der paduanische Familie di Santa Sofia),” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte de Medizin, 26 (1933), 191–93. 35 Tanfani, “Una illustre familia,” 109. Tiziana Pesenti, Marsiglio Santasofia tra corti e università: la cariera di un “monarcha medicinae” del Trecento (Treviso: Antilia, 2003), cor- rects that to 1450, see her genealogy of the family between pages 130–31. the healing of piero de lodovico 193 discusses quartan fever within the branch of putrid fevers. Its cause is the ingestion of bad food or water that led to putrefaction affecting the humors; the quartan is the specific result of inflamed black bile. Gentile goes over the “signs” of the disease—quickened pulse, paroxysm, headache, blackened tongue, chills, tremors, changed urine color—and notes that the quartan is a relatively mild variety of fever, though a longer- lasting one. He distinguishes between the disposition of hotness and the matter causing it and, depending on the situation, advocates a different order of addressing the disease or its cause. His recommended treatment includes diet, phlebotomy, purgation, clysters to stimulate evacuation, ointments of various herbs, acid syrups, wine and vinegar mixtures, and sweet water and food, applied at different stages of the disease’s progression and therapy.36 While Gentile’s treatise contained a good deal of scholastic theory, Marsiglio’s, Galeazzo’s, and Bartolomeo’s works bear all signs of pragmatic, hands-on manuals for practitioners, focused on diagnosis and treatment. Like that of Gentile’s, Marsiglio’s tract is an extensive commentary on the first fen of the fourth book of Avicenna’s Canon.37 He skips, however, the first treatise on the definitions, kinds, and types of fevers and the section on “ephemeral” fevers. The work begins directly with the genus of putrid fevers, into which the quartan fever is included, mild and acute, and after a long section on different manners of purgation, evidently a key procedure of addressing putrid fevers, overviews general symptoms and side effects, and gets to concrete manners of treatment in a section on tertian fever. Quartan comes next, divided into a choleric, a phlegmatic, a melancholic, and a sanguinic variety, distinctions based on temperature and pulse. Each has its prescribed regimen. In cases of choleric quartan, for example, the first action prescribed is to bring down the heat and make patients comfortable by placing them in a cool room, followed by rubbing them with cooling agents and allowing them ample amounts of sleep with abstinence from sex, among other measures. Dietary rec- ommendations follow (bread of good wheat yes, hare meat, no, spinach, chicken broth, plums and cooked apples for fruit, sweetened syrups, etc.). In case of high fever, clysters should be applied as yet another mode of purgation. Sugary syrups with herbal concoctions figure large in the case

36 Gentile da Foligno, De febribus (Venice, 1514), esp. fols. 23–61; 106r–v on the symptoms of the quartan, 107 on its cure, and 111r on the food recommended to quartan patients. See also French, Canonical Medicine, passim. 37 On Marsiglio and his work see Pesenti, Marsiglio Santasofia, esp. 295–308. 194 chapter nine of sanguinic quartan. Phlegmatic quartan patients should avoid pure water and always have it adumbrated with mixtures; light white wine works as well.38 Galeazzo follows a similar plan, stresses the value of purgation, and dwells at length on the symptoms accompanying fevers and their treatment. He distinguishes between continuous and intermittent quartan, and then uses the same typology as Marsiglio to prescribe a diet and a rich regimen of medicinal mixtures for each kind within the four varieties based on the humors.39 Except for the remedies, which were proprietary for each doctor, Marsiglio and Galeazzo do not differ much in their treatment of the quartan. Bartolomeo himself did not stray from that tradition. Adhering to the same etiology of the illness, he divides the quartan into a continuous and a periodical variety and explains it with humoral putrefaction. Despite the tendency for useful scholastic distinctions such as that the “daily” fever is the one that attacks during the day and the “nightly” the one that comes at night, he does not offer originality in the treatment and goes for the usual light food and wine.40 The incunabulum’s hint that Piero suffered from nausea whether on full or empty stomach may refer precisely to a treatment including a dietary regimen to help him overcome the fever attacks. As ingenuous as the approaches of classical and medieval medicine were, before the advent of quinine, likely introduced in Venice in the mid-seventeenth century, malarial fevers resisted treatment by doctors. Fortunately, the conceptualization of quartan fever in favor since antiquity allowed for perfectly plausible non-natural approaches. As noted, while the Hip- pocratic corpus sought naturalistic solutions, it also referred to a spiritual principle informing the heat balance on a cosmic scale. Roman authors reinforced the idea of divine or supernatural (celestial or other) causality,

38 Marsilii de Sancta Sophia Patavini De febribus celebrissimus tractatus cum omnium accidentium cura novissime recognitus. Additis tribus solemnissimis tractatibus de febribus inferious descriptis: nunc primum in lucem editiis . . . Tractatus tres, videlicet Galeatii de Sancta Sophia De febribus cum cura accidentium. Ricardi Parisiensis De signis febrium. Antonii de Gradis Mediolanensis De febribus (Venice, 1514), chapters lxij–lxxj. Marsiglio wrote another, shorter commentary of the same fen, De pulsibus febrium, but it did not have the influence and wide reception of the long treatise, and is now known in only one manuscript, see Pesenti, Marsiglio Santasofia, 312–13. 39 Ibid, Galeazzo de Santa Sophia, De febribus, chapters xxv–xxxvij. 40 I am using the copy of De febribus in Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, MS Ash- burnham 217, 131v–156v, an early version made in the middle of the fifteenth century and thus the closest one to Piero’s treatment. The largest part of the treatise is dedicated to pestilential and morbid fevers. The quartan is discussed in short in terms of signs and treatment, see 138v–139r. the healing of piero de lodovico 195 especially for diseases with periodic regularity, the quartan being a perfect example. The “occult” forces setting the disease in motion in Galen’s notion concurred with that approach. This explains why popular remedies harkening back to an archaic mentality survived the advent of naturalistic medicine and were routinely used by Roman physicians. Sympathetic magic was practiced and prescribed, as were “treatments” involving incan- tations, amulets and artifacts operating on the principle of “contagion” to appropriate, assume, and carry away the disease. As the miracle with the daughter of Nicolo di Benvegnudo indicates, early fifteenth-century Venetians had recourse to such alternatives when canonical medicine failed them. A deeply rooted, overarching principle recalling the archaic and classical traditions of fever postulated a link between cure and the belief of the patient, be it superstition or proper religion, as well as cura- tive practices resting on the principles of similarity and contagion.41 As a faithful believer, when medicine failed him, it was logical for Piero to go straight to the Cross. Curiously, his decision fits neatly into the old folk and medical traditions. Roman magical cures, branded as pagan superstition as they were, involved only three human substances, one of them relics from crucifixion. Finger- or toenail clippings from a crucified man, nails from the cross, or a piece of the cord used in crucifixion were all powerful agents against malarial fevers. The early Christian tradition offers numerous cases of healings by Christ of what appear to have been intermittent malarial fevers.42 The fragment of the Cross was thus the perfect embodiment of a polyvalent artifact, synthesizing condensed archaic perceptions of the nature of disease, naturalistic medicine’s acknowledgement of occult causal forces beyond its powers, folk mentality operating on the magical principles of sympathy and contagion, and the ontological conceptualization of Christian medical theory. The relic was a hinge on which a number or overlapping realities were hung in a seamlessly interconnected array, and was capable of opening any one of them at the touch of appropriate action. Piero’s despair refers at once to the psychological state of a gravely ill man, on the one hand, and a theological condition, on the other. Reversely, it indicates the perturbed physical condition of “melancholy” caused by natural malfunctioning but perfectly curable

41 Laura Lane, “Malaria” passim. 42 Reinhard von Bendemann, “ ‘Many-Coloured Illnesses’ (Mark 1.34): On the Signifi- cance of Illness in New Testament Therapy Narratives,” in Michael Labahn and Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, eds., Wonders Never Cease: The Purpose of Narrating Miracle Stories in the New Testament and its Religious Environment (London: T & T Clark, 2006), 100–124. 196 chapter nine through belief alone. Piero offered prayer, the sanctioned typological equivalent of pagan incantation. His candle touched the Cross to assume its powers through sympathetic contagion; with the powers present in the candle he took to bed, the powers overwhelmed and defeated the disease when it reared its head that night. The multidimensional interpretation of reality inherent in the conceptualizations of disease depended on the symbiosis of Christian ontology and physical naturalism, which allowed the relic to smoothly transition efficacy between contexts. In Piero’s case, the quartan extended the latter’s range in a crucial way, since from ancient times it operated within a cultural paradigm that had specific and far-reaching implications in the Venetian social and political environments. There had been an ancient tradition in popular lore and natural science to tie the quartan fever to that most impressive of animals, the lion. The lion, it was asserted, suffered from quartan fever, which it sought to cure by feeding on the flesh of apes. The association gave rise to the archaic Greek belief that lion-associated artifacts assist against the quartan. Heracles, for example, wearing the lion-hide, cured those afflicted by the disease, as did his statues. According to Pliny the Elder, the eating of a lion’s heart would cure quartan fever. In ancient Egyptian lore one could cure oneself of quartan as the lion did, by consuming ape meat. The symbolism of the association may rest on astronomic phenomena related to the seasonality of the quartan. The Greeks and the Romans knew Regulus, the chief star of Leo, as the Lion’s Heart, and it came to dominate when the fever’s high season was beginning to end.43 In any case, the topos of the lion suffering from quartan was a scientific fact ascribed to Pseudo-Aristotle’s Secret of Secrets and, after that, a host of commentators and encyclopedists such as Pliny, Solinus, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus Maurus carried it on to the early Middle Ages. Thomas of Cantimpré’s great compendium Liber de natura rerum, composed 1230–1248, made it a fixture of late medieval and early Renaissance science.44 As the postulate filtered into later works, however, an important change occurred. The ancient tradition did not explicitly explain the cause of the lion’s affliction, nor did Thomas, who merely restated the content of his sources. Bartholomeus Anglicus seems

43 Several examples are collected in Lawrence P. Brown, “The Cosmic Madness,” The Open Court 33 (1919), 610–33, at 630. 44 Helmut Boese, ed., Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum: Editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos. Part 1. Text. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), 141, Book IV, Chapter LIV, De leone, ll. 106–8. the healing of piero de lodovico 197 to be the first to imply a connection between the quartan fever and the lion’s fierceness.45 Later medieval writers, for their part, disregarding rational critics such as Albert the Great, not only accepted that the fever was natural to the lion (as Petrarch and Torquato Tasso remarked in passing), but moralized the association as well.46 Basing themselves on the con- ventional premise that moral failings were just as impactful in producing diseases as were natural causes, they asserted that as the lion was a fierce beast and a proud one, the quartan was needed to sap his strength and tame his pride. The Dominican Philip of Ferrara (died ca. 1350), who spent 1307–1308 at his order’s convent in Venice, neatly sums up the theory in his Liber introductorius loquendi in mensa. If superfluous food remains in the stomach, he stated, it would affect the melancholy (the black bile) and cause quartan fever. But one should pay attention that “the lion has all the time quartan fever in order to tame his ferocity, that is, to temper his irascibility and pride. As Galen says similarly, among diverse people diseases correct diverse faults (vicia) . . . Pay attention, that as the disease follows its course, it intensifies as the sun gets farther, as is clear in quartan fever, and when the sun gets nearer the disease abates . . . In the same manner it is possible to speak of the ruinous sickness of the soul that [is cured?] by the sun of justice, that is, Christ.”47 In other words, although resulting from perfectly natural conditions, the quartan was also the principal coun- termeasure of pride, the cardinal vice and cause of all sin. Such moraliza- tion of the quartan does not, in fact, depart from the ancient polyvalence of the figure of the lion. In late medieval and Renaissance imagery, the lion stands on the one hand for Christ and the Church triumphant, who devour sin, and on the other for pride. Simians, the lion’s dietary regimen when in fever, were the traditional late medieval embodiment of that sin.48

45 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, Book XVIII, Chapter 65, see Michael C. Seymour, Bartholomaeus Anglicus and His Encyclopedia (London: Variourum, 1992), 208–32. 46 In a letter to Boccaccio Petrarch complained that fever afflicted him as often as the lion and the goat, that is, all the time, see his Seniles, II, 1 see Francesco Petrarca, Le senili, ed. Guido Martellotti (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 14, 16. 47 Quoted after Joseph Ziegler, “Fourteenth-Century Instructions for Bedside Pastoral Care,” in Miri Rubin, ed., Medieval Christianity in Practice (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 103–8, at 104. 48 See for examples Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 3–4, 213–18, and 15 for Thomas de Cantimpré and his sources; Boudien van den Abeele, “Bestiaires encyclopédiques moralisés. Quelques suc- cédanés Thomas de Cantimpré et Barthélemy l’Anglais,” Reinardus 7 (1994), 109–228. 198 chapter nine

Quartan therefore, as an outcome of the lion’s pride, forced the beast to suppress sin and vice, a polyvalent illness symbolic in its own right. That imagery and symbolism was most relevant in Venice, the City of the Lion (of San Marco). Learned tradition, theology, and popular lore habitually connected the lion and fever in the vein of the moralistic symbolism. “The lion in fever” was the customary idiom reflecting the republic’s political and military troubles and the quartan as the just deserts for one’s pride and irascibility was a folklore staple as a proverb recorded by the antiquarians in 1610 indicates.49 It is against that background that we should seek the reasons for the singling out and recording of the story of Piero’s quartan, the failure of his physician, the patient’s despair, and his healing by the relic from among the many miracles the Cross had effected. “Lion,” “quartan,” “Venice,” and the Cross were all too thickly enmeshed in clusters of habitual political and ideological significations to limit the implication of their connections in the story to the level of individual suffering, physical disease, and existential particularity. The specifics of the links postulated between these categories by the accounts of the miracle leave little doubt of its function as a political commentary and a means to fashion a new order of ideological reality. Piero’s health was the health of the body politic; his fever was a sign of a dangerous disequilibrium of the social and political forces that shaped Venetian society in the 1440s. For many centuries, the “fevers” of the lion of San Marco were mostly seaborne. Venice was predominantly a maritime power expanding its commercial and political presence in the Mediterranean. Water, and what floated on it, was the source of the republic’s prosperity, as well as its greatest anxieties. Earth, or territorial possessions on the mainland, were considered only to the extent to which they facilitated sea-oriented, Mediterranean commercial expansion. It was a balance of priorities that ensured the economic, social, and political stability of the republic. In the early 1400s, however, a process began which gravely affected the equilibrium of the body politic of the Venetian lion. The secession of the

49 See for example Allesandro Vianoli’s reference to “il Veneto leone travagliato della febbre frequente del turco” derived from his sixteenth-century sources, quoted after Giuseppe Cappelletti, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia dal suo principio sino a suo fine (Venice: Antonelli, 1850), vol. 5–6, 254; and the collection of a Venetian Dialogi Piacevoli of 1610 in Niccolò Tommaseo: Rivista mensile delle tradizioni populari d’Italia, ed. Giovanni Giannini, vol. 11–12 (1905), 140: “Al leone bene sta la quartana,” with the meaning that a ferocious husband is well served by a quarrelsome spouse. See now also Francesco Zorzi Muazzo, Raccolta de’ proverbii detti, sentenze, parole, e frazi veneziane, arrichita d’alcuni esempii ed istorielle, ed. Franco Crevatin (Venice: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 2008). the healing of piero de lodovico 199

Carrara lords of Padua from their Venetian alliance in 1404 and Venice’s response set off a train of events that, in less than a decade, transformed the republic into a major territorial power with substantial holdings to the northeast, in Friuli, and to the west, along the Po in the direction of Milan. The city on the lagoon, previously aloof of mainland affairs and focused on securing its maritime domain and Mediterranean empire, began absorbing land at a quickening pace. In 1425, an alliance with Flor- ence threw Venice in the anti-Milanese camp. From that point on war with Milan and expansion in Lombardy went on without respite. The new engagement was supported by a broad consensus among the governing class, reservations put aside. Still, for the members of the elite, patricians and top citizens alike, vested in the maritime trade, land acquisitions (or increase in the primary element of “earth”) upset the balance of priorities and threatened the economic and political wellbeing of Venice. According to a recent re-evaluation of the evidence, especially of Doge Mocenigo’s three speeches recorded by Marino Sanudo under 1423, the debate does not seem to have been especially acute in the first decades of the terraferma expansion.50 Gradually, the republic came to adjust to the new territorial realities. It was a slow process, however, and any setback on the terraferma front provoked frequent, violent shakeups of the status quo that revived the debate over the balance of interests.51 The late 1440s mark the first point in time when territorial expansion generated clear tensions in Venetian society. In the summer of 1447, the Venetian offensive against the old enemy since the 1420s, the Duchy of Milan, was at its peak. On August 13, just as he had succeeded in inducing Sforza to abandon his service to Venice, and was plotting a new regional alliance against the republic, Filippo Maria Visconti died of the plague. Upon the news of his death, the Milanese reacted immediately, proclaim- ing Milan a republic under the patronage of St Ambrose. Lodi and Piacenza threw off Milanese sovereignty and placed themselves under Venice. With full control of the Adda and Po valleys, Venetian troops encroached upon

50 Romano, The Likeness of Venice, 28–34; Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton, Sto- ria della Repubblica di Venezia: Dalla Guerra di Chioggia alla riconquista della terraferma (Turin: UTET, 1986), 3; Doris Stöckly, Le systeme de l’incanto des galées du marché à Venise ( fin xiiie–milieu xve siècle) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1995), 328–30. 51 For an overview of the territorial expansion see Michael E. Mallett, “La conquista della terraferma,” in Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, eds., Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima. Vol. IV. Il Rinascimento. Politica e cultura (Rome: Enciclope- dia, 1996), 181–244, and Alfredo Viggiano, “Il dominio da terra: politica e istituzioni,” ibid., 529–78. 200 chapter nine

Milan. What seemed a fortuitous turn of affairs, however, ended in disaster. Gobbling up too much land in Lombardy did not sit well with the Milanese and clearly riled other Italian powers. On August 30, the Ambro- sian Republic allied itself with Francesco Sforza, who immediately began a counteroffensive toward Piacenza. Traditional Venetian allies, such as the Medici, warned that the republic on the lagoon was overreaching. The debate on the territorial expansion of the terraferma, which had been muted in the beginning, gained new life. More importantly, the Vene- tian ruling class appears to have split. As Dennis Romano has recently indicated, the hawkish party of expansion headed by Doge Foscari met with opposition led by younger members of some of the most prominent houses, among them the humanist Francesco Barbaro, Pasquale Malipi- ero, and Jacopo Marcello. Their opposition was justified when in Novem- ber 1447, and then again in July and September 1448, Francesco Sforza, now hired as a captain-general of Milan, crushed the Venetian forces at Piacenza, Casalmaggiore, and Caravaggio. There had been setbacks before, in the 1420s and 1430s, but nothing compared to these defeats. Worry and despair, or “melancholy” as Dolfin put it, descended upon the city.52 A bout of “fever” had seized the lion. In humoral theory’s terms, its cause was excess of earth. Adding to the disaster was the discovery that nobles of the Donato, Venier, Morosini, and Pisani houses, following in the steps of Doge Foscari’s son Jacopo, had cultivated ties with Sforza just as he was about to break with Venice. The danger was exacerbated by the rising tensions between the exceedingly wealthy elite seeking control of all levers of power and the poorer nobles who sought alleviation of their woes in administrative positions on the terraferma, as well as by the forming of political factions within the nobility. The ruling class was clearly seized by the social malaise of corruption, factionalism, and disregard for the republic’s critical interests.53 If that was the political etiology of the quartan as a symptom of sys- temic trouble in 1447, and if Piero’s case was its condensed expression in the human body, which of the available cures, magic, medicine, or religion, would be the most effective? In the profoundly Christian and devout context of the miracle, magic (even of the “white” variety) had to

52 Romano, The Likeness of Venice, 209–11, citing Zorzi Dolfin, Chronica, BNM, Ms. It. Cl. VII, 794 (8503), 412r. 53 Romano, The Likeness of Venice, 201–3. the healing of piero de lodovico 201 be ruled out.54 Of the remaining two, medicine too appears inadequate to the task. In conceptual terms, Piero’s ailment resulted from the mixing of incompatible substances (fresh and salty waters) and the excess of a principal element, earth. Furthermore, fever was a conservative force restoring the original balance to the afflicted body. Doctors, as we have seen, sought to return the body to its customary balance, above all by purging the dangerous, excess matter. That, however, was not a treatment that could have been applied to the Venetian body politic in the late 1440s. The republic had absorbed too much of the principal element to regurgitate it. At that point, the only issue was how to assimilate and integrate it properly, in political and cultural terms of control and self- image. The call was for equilibrium, a key operative concept of the new local and Italian reality, which Venice had partly engendered and partly been forced into with the need to at least counter the Milanese expansion. That much was intuitively sensed by Francesco Barbaro in his opposition to unrestrained attacks on Milan in the volatile days of the late summer of 1447.55 In the narrative logic of the miracle account, to allow medical treatment to cure Piero in such circumstances would imply first that there had indeed been such an imbalance, that it was strictly internal to the Venetian body politic, and that it needed addressing. The quartan fever was a mild and nonlethal ailment but a symptom of discord nonetheless. Second, to return to the original state of being would have meant taking a position for restoring the status quo of an exclusively maritime state. Nei- ther acknowledgement would have benefited the community as a whole. The solution through miracle, the last available option, emerges as the only one acceptable. It was doubly beneficial. To begin with, it allowed for the elimination of natural and internal causality. It was not Venice’s fault that imbalance occurred. The agent of discord between its constitu- ent parts was imposed on it by an external force. Moreover, miraculous healing left the condition of the healed body wide open for interpretation. It may have been returned to its original healthy state untransformed. If so, Venice had been strong enough to deal with trouble to begin with. It also may have been changed for the better. It was known that once

54 For examples of what can be termed “white magic” for cure of quartan fever in the so-called Mass of St Sigismund see Faith Wallis, ed., Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 68–9. 55 As testified in two of his letters of the second half of 1447, see Giovanni Pillinini, “L’umanista veneziano Francesco Barbaro e l’origine della politica di equilibrio,” Archivio Veneto, 5th Series, 72 (1963), 23–27. 202 chapter nine cured, a sufferer from quartan fever was not afflicted again, a certain immunity or resistance having remained with the body. Whichever the case, the intervention of the Cross, while creating a social consensus (the body was now healthy), offered the possibility of multiple interpretations with no cultural consensus, something that medical treatment with its clear-cut diagnosis and rigid rational and causal conclusions simply precluded. Venice in the 1440s was anything but unanimous as to its condition and direction as a body politic. To accept the scientific, medical solution to the affliction would have meant to cut options and commit to a single solution. The intervention of the Cross eliminated that forced narrowing of options by righting the balance and producing a healthy, and likely healthier, body while obfuscating both the possibility that there had been an internal imbalance in the first place and its potential causes and results. Piero’s malady was thus as much a real ailment as the leading citizens’ metaphoric commentary on the expansion in the terraferma, a different tack on the tension that had surfaced in 1443 with the miracle of Giacomo de Salis’ son. The imperial growth on the peninsula meant involvement for the elite citizens as it did for the patricians; the cittadini, too, formulated a position on foreign affairs. For a man like Piero, if he continued his father’s business orientation to seaborne trade, the question of “sea or land,” too clean-cut as it might have been in the 1440s, must have been highly relevant. Just as the rise of the de Lodovichi signaled that a family could carve out a domain for themselves in a prestigious citywide institution by their own effort, notwithstanding external hindrances, so the painting executed by Gentile Bellini made the same statement on behalf of the scuola. Bellini’s canvass deviates radically from the normative “eyewitness” style, which he so painstakingly endorsed in all of his work, including the two earlier pieces for San Giovanni’s, and calls for an explanation. In his visual commentary of this miracle, Bellini chose to focus on the moment of Piero’s prayer to the Cross. As it occurred on the first Sunday of the month, the Cross is indoors, on the high altar of a church. The church depicted, however, is not the building where the supplication would have taken place, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Bellini appears to have constructed an imaginary edifice rather than depicting the actual church. His departure from the “eyewitness” accuracy that characterizes most of the paintings in the cycle has been explained with the strained relations between the confraternity and the priors of San Giovanni, members of the Badoer clan. In the 1490s, unknown reasons caused the prior Alvise Badoer to obstruct the scuola’s use of the church. Both parties sought the the healing of piero de lodovico 203 support of civic and ecclesiastical authorities in Venice and Rome, but the controversy dragged on. In 1494 the issue came before the patriarch. With a sentence of March 24, 1494, he supported Badoer, in the sense that the scuola was not permitted to use the church of San Giovanni to build a new chapel, but the scuola’s chaplain could say mass at the altar of the confraternity. That of course did not sort things out, and frictions continued, with conflicts recorded for 1499 and 1514.56 Thoroughly frustrated, already in 1491 the confraternal officials sought a radical solution, peti- tioning the Council of Ten to allow the construction of a new church of their own. Bellini’s painting, designed soon after the idea was conceived, reflects the scuola’s intentions. Rather than affirming the confraternity’s dependence on the Badoer, the depiction dissociated the miracle from the actual structure the Badoer controlled and placed it in a space designed and virtually “owned” by the scuola.57 These being the facts of the matter, in a typological sense Bellini’s church, the confraternity leadership’s vision for themselves, and the de Lodovichi’s trajectory, then still at inception but no doubt representative of the citizen elite’s aspirations, overlap. They converge on the same notion of shaping a new identity through the carv- ing out of a new domain for themselves through their own effort, independence, shedding past associations, and implying rank though cultural sophistication. Excepting the issue of independence, in the decades to come state policies designed to fashion the citizen elite into a social class would expect just that from them.

56 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 34 Catastico 1323–1495 (compiled 1550), f. 291v–292r–v, 293v. 57 The identification of the space in the picture and the explanation of Bellini’s choices are made by John Bernasconi, “Topographical Aberrations in the cycle of the Miracles of the Cross from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice,” in Judith Bryce and Doug Thompson, eds., Moving in Measure: Essays in Honour of Brian Moloney (Hull: Hull University Press, 1989), 83–5.

Chapter Ten

Maritime Empire, Mobility, and Cross-Cultural Identity: The Miracle of Antonio Rizzo

On December 14, 1461, a Candia-bound ship belonging to the Filomati shipping house cleared Venice on its way to Crete. On board the vessel were a Venetian cittadino and member of San Giovanni’s, Antonio Rizzo, and his family. Rizzo held the position of chancellor of the Archipelago and was on his way to the Cyclades, the residence of his employer, the duke of Naxos. The ship sailed the traditional course, crossing over to the eastern Adriatic and then following the shore southwards. The season, however, was unusual. Unarmed cargo vessels did not normally leave port before mid-February. Sailing out in December was highly abnormal and outright dangerous. The timing suggests urgency, if not emergency. The journey began with good weather but then sirocco and levante caught up with them at Budua and pushed them back northwards until they reached the harbor of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). On the night of January 1, 1462, the wind pattern reversed. The ship was hit by grego and tramontana with fierce gusts that did not allow them to look against the wind, much less leave harbor.1 Their three anchors lost hold and the rudder touched the bottom three times. The ship began to drift to the rocky shallows. Rizzo, who reported the developments in a letter to the confraternity, saw the shore a stone’s throw away. The frightened men on board supplicated the Virgin in two of her representations, the Cretan Madonna and the Madonna of Loreto, but to no avail. Having lost hope, they prepared to abandon the doomed vessel. Rizzo rushed to lead his wife, sons, and servants on deck

1 The constellation of the winds as well as their sequence and duration are typical for the season in the area. The sirocco is south-easterly, warm and humid. The tramontana is a type of bora, a cold, dry, violent northerly. It is produced by the development of low-level jet stream in the tail end of a cold front moved over Italy into the Adriatic and Croatia over the Dinaric Alps by a cyclone. During the winter season the tramontana is the preva- lent wind. A spell of sirocco is normally succeeded by tramontana. Grego (“the wind from Greece”) or gregale is strong, cold north-easterly, mainly winter wind. It blows over the Ionian Sea and usually lasts two-three days but frequently reaches gale force, accompanied by rain. Levante is another variation of bora, a strong, moist, cool easterly or north-easterly current, frequent in spring and late autumn, lasting into December. For a summary see Maria del Carmen Llasat, “Storms and Floods,” in Jamie C. Woodward, ed., The Physical Geography of the Mediterranean, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 531–2, and the wind table summary on page 78. 206 chapter ten and to collect his papers. As he was gathering his belongings, he came across two candles stashed away and remembered that they were from the scuola and had touched the Cross. He promptly lit one of them before an icon of the Virgin, then went back up on the deck and told the captain and crew to proffer one last vow to the Cross and to trust God and the Vir- gin. The crew agreed. Short as the supplication was, the effect was immediate. The anchors, which had been dragging on the bottom, caught hold again. The ship steadied and withstood another two days and nights of buffeting as the wind continued to rage. Finally the storm abated and they continued on their way to Candia, there to disembark and fulfill their vow. Rizzo proceeded on his journey and we don’t hear of him after that. Earlier, however, as soon as the danger had passed and the ship readied to resume its journey to Candia, Antonio Rizzo sat down to relate the miracle to the confraternity. Dated January 5, 1462, in Ragusa, his letter must have reached the brethren soon thereafter, but remained unaccounted for in the confraternal archive. Rizzo was certain that his deliverance was the result of a supernatural intervention and urged the brothers to insert it into the list of miracles already performed, but his account was not incorporated in the dossier at the time the incunabulum was printed and the miracle was not included in the paintings’ program. It was printed in the 1590 edition, but when was it added to the cycle is a matter of conjecture. The scuola already had two miracles with sea storms and at least one of them was available as a painting as well. There is one tentative terminus post quem, the endowment fund made by a Rizzo clan member that the confraternity absorbed in full by the middle of the sixteenth century. It may have served as an incentive. As it was with the earlier miracles, several factors were at work in the making of the cycle. Besides a concrete need of the confraternity to highlight itself in the Venetian devotional landscape, there had to have been men on the banca who would relate to the miracle. On the first count, the project with the meeting room’s elaborate coffered ceiling had proved expensive and it was in the making for decades with periodic calls for fundraising. It was probably the cause for the request for permission to enroll thirty extra members that the confraternity sought from the Council of Ten in May 1457, with the justification that it needed their entrance fees to finance an important, if unspecified, ongoing project.2 The request was granted, but the sum thus collected failed

2 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 200 lists the thirty new members; Wuthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 213. the miracle of antonio rizzo 207 to see the project to completion. Another spur came in June 1460, when the great council authorized the banca to begin collection of donations for that purpose from among the brothers. Despite serious subventions recorded in November 1460, which raised about a third of the sum, there was need for more and the fundraising likely extended into the next year.3 Chancellor Rizzo must have been cognizant of the funding needs. On the second count, the tenor of the chancellor’s letter suggests close relation with the men on the banca and a standing in the confraternity above the common cut. His stripe and family history in San Giovanni’s justified it. Rizzo was a widespread cognomen in fifteenth-century Venice and it is unlikely that all families bearing it were related. They are documented in all six districts.4 A particularly large group of Rizzo clustered in the district of Castello, in the parish of San Martin. There are reasons to think that they belonged to the same large clan. In the first quarter of the fifteenth century several of them were members of San Giovanni’s. At the time of the miracle there was only one Antonio Rizzo, son of Giovanni, listed in the roster composed in 1478, with a later-hand addition that he had passed away in 1482.5 There are no reasons to doubt that he was the chancellor of the miracle. His close family had long roots in the confraternity and with time was to prove generous in endowing it. Chancellor Rizzo’s grandfather, Giacomo, had joined sometime in the beginning of the century and served at least one term as deacon in 1427. On March 3 of

3 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 72, f. 230 and Reg. 140, ff. 173r–v; Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 208–209; see also G.M. Urbani de Gheltof, Guida storico-artistica della Scuola di. S. Giovanni Evangelista in Venezia (Venice: Nodari, 1895), 11–12. 4 The acts of just one notary, Odorico Tabarini, contain references for several Rizzo: Baltazar Rizzo son of Giovanni, drapier, Santa Maria Mater Domini, 1431, ASV CIN, b. 213, Protocol I, f. 30r, 49r, 56r; Pietro Rizzo tamisarius, 1438, idem, f. 10r; Giovanni Rizzo son of Giacomo, no parish, idem, f. 11r; Antonio and Paolo Rizzo, brothers, the one residing in San Pantalon the other in Santa Maria Nuova, idem, Protocol IV, f. 6r; Antonio Rizzo of San Proculo, Idem, Protocol V, f. 38r; Paolo Rizzo of San Silvestro, 1434, idem., f. 75v; Protocol V, Paolo Rizzo son of Mafeo of Santa Marina, 1433, f. 112v. A short sample of other casual finds: Giovanni Rizzo, son of Clement Rizzo, San Martin, will December 28, 1469, ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, b. 48, filza 1461–1469; Paolo Rizzo son of Mafeo of San Martin emancipated his son Antonio in 1425, ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, f. 11r; Antonio Rizzo, cleric of San Marco, 1432, ASV CIN, b. 212, act of Nicolo Gruato; ibid, Giovanni Rizzo son of Giacomo of San Giovanni Nuovo makes a promissory note, ibid., act of Nicolo Grison; etc. 5 ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 12, Elenco fratelli, no pagination, composed in 1478. Antonio Rizzo che fu Giovanni is in the original hand. A later hand had added 1498 against the name in the manner dead brother are indicated, but there is a note of still another hand on the side of the name indicating January 1482. 208 chapter ten the same year, Giacomo’s younger son Francesco became a member too.6 In August 1427, Giacomo, a not really rich but comfortably well-off silk dealer, made his will and left to the confraternity, among other things such as ten processional wax candles (doppieri) weighing two-and-a-half pounds each and a small sum for his funeral, a good-sized bequest in real estate and bonds in case his bloodline were to wane. Several generations later, in 1548, when more property had accumulated around the gift, the wife of his distant descendant Zaccaria, Marietta Rizzo, accomplished Giacomo’s design and bequeathed the entire estate she owned to the scuola.7 Neither Giacomo’s sons, Giovanni and the younger Francesco, nor Giovanni’s son Antonio served on the banca; it is understandable for Antonio if he was away in the Aegean. The generation after, however, the chancellor, including his offspring and possibly his brother’s sons, were well represented, although it appears that only one of Antonio’s sons made it into the leadership: a certain Giacomo Rizzo, who appears as a deacon in 1474–1475 and became guardian da matin in 1478–1479. Another Rizzo, Andrea, stepped in as deacon for Castello in 1482 and in 1484, and served as scribe in 1487–1488. Three more Rizzo are recorded in the mid-1490s: Andrea “dal bancho,” Piero, and Francesco, who did consecutive deacon’s

6 Giacomo Rizzo was the half-year deacon who took part in a deal that San Giovanni’s banca struck in August 1427 with Alvise de Pradis son of Cristoforo of San Silvestro, ASV CIN, b. 132, Marciliano di Naresi, paper protocol, f. 32v, dated August 9, 1427. For Francesco, ASV, SG SGE, Reg. 72, under admissions for 1427. Besides Antonio, ASV SG SGE, Reg. 12, unnumbered lists of brothers, has Antonio Rizzo dalle Telle of San Polo, who passed away 1481 or 1483 (again there is no agreement between the two notes attached to the name); Donato Rizzo of San Martino, who too passed away in 1481, Giacomo Rizzo, armiraio, who was admitted in 1441 and died in 1484, and a Matio Rizzo whose parish is not indicated. 7 A transcript of Giacomo’s will in the vernacular is in the documentation of the commissaria that devolved to San Giovanni’s with Marietta Rizzo’s bequest, ASV SG SGE, Reg. 317, filza D, f. 1r–3r. For Marietta Rizzo’s will see ibid., f. 5r, July 16, 1548. Giacomo’s will was made by Rolandino de Bernardi, active 1406–1431, but he had passed away before Giacomo died and there was no one to publish it. The original, which would have been in de Bernardi’s registers (ASV ANT, b. 553, or CIN b. 24), is not extant. The transcript was made by a later notary, Domenico dalle Fornaci, archdeacon of San Pietro in Castello and cancelliere inferiore, on June 2, 1447, as official publication of the will. Giacomo appointed as executors his wife Maddalena and his sons Francesco and Giovanni, Antonio’s father. Giacomo lists two houses, a bigger and a smaller one, and their furnishing that were to be liquidated and turned into bonds, plus direct gift of bonds in the State Loans Office worth a hundred ducats in gold for his daughter Maria, mal marida, that were all unalienable by his progeny and were to go to San Giovanni’s in case of the bloodline’s failure, as it eventually happened. Giacomo self-identifies as sirico, directly translated as “dalla seta” and habitually employed as professional moniker by silk dealers. On the Venetian silk industry in the period see Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore and London: John’s Hopkins University Press, 2000). the miracle of antonio rizzo 209 terms each for Santa Croce, Cannaregio, and San Marco between 1495 and 1497. Given their area of responsibility and the tendency for hereditary involvement of a family strictly so defined, one or more of them may have been from the same stem of the clan as Chancellor Rizzo but not his direct offspring.8 Piero, for example, may have belonged to a large Rizzo family in San Martin that in 1471 numbered three men, themselves and their brother Giovanni, and five sisters.9 At that point, the Rizzo disappear from the executive body. The cognomen reappears in 1528, when another Anto- nio Rizzo did a term as deacon for an unspecified district; yet another Rizzo, Augustin, served in the same capacity in 1538. As the confraternity stopped recording the officials’ parish and their district of responsibility, it is not clear to which stem of the Rizzo the latter two belonged. In sum, the Rizzo maintained a presence on the banca but they were a very large clan and possibly a cluster of loosely and collaterally related groups. The ascendance of the San Martin family of Chancellor Rizzo’s may have ended in the late 1480s, before the confraternity’s painting program was set in motion in earnest, the incunabulum had been printed, and the Rizzo endowment received. After Giacomo’s and Andrea’s terms they served exclusively as deacons, which may also explain why the miracle with Antonio was not immediately inserted in the dossier. The Rizzo of San Martin were an imposing clan nonetheless and their absence from the scuola’s governing body in the 1490s does not detract from their reputation.10 The chancellor of the miracle belonged to a branch of an elite citizen group whose members had already taken

8 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 73, Elenco banche 1465–1690, f. 10v, 11r, 14r, for Giacomo Rizzo, 18r, 20v, 23v, 24r for Andrea Rizzo, and Antonio Rizzo is recorded on the un-paginated section of the register and without indication for which district he did his deaconship. On March 22, 1495 Andrea Rizzo “dal bancho” appears as deacon for Santa Croce, ibid., f. 31r, and on the following year Piero Rizzo did his term for Cannaregio, ibid., f. 32r. Andrea “dal bancho” and Piero Rizzo were most likely not from the same stem of the clan, if they were related at all. 9 The family is known through the will of one of the sisters, Franceschina who, being childless, named and left small bequests to every single sibling, the sisters Polisena, Lucrezia, Isabeta, and Lucia, and the brothers, Giacomo, Piero and Giovanni, and their offspring and to one collateral relative, Andea Rizardo and his son Francesco, see ASV ANT, b. 1238, # 274, dated February 27, 1471, notary Tomaso Tomei. Franceschina notes that her husband, Policreto Cortese, a long-term official of San Giovanni’s, willed to be buried in the Dominican’s church, and she willed to be laid to rest there as well. 10 In 1429 one of the Rizzo of San Martin, Antonio son of Maffeo, made a real estate deal with Leonardo Mocenigo and Beto Donato and the transaction had to be approved by other clan members (one of them, Giovanni Rizzo son of Giacomo, the father of Chancel- lor Rizzo) who might have stemmed from the same patriarch Maffeo, ASV CIN, b. 190, filza Enrico Salomon, parchment sheet # 22. 210 chapter ten governmental positions in the fourteenth century. As deacon, Giacomo took part in deals of the banca with outside parties while Paolo Rabia was vicar.11 It is difficult to establish the rank of the Rizzo stem that joined the confraternity but a branch of the larger Rizzo group had a close connection to the Vendramin clan. In 1405 Zaccaria Vendramin, the son of Andrea the guardian grande, appointed as chief executor of his will a certain Antonio Rizzo of Santa Fosca, son of Andrea Rizzo of San Cas- sian, and left him fifty ducats bequest.12 In their turn, Luca and Andrea Vendramin, sons of Zaccaria’s brother Bartolomeo and the guardian’s grandsons, the latter the future doge, were appointed executors of the will of Antonio Rizzo in 1417 alongside his wife Thadea and his son Mateo.13 Since the brothers were barely adult at the time, the appointment must have been for reasons of family relation. There were Rizzo in another of Vendramin’s neighborhoods, the parish of Santa Fosca. Francesco, his son Zaccaria, and the latter’s nephew Antonio Rizzo are documented there in 1439.14 That Rizzo family was close to a branch of the Contarini, but was affiliated with another of the great confraternities, Santa Maria della Misericordia. Besides such illustrious connections, men of San Martin’s Rizzo branch continued to serve the republic during the next centuries and are attested to in various administrative and notarial capacities from Chancellor Antonio’s time until well into the seventeenth century.15 A close cousin of Chancellor Antonio belonged to a branch that frequently intermarried with the nobility, taking da Mosto, Molin, and Grimani wives for three generations.16 Antonio’s sons Giacomo, Giovanni, and Francesco

11 ASV CIN, b. 132, Marciliano di Naresi, paper protocol, f. 32v, dated August 9, 1427. 12 ASV ANT, b. 575, # 722. Antonio Rizzo of Santa Fosca is confirmed as chief executor of Zaccaria’s will in a note of Enrico Salomon in which he acknowledged the receipt of funds from Zaccaria’s estate, ASV CIN, b. 190, parchment register 1399–1412, no foliation, dated February 18, 1405. 13 ASV CIN, b. 132, loose parchment leaf dated June 12, 1417, notary Donato de Natale. The document registers an appearance before the Guidici del Mobile in which the claimant, a certain Nicolo Sturion of San Gervasio contested the estate of Antonio Rizzo and the respondents were the executors of the will, Antonio’s wife Thadea, his son Mateo, and the two Vendramin. 14 ASV CIN, b. 148, notary Tomaso Paroni, loose parchment leaf # 28, will of Zaccaria Rizzo dated July 5, 1439. 15 In 1425 for example, Antonio Rizzo of San Martino was emancipated, ASV CIN, Mis- cellanea notai diversi, b. 32, f. 11r. He would have been a good fit but the name of his father was Paolo. 16 Tassini, Cittadinanze veneziane, f. 80a, who had composed a large and convoluted stem of the Rizzo he knew, lists an Antonio Rizzo, son of Giovanni, son of Giacomo, who died in 1482, and indicates a will for his grandfather Giacomo in 1437. Tassini does not mention where he obtained the date of Antonio’s death, but the coincidence with Rizzo the miracle of antonio rizzo 211 each served, respectively, in the ducal chancellery, as a scribe with the Beccaria, and as a notary with the Messeteria.17 Giovanni Rizzo, presbyter and archdeacon of Venice, was cancellarius in the Cancelleria Inferiore in 1463.18 Chancellor Rizzo of the miracle must have been a notary himself. It went with the job, and in the first night of the storm he was about to collect his writing case when he spotted the candles. Independent information about him is uncertain. If Antonio was the son of the one attested Giovanni Rizzo of San Martin who got emancipated by his father Giacomo in 1429, his father had to make do quite modestly until his portion of Giacomo’s estate devolved to him. Giovanni was granted the right to buy, sell, and trade his possessions (which weren’t much, given his father’s will from two years earlier) as he saw fit and received a gift of the woolen and linen clothes on his back, a bed, a curtain, a pair of linen sheets, and an icon of the Virgin.19 Devotion to the Virgin’s images was common as already noted, but the last reference is indicative. Among the Rizzo men with the first name Antonio, Chancellor Rizzo could be identical with one Antonio Rizzo of San Martin who had a will drawn on December 10, 1461, a piece that offers precious circumstantial clues about the testator. It is short, hastily written in form and content, witnessed but evidently designed as a guide for the notary to write a proper document if need be. It fits the mood of a man who would embark on a dangerous journey just four days later. Antonio appointed executors, among them his wife Elizabetta, and willed to be buried in San Giovanni and Paolo, where his father rested. The last reference links him to the Rizzo family who sat on the banca in the 1470s and 1480s and also favored the Domini- can foundation. No bequest for San Giovanni Evangelista is mentioned, only donations for masses for his soul in San Gregory’s and for the poor from San Giovanni is indicative. His stem for members otherwise undocumented is tentative and should be used with caution. In fact, Giacomo father of Giovanni, who may have been Antonio’s father, was well and alive in 1429 when he emancipated Giovanni. 17 On the page behind Giacomo’s will in ASV SG SGE, Reg. 317, filza D, f. 4r, there is a family stem in a sixteenth-century hand, which features Antonio Rizzo, son of Giovanni, with a note that he had passed away on January 20, 1482, and his three sons with their respective occupations. I could not confirm the appointments independently. The only other piece of evidence that Rizzo had more than one son is the miracle, which mentions several sons. 18 He made out a document for Magdaluza widow of Pietro Corner on May 4, 1463, ASV CIN b. 122, paper register, no foliation, under date. 19 ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, Emanzipazioni, b. 32, f. 15r dated January 25, 1429. Giovanni may have been the same Giovanni son of Giacomo Rizzo, who made a promissory note in 1426, with the caveat that his parish was San Giovanni Nuovo, ASV CIN, b. 212, f. 17r. 212 chapter ten souls of the hospital of Santa Maria di Nazareth.20 The note implies Mar- ian devotion and recalls the icon of the Virgin that Chancellor Rizzo supplicated in the storm and the image that Giovanni Rizzo received from his father and may have in turn bequeathed to his son. Vague but no less suggestive is the link to Nazareth, for the frightened men on board the buffeted Filomati ship addressed next the Virgin of Loreto, whose shrine precisely in that decade, the 1460s, began to be equated with Mary’s original house in Nazareth. Rizzo did not mention an impending voyage as Antonio Filomati did in his will a year earlier, but he twice indicated an affiliation with “partibus Romanie.”21 The clues are tenuous indeed, and the lack of bequest to San Giovanni’s puzzling, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary the Antonio Rizzo who made the will is the best candidate to be the chancellor of the miracle; the grandson of Giacomo Rizzo who served as deacon in 1427; the son of Giovanni, emancipated in 1429; who was recorded on San Giovanni’s roster; who died in 1482; and who was the homonymous Rizzo on the San Martin family stem who died in the same year. Antonio Rizzo and his family boarded a Candia-bound ship captained by a certain Manolis Varis, likely a Candian Greek, belonging to the Filomati company.22 The Filomati were one of the very few well-off Greek ship- owning families that established themselves in Venice in the late 1300s

20 The medieval foundation on Santo Spirito (Lazzareto) was operated by the Augus- tinians, who left in 1421, but must have returned before 1460. The foundation is not to be confused with the current Santa Maria di Nazareth (Scalzi) where the image of the Virgin from the medieval hospital on the island was moved after the new establishment was set up in the seventeenth century. I use the occasion to thank Jonathan Glixon for the reference to the site of the original foundation. 21 ASV, CIN, b. 121, Protocol 1, # 18, notary Marco di Miale, dated December 10, 1461. The text does not allow to ascertain whether the references to “Romania” are to south-central Italy or Greece. 22 For a short sketch on the Filomati based on published material see David Jacoby, “I Greci e altre communità tra Venezia e oltremare,” in Maria Francesca Tiepolo and Eurigio Tonetti, eds., I Greci a Venezia (Atti del convegno internazionale di studio, Vene- zia, 5–7 novembre 1998) (Venezia: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2002), 41–83, at 57–9. Jacoby sums up the findings of Brunehilde Imhaus, Le minoranze orientali a Venezia 1300–1510 (Rome: Il Veltro, 1997), 72 and notes. In her prosopography section, Imhaus lists several Candiote Greek immigrants to Venice by the name Manolis, many of them mariners, but they all date from the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Manolis Varis is not on the civesveneciarum database either. He was most likely a Candiote Greek and non- resident of Venice. Antonio Trivan, the late chronicler, list a “Vari” family in Rhetymno in the seventeenth century, but the cognomen is not uncommon, see BNM, Ms. It. VII. 525 (7497), 29v. At least on one occasion Demetrius Filomati did business with a Candian Greek called Manolis, but that was back in 1432 and the man’s cognomen is not given, see CIN, b. 213, f. 77r, dated March 20, 1432. the miracle of antonio rizzo 213 and acquired full citizenship rights. Originally from Candia, they are documented for the first time in 1400, when Andrea Filomati and his son Dem- etrius resided in the parish of San Cassian, where they would have rubbed shoulders with the Vendramin and several other members and officers of San Giovanni’s. By 1413 another son of Andrea, Antonio, was granted the legal status of cittadino originario; his brother, Georgio, became a knight. The Filomati ships operated on the Alexandria and Constantinople trade lines, importing malvasia wine, Cretan cheese, and other commodities.23 Since 1430 at least Demetrius had involved his son Antonio, who operated the sea travel.24 In 1433 Demetrius is on record for buying woolens in Ven- ice, most likely for export to Candia on the outbound trip.25 On several other occasions during that decade he was involved in a variety of deals, buying a Russian slave girl, selling carpets, striking a deal to supply the castellan of Brescia, acting as a representative of Greeks from Candia and Corfu, taking out loans, and commissioning work from Candian craftsmen.26 Members of the family resided in several key locations supporting their shipping business, in Candia, Thessaloniki, and Constantinople. Venetians through and through, the Filomati’s Greek roots ran deep. By the middle of the fifteenth century they were thoroughly integrated, although not assimilated in Venice. Demetrius maintained an Orthodox chapel in his house where mass was served in defiance of Venetian laws, and the Coun- cil of Ten suppressed it in 1430. Demetrius must have retired to Candia after he emancipated his son Antonio in 1438 and there he died in 1451.27 Starting in the 1440s most of the Filomati affairs on land and on the high

23 See Nanetti, ed., Il Codice Morosini, vol. 2, 878, # 898. 24 See for example ASV CIN, b. 62, notary Constantino de Constantini, parchment register, f. 2v–3r, dated July 29, 1430, where Giovanni Bartholo of San Severo made a deal with the Filomati for export of velluto textiles to Candia; Demetrius secured the ground and financial logistic while Antonio was charged with the export of the cloth. 25 ASV CIN, b. 98, # 22, notarized by Filipo Griffo. 26 In the 1430s Demetrius worked often with notary Oderico Tabarini, and the cited examples come from his registers, ASV CIN, b, 213, Protocol I, f. 63v, f. 65v, f. 77r, f. 85v, f. 133r, f. 127(bis)v, 134(bis)r; Protocol IV, f. 8v, f. 37v; b. 214, f. 64v, April 19, 1433, f. 80r, March 26, 1433, f. 95r, May 12, 1433, f. 182v, June 30, 1434; b. 215, paper register of 1434– 1436, April 25, 1434, f. 116r. On November 30, 1433, he took a 12-moth loan from nobleman Daniele Veturi and wrote him a promissory note, ASV CIN, b. 98, notary Filippo Griffo, lose leaf from parchment register, at date. See also for his early deals, a sale of a Bulgarian slave girl, ASV, CIN b. 57, notary Pietro de Canal, second parchment register, no foliation, dated February 6, 1414. 27 For his will see ASV Notai di Candia, b. 115, register wills, f. 105v, dated May 14, 1451, notary Nicolo Gradenigo. 214 chapter ten seas were managed by Antonio.28 Antonio captained the Filomati ship that was in the harbor of Constantinople in support of the doomed capital just before the city fell in May 1453. The vessel managed to slip away and brought the news of the fall of the city to Candia. Three years later, in November 1456, Antonio and his brother Marco, then residing in Candia, planned imports of grain from Apulia to Crete.29 This is the last specific record of their business currently available before Rizzo’s journey. As the miracle indicates, they had continued to operate on the Venice-Candia line. Antonio Filomati was in Venice in the summer of 1460 and had his will drawn up on August 8, just before leaving on a trip to Candia. It is not clear whether he had joined the confraternity of San Giovanni Evan- gelista, but the will indicates at least a strong affiliation with the scuola since he willed to be buried in San Giovanni’s.30 In the tradition of honoring confraternal members, Rizzo’s mention that the ship belonged to the Filomati may not be accidental. In the next decade members of the clan entered civil service as well. In 1474 Antonio Filomati, son of Demetrius, applied for the position of notary with the Giustizia Nuova, listing himself as cives originarius; Alvise Filomati was a job applicant in the same year.31 If there was an elite citizen family that exemplified perfectly the syncretic nature of Venetians with origins in the Levant spanning all spheres of life, it was the Filomati. The journey to Candia was the first leg of Rizzo’s travels. His destination, the Duchy of the Archipelago, was one of the troubled spots on the map of Venetian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The duchy was founded in 1206 by an adventurous Venetian nobleman, Marco Sanudo, in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and consisted of several islands in the Cyclades archipelago, loosely allied under the leadership of the Sanudo of Naxos. The lords of Naxos were formally independent from

28 Demetrius emancipated Antonio on January 25, 1438, ASV, Miscellanea notai diversi, Emanzipazioni, b. 32, f. 13v. Since then Antonio shows up occasionally in the Court of Appeals’ records, one of the few systematic series of documents of the period, see for example ASV, Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, R. 107, f. 23r of June 7, 1449, where Marin Ugolino and his son Francesco recorded a compromise with Antonio. 29 Hippolyte Noiret, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la domination véniti- enne en Crète de 1380 a 1485 (Paris: Thorin & Fils, 1892), 454–5. Marco must have been more or less permanently located in Candia, since his son Atanasio made a will there while his father was still alive, see ASV, Notai di Candia, b. 18, filza cedole, # 7, f. 7, dated November 13, 1480, notary Pietro Bonaresi. 30 ASV ANT, b. 1229, # 12, will of Antonio Filomati fu Demetrius, notary Cristoforo Rizzo, dated August 8, 1460; or ASV CIN, Miscellanea notai diversi, b. 26, # 2132. 31 ASV Collegio, Notatorio, Reg. 11, f. 161r. These must have been Antonio’s nephews. the miracle of antonio rizzo 215 the Serenissima’s official control but Venetian policy-makers kept a wary eye on the Cyclades and intervened whenever they saw fit. The island group was in close proximity to Crete and Negroponte, the two largest and most crucially important Venetian possessions flanking the Aegean island world. It sat astride the route to Constantinople and the Black Sea, where Venice’s perennial rival, Genoa, plied the shipping lines as well, and provided an important way station and piracy monitoring center. As the Ottoman power grew in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that position turned into a disadvantage as the Archipelago became a target of Ottoman depredations, especially after the fall of Con- stantinople. The larger islands Naxos, Tinos, Paros, and Andros produced staple Mediterranean products for export and maintained naval facilities and small fighting contingents on which the Serenissima could call in time of need.32 To ensure the republic’s interests in the Archipelago, two islands, Tinos and Mykonos, were directly controlled since 1382. A rector, appointed by the bailo of Negroponte and ratified by the Senate, resided in Tinos and, besides keeping a close eye on the duchy and the other island lordships in the area, shouldered the responsibility to outfit fighting ships and provide an annual payment to the Serenissima. By the middle of the fifteenth century, however, the islands were so impoverished by the mounting Ottoman pressure that the republic tried three times, unsuccessfully, to sell them. There were no takers. The duchy was a different story.33 Naxos was richer, with fertile, commodities-producing lands, and the authorities in the lagoon intervened in its affairs on several occasions to ensure that governance was in the right hands. In 1383, when the suc- cession of the Sanudo line on Naxos became problematic, the government in the metropolis orchestrated a coup. With the support of the bailo of Negroponte, a shady figure, the Veronese Francesco Crispo, then ruler of Minos by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of the last adult male Sanudo, Giovanni I (1341–1362), had the young duke Nicolo assassinated and took over the duchy. The new dynasty lasted for another two hundred years. The Crispo dukes ruled much in the fashion of the Sanudo, without changing the power distribution within the Archipelago or between the Cyclades and Venice. The arrangement suited the republic. A stronger

32 The fiefs of the islands provided their lords with marketable commodities such as silk, cotton, grain and wool, and Naxos was one of the richest islands, see B.J. Slot, “The Frankish Archipelago,” in Bizantinische Forschungen, 19 (1991), 195–203, at 199. 33 For the agriculture of Naxos see Aglaia Kasdagli, “Peasant and Lord in Fifteenth- Century Naxos,” Byzantinische Forschungen 11 (1987), 347–56. 216 chapter ten power in the Aegean, allied with Venice, having the wherewithal to provide for itself, contribute to the defense of the area with cash subsidies and war vessels, and fend off the Ottomans and assorted freebooters on its own, was preferable to the headache of direct possession and the expenditures it would incur. At the time of Rizzo’s appointment the reigning duke was Guillelmo II Crispo (1453–1461/3), the fourth son of the founder of the dynasty.34 Given the frailty of the duke, who was over sixty years of age when he took over and apparently was already having difficulty governing, his officials must have been crucial for the stability of the duchy. Among them, the vicario held a place of honor, and presided over the duchy’s high court. The bailo was, in the spirit of feudal law rather than the Venetian practice, primarily a judicial officer as well, dealing with minor court cases unrelated to high justice and seigneurial rights. The kapetani, castellans, and protoyeri were local offices that went back to the Byzantine administration engaged in the administration of the islands and appointed by the ducal council or elected by the communities. Many of the duchy’s notaries were incorporated in the administration. The chancellor was appointed by the duke, but was more than his personal secretary. Most likely he operated in Naxos only, since it appears that all islands had their own chancellors. The chancellor served as a public notary and court clerk, with a focus on maintaining the duchy’s records of official correspondence, judicial records, such as civil and extraordinary court cases and sentences, feudal statutes and registers, and land cadasters. Much of the legal business the dukes transacted was also handled by notaries in Candia. Guillelmo II had his will drawn up by a hardworking Venetian transplant in Candia, Nicolo Gradenigo, in 1449, well before he took over the Archipelago. A note Gradenigo recorded on the will later states that on April 16, 1461, he had received news of the duke’s death in Naxos.35 Rizzo’s appointment suggests that the dukes may have followed the practice of the rector of Tinos,

34 Besides William Miller, The Latins in the Levant, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1908), there is precious little on the Cyclades in the period. B.J. Slot, Archi- pelagus turbatus: Les Cyclades entre colonization Latine et occupation Ottomane c. 1500–1718 (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1982), vol. I, 1–57, gives a short survey of the early period. Charles Frazee and Kathleen Frazee, The Island Princes of Greece: The Dukes of the Archipelago (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1988), is the only account in English after Miller, but the authors mostly follow the seventeenth-century work of Robert Sauger (Saulger), Histoire nouvelle des anciens ducs et autres souverains de l’Archipel (Paris, 1699). 35 ASV Notai di Candia, b. 115, f. 184r–v, notary Nicolo Gradenigo, dated June 4, 1449. The later note is by Nicolo’s hand. the miracle of antonio rizzo 217 employing foreigners without local ties and loyalties and unattached to the ducal administration. For some of their ducal acts, the dukes preferred independent notaries rather than the chancellor, and for routine business they used factors among the duchy’s notaries.36 Rizzo was apparently such an outsider. Unlike the chancellors of Crete who since 1372 were appointed by the Senate, there is no evidence that he was a Venetian appointment.37 Chancellors of the duchy are not mentioned among Venetian provincial officials, and he is not on the list of Venetian notaries of the period.38 Given the status of the duchy, that is to be expected. His predecessor in the office, Lorenzo Scacchi, was escorted to Naxos by the Venetian war fleet which operated in the Aegean in 1459, but Rizzo got no free pass as governmental appointees did and had to travel on a commercial vessel.39 He was clearly not a patrician and the position was not one of authority. Furthermore, in the 1460s the Senate was hard pressed to staff many of its direct possessions and dependencies with noble magistrates.40 For some of the cittadini such an appointment may have opened opportunities unavailable in the metropolis. Rizzo being accompanied by his wife, children, and servants indicates that the office, regardless of how arrived at, was considered long-term, rather than

36 Summary in Slot, Archipelagus turbatus, 52–54. 37 Noiret, Documents inédits, 358. 38 All appointments for the period are in ASV, Segretario alle voci, Reg. 5, where several consiliarii are mentioned, of Coron, Modon, Crete, etc.; for example, Benedetto Erizo began service as consiliarius of Crete on July 7, 1459; Donato Erizo followed on June 26, 1460; Giovanni Badoer followed on August 25, 1462 (all three listed on f. 42v. The Venetian Senate elected “governors” of Naxos on several occasions in the 1490s, after Duke Giovanni III Crispo (1480–1494) was killed after a rebellion and the citizens asked Venice for a governor during his heir’s minority, see Frazee and Frazee, The Island Princes, 78–9. Monique O’Connell was so kind to inform me that there were four elections for such governors, in 1494, 1495, 1498, 1517, see ASV, Seg., V, Reg. 6 and 8 (personal communication from September 2011). These were, however, clearly exceptional cases. On Venetian provincial administration in general see her Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Mari- time State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 39 Carl Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romaines inedites ou peu connues, publiées avec notes et tables généalogiques (reprint, Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1966), 200, quotes an extract from Stefano Magno’s Annali veneti (from MS Foscarini 6216, Vienna), “1459: Classem Vene- torum in Aegeo mari morantem comitatur Lorenzo dei Caschi Cancelier del Duca dell Arcipelago.” For the free travel of the chancellor of Canea in 1439, see Noiret, Documents inédits, 389. 40 On May 2, 1462, the Senate nominated Giovanni Diedo as chancellor of Crete; apparently he demurred, since on July 12 another election to the office was made by the Sen- ate, Noiret, Documents inédits, 466. On February 8, 1462, the Collegio noted that Blasius Quirini, who had been appointed counselor of Canea had not taken his office and had thrice refused to go, see ASV, Collegio, Notatorio, Reg. 10, 1460–1467, f. 49v (entry 181). 218 chapter ten a temporary assignment. He expected to get established at Naxos, part of the light but steady emigration to the Cyclades by Venetians and other Italians. The chancellors of Naxos were frequently feudatories with considerable holdings and Rizzo could reasonably hope to draw more than a monetary remuneration for his services, plus the usual bonus of utilitates.41 The powers vested in the position, especially the control of judicial records, allowed for accumulation of property and wealth in a not altogether licit manner as well, if one were bold enough to try. That was one of the reasons why the office was staffed with foreigners, although the provision did not always work.42 In 1394 the government of Crete requested permission to take action against Pietro Conte, chancellor of Canea, on charges of corruption. The Senate demurred to authorize prosecution by a narrow margin. In 1446, acting in its capacity as a court of appeals, the Cretan government investigated another case of malfeasance, illegal appropriation of property, and forging of signatures on official documents by the chancellor of Cythera. The audit ended with punishing the offender and reiterating the prohibition to employ as chancellor, castellan, or scribe any indigenous dweller of the island.43 Licit or illicit, the economic advantages the job offered to a qualified cittadino may have compared favorably with those in Venice. Since the middle of the fifteenth century, major commercial operations, always the domain of the patriciate, were becoming even less available to ambitious and resourceful commoners. While the cittadini could not be patrons of the public galleys, for most of the fifteenth century they were participating by investing in their journeys. By the end of the century that window of opportunity was closing. In 1495, only twenty-five commoners belonging to eighteen families participated in the lucrative public commerce on the

41 The chancellors were among the most frequently mentioned feudatories in the fifteenth-century notarial acts from Naxos; see Kasdagli, “Peasant and Lord,” 353–4. The major collection of published material, Peter Zerlentis, Grammata ton telentaion Fragkon doukon tou Aigaiou Pelagous 1438–1565 (Hermoupolis, 1924) contains very little for the fifteenth century. 42 Information about fifteenth-century chancellors is scant. Besides Scacchi and Rizzo, Chancellor Oliver de Sapientis, son of Nicolo, notarized an act of July 2, 1448, and Giovanni Cotrono another one of October 22, 1490, see Zerlentis, Grammata, 59 and 61. Giovanni Cotrono may have been a Venetian subject and a cleric, since a priest and piovan with that name is noted in June 1463 to have forsaken his benefice of the church of San Leonardo in Terra delle Bebbe “a long time ago,” see Girolamo Vianelli, Nuova serie de’vescovi di Malam- occo e di Chioggia, vol. 2 (Venice: Baglioni, 1790), 60. I would like to thank Chris Schabel for procuring a copy of the relevant material in Zerlentis’ work for me. 43 Noiret, Documents inédits, 67, 414. Corruption seems to have been more rampant among the noble magistrates, see O’Connell, Men of Empire, 133–134 for a series of cases. the miracle of antonio rizzo 219 state galleys. Their outlays were limited, never reaching beyond seventy- one carats of cargo. By 1503 investment in the public or state-supported galley runs was largely out of reach for them. Among the privileged cittadino families who saw their economic horizons shrinking was one of the Rizzo families. In the 1490s and the first decade of the 1500s, several Rizzo of two generations of that branch, among them the brothers Marco and Antonio Rizzo, invested yearly in the galley runs to Beirut and Barbary.44 The Rizzo who took the office of chancellor of the Archipelago belonged to an earlier generation, but it is not unlikely that he was related to that family stem. With the commoners being pushed out of the government- sponsored commerce, a shift to private shipping and other economic options was a natural choice for the cittadini. A placement in the chancellery of the Archipelago was a way to diversify. The Cyclades lay to the north of the lines in which Marco Rizzo invested, but as a way station to Constantinople they still served a purpose. An earlier generation of Rizzo, most likely closely related to the chancellor’s family since they resided in San Martin as well, was vested in the Constantinople-Black Sea trade. The brothers Giacomo and Giovanni Rizzo had interests in half of a commercial vessel that was in Tana in 1449.45 A Rizzo was not without relatives in the island world of the Levant. An Antonio Rizzo of San Martin had been on Corfu in the 1440s; the date is early for that man to be the chancellor of the miracle, but does not preclude family ties.46 There were Rizzo of San Martin who were closely involved in the Candian trade in the same decade. There were Rizzo noblemen among the Candian feudatories and there were Rizzo commoners on Crete and in Candia.47 Moreover, there were Rizzo on Naxos. In April 1433, Nicoleto Rizzo from Naxos made a

44 Information kindly provided by Claire Judde de Larivière, available in the online appendices to her Naviguer, commercer, gouverner. Èconomie maritime et pouvoirs à Venise (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 45 ASV CIN, b. 149, notary Pietro Palacan, paper register, no foliation, dated September 1, 1449. On the same day Palacan drew an act on behalf of Tadeo Rizzo, balistrarius in Tana, see ibid. The act does not give the Rizzo parish, although the notary left space for that, and I infer the identification with another pair of Giacomo and Giovanni Rizzo that was residing in San Martin, see above. 46 ASV, Procuratori di San Marco de citra, Commissarie, b. 373, Punti di testamento, has a brief register that features Antonio Rizzo da Corfu, di San Martin, dated April 15, 1442. 47 For fourteenth-century references see Sally McKee, Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 181; also ASV Notai di Candia, b. 295, register of wills, f. 10v; b. 115, register of wills, f. 86r; b. 90, f. 3, register of wills, f. 3, # 3; a Tomaso Rizzo of San Lio was a Candian resident in 1414, ASV CIN, b. 57, notary Pietro di Canal, second parchment register, no original foliation, dated July 18, 1414. In 1443 another Rizzo, Baltasar son of Giovanni Rizzo of San 220 chapter ten will with Nicolo Gradenigo, the Candian notary who drew up the will of Duke Guillelmo II sixteen years later.48 The overlapping of professional and family affiliations made contacts easier. Placing family members at key points in the Venetian commercial network was a family strategy frequently practiced in the period by patrician magistrates and other noblemen in governmental service. The Rizzo might have availed themselves of the same opportunity. And yet it was a strategy fraught with hazards, natural and man-made. Few agents of the numinous were powerful enough to confront them. The mariners’ first choice, the Virgin Mary, had a special place in Venetian identity. March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, was the central date of the foundational myth of the republic. Several representations and allegories of the Virgin populated the religious, governmental, and commercial foci of the city, and an untold number of ancone attracted public and private devotion. The supplication that Andrea Vendramin offered back in 1370 to his own image of the Virgin after the distressing dream must have been repeated by many a desperate Venetian in dire straights. Shortly after 1365 the Great Council’s room in the ducal palace was dominated by a monumental fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin executed by Guariento. Mosaics, sculpture, and murals of the Annunciation graced the State Bonds Office, the façade and southern portal of San Marco, and the sixteenth-century decoration of the Rialto bridge, among others. Begin- ning no later than the fifteenth century, a Byzantine icon of the Virgin of Victory kept in San Marco was carried in ceremonial procession every August 15, the feast of the Assumption.49 Seeking the Virgin’s patronage was not an exclusive province of the Venetians, but the parallel with the

Martin, made a deal with two Candians, ASV CIN, b. 58, f. 50r, dated April 6, 1443, notary Anastasio Cristiano. 48 ASV Notai di Candia, b. 115, f. 36r, notary Nicolo Gradenigo, dated April 26, 1433. Nicoletto defined himself as “resident of Naxos.” He died the next day as Nicolo’s note at the bottom of f. 36r clarifies. 49 Giovanni Tiepolo, Trattato della Imagine della Gloriosa Vergine dipinta da S. Luca conservata già molti secoli nella Ducal Chiesa di S. Marco della città di Venezia (Venice, 1618); Carlo Querini, Relazione dell’Imagine Nicopea che si ritrova in Venezia nella Ducale di San Marco (Venice, 1645); Agostino Molin, Dell’anticha immagine di Maria Santissima che si conserva nella basilica di San Marco in Venezia (Venice, 1821); Antonio Rizzi, “Un’icona constantinopolitana del XII secolo a Venezia: La Madonna Nicopeia,” Thesaurismata, XVII (1980), 290–306; Rona Goffen, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1986), 142; see also Maria Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice: An Appropriation of Byzantine Heritage,” Art Bulletin, 77:3 (1995), 493–4. the miracle of antonio rizzo 221 conception of the Savior and the birth of the republic gave Venetian Mar- ian political theology a special dimension.50 In the private sphere, among the special powers of the Virgin was her propensity to help mariners in trouble. The reputation stemmed from an early confusion in the transcription of the epithets glorifying the Virgin, which produced the image of Mary as stella maris, “the star of the sea,” the light and guidance of sailors. The perception goes back to the early Middle Ages and was widely distributed among the seafaring nations of the Mediterranean. It does not fully explain why, however, when finding themselves in dire straights at sea, the ship’s crew and Rizzo did not turn to any of the manifestations of Mary located in Venice. Instead, they supplicated two other stand-ins for the Virgin located, respectively, in Candia and Loreto. The appeal to a Candian Virgin ought to be expected on a ship whose captain and crew were Cretans or Cretan Venetians. Rizzo’s fear of drowning explains his joining the supplication as much as his uncertain identity. With the situation worsening and the Cretan Virgin apparently not immediately responding, the men on board turned to the Madonna of Loreto, a patron closer at hand and perhaps more specifically associated with patronage of mariners in distress. Situated as she was at the coast overlooking the busy shipping lines crisscrossing the central Adriatic, the Virgin of Loreto was celebrated as “mornings star,” “ark of the covenant,” (understood as “boat”) and “comforter of the afflicted” in the Litany of Loreto: all images highly relevant to the men threatened by a brutal storm in the dark of night and in danger of imminent shipwreck and death by drowning.51 This said, there are reasons to think that the appeal to the two Virgins indicates preoccupations transcending the meanings suggested by local allegiances and generic perceptions of the Virgin. The Candian and the Loreto Madonna must have been venerated in Venice in the 1460s, and became more prominent as the sixteenth century wore on. The former

50 See, most recently, the comprehensive discussions of David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 13 sq., and Iain Fenlon, The Ceremonial City: History, Memory, and Myth in Renais- sance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 38–47. 51 The origins of the Litany of Loreto are difficult to pinpoint. While there are reasons to think that the supplication of the Virgin at Loreto had taken a more-or-less formal expression already by the late fifteenth century, the Litany gained wide currency only in the sixteenth century and was officially sanctioned in 1587. The earliest preserved copy dates to 1558 and is of German provenance. The earliest Italian copy so far is dated to 1576. See Angelo De Santi, Le litanie lauretane. Studio storico critico (Rome: Civiltà cattolica, 1897), passim. 222 chapter ten was well known to the Cretans or Cretan Venetians who maintained close ties with the capital on the lagoon and who had a sizable presence in Venice. The latter gradually increased her profile in the city in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. In 1432 the then governor of the Marche, Bishop Giovanni Vitelleschi, sent the already substantial treasury of the shrine on board a ship to Venice to safeguard it against possible pilfering by Francesco Sforza, who was to visit the holy site. The earliest wood- engraved panel of the shrine, produced some time before 1460, is most likely Venetian-made. Venetian pilgrimages to Loreto, scarcely documented before that decade, begin to appear more frequently in sources from the 1460s on. The miraculous healing of the Venetian Cardinal Pietro Barbo (the future Pope Paul II), was perhaps the most conspicuous case of a pious visit to the shrine.52 The call to the Cretan and Loretan Vir- gins in the miracle ought to have resonated in Venice at the time and during the subsequent century with the growth of Catholic piety and the cult of Mary. Already in the 1460s, however, and more so as the sixteenth century wore on, the miracle appears to have drawn on a set of connotations deeply relevant not just to sailors in distress but for all Venetians engaged in the eastern Mediterranean. In Candia, the Venetian residents and the Greek Orthodox population shared devotion to the Virgin present in the revered icon of Mesopanditissa, now residing in the Venetian Santa Maria della Salute.53 By the time Antonio Rizzo wrote his letter, and also when the account was printed in the new edition of the miracles in 1590, the icon, a twelfth- or thirteenth-century Byzantine work, was still kept in the cathedral of Candia, the Byzantine church of St Titus, an edifice that retained its basic Eastern Orthodox layout but was converted after the conquest to Latin practice. The Virgin on the icon is a Hodigitria (“guiding the faithful”) type, a traditional Byzantine Orthodox manifestation of the Virgin. In Venice, it enjoyed the fame of being the work of St Luke, transferred from Constantinople to Crete during the iconoclastic controversy.54 More importantly, the image of the Mesopanditissa advanced by the Vene- tian authorities was that of a promoter of peace and harmonious relations

52 On the devotion to the Loreto Virgin in Venice see Davide da Portogruaro, “Devozi- one di popolo, devozione di stato: Venezia e Loreto,” Rivista di Venezia VII (1929), 213–42. 53 McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 114, and Georgopoulou, “Late Medieval Crete and Venice,” passim. 54 According to the seventeenth-century chronicle of Andrea Cornaro, Historia Candi- ana, BNM, MS Ital. CI VI. 286, coll. 5985; Book VII, fol. 54. the miracle of antonio rizzo 223 between the Cretan Greeks and the Venetians. Referring to the Cretan revolt of 1261–1265, the later chronicler Antonio Trivan noted her miraculous intervention that ended the revolt and explained the meaning of her name as “mediator of peace between the two parties.”55 Since the fourteenth century at the latest the icon was paraded around the city in a weekly Tuesday procession attended by both Latin and Greek Orthodox clergy.56 This practice, as well as other, circumstantial evidence, suggests that Trivan’s injunction was based on earlier perceptions. This was the exclusive meaning of the agency imputed on the numinous agent vested in the icon until the late sixteenth century. Only in 1575 and 1599 it performed two healing miracles.57 The Mesopanditissa therefore not only signified the convergence of spiritual sentiment among Latins and Greeks but also acted as the focal point of unity and shared identity, a feature that became increasingly relevant during the Ottoman advance in the fifteenth century. By that time the meanings accruing on the shrine of the Madonna of Loreto, the frightened mariners’ second choice, had acquired similar implications. From around the 1420s, Loreto had been the center of Mar- ian devotion in the Marche; moreover, it was rapidly expanding its appeal, soon to become one of the greatest shrines of Catholic Europe. Located on a hill between the town of Recanati and the Adriatic shore, it attracted pilgrims by land and sea, with ships crisscrossing the central Adriatic frequently putting in at Recanati. The shrine boasted an image of the Virgin already credited with working miracles by the early decades of the fourteenth century. While there are reasons to think that the original structure contained material brought over from the Levant and the upper Adriatic, already at that time there was a belief that the image depicting the Virgin and child and the structure housing it were placed there by angels. In the 1420s the Madonna of Loreto had become a magnet not just for the humble faithful but for highly placed Italian secular lords and ecclesiastics, among them several popes. The princes of the Marches and the Romagna were

55 Venice, BNM, Ms. It. VII. 525 (7497), f. 13r–v. 56 See now Aspasia Papadaki, Ceremonie religiose e laiche nell’isola di Creta durante il dominio veneziano, trans. Giorgio Pelidis (Perugia: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2005), 145–58; and for context the older but still useful work of Nicolas Tomadakis, “La politica religiosa di Venezia a Creta verso i cretesi ortodossi dall XII al XV secolo,” Agostino Pertusi, ed., Venezia et il Levante fino a secolo XV, vol. 2 (Florence: Olschinki, 1973), 783–800. 57 Papadaki, Ceremonie religiose, 155. The author agrees that the most important meaning vested in the Mesopanditissa was religious unity. 224 chapter ten attracted to the shrine quite early, but its reputation quickly acquired a pan-Italian dimension. In 1427 Elizabetta Malatesta visited it with her sons. In 1429 Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, endeavored to build an altar and chaplaincy in the church. Sigismondo Malatesta made several pilgrimages, the first one in 1431, soon after he became lord of Rimini. Alessandro Sforza, later lord of Pesaro, followed suit in 1437, with several visits of his own. Alfonso of Aragon, king of Naples, arrived in 1443; and the lords of Ferrara and Mantua did so in 1437 and 1469.58 By mid-century, the fame of the shrine, already visited by German pilgrims, had solidified its international reputation, and attracted Dalmatian Slavs and Albanians from the opposite shores of the Adriatic. In the early 1470s, with the help of a great devotee of the Virgin, Bishop Niccolo d’Este, and the narrative talent of the then rector of the shrine, Pietro di Georgio Tolomei of Ter- ramo, it was firmly established that the building was nothing lees than Mary’s house in Nazareth. Miraculously transported, it was first placed in Fiume in Illyria. Not properly honored, it was then moved two more times until angels deposited it at Loreto. The narrative of the translocations may have been seen as dubious in the 1460s outside the Marche, as it still was in the 1480s, but that did not discount the shrine’s principal attraction.59 Carrying connotations that transcended local and regional affiliations, the Marian cult at Loreto resembled the Candian Mesopanditissa in its ability to cross the numerous boundaries that defined identities in Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean and engendered chronic warfare to efface differences and enact devotional unity. Importantly, it went even further. Since the early days of the cult there has been a strong connection with the lands across the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean cradle of Christianity. As devotion grew, churches and chapels dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto dotted coastal Dalmatia, the region best linked, through commercial connections, with its Italian counterpart. From there, the cult spread into the Dalmatian islands, in the territories of Dubrovnik, and penetrated the Orthodox duchy of Montenegro, especially after Duke

58 Ronald Lightbown, Carlo Grivelli (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 40. 59 The literature on Loreto is huge. For orientation, see the collection of Ferdinando Citterio and Luciano Vaccaro, eds., Loreto: Crocevia religioso tra Italia, Europa, ed Oriente (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997), and the excellent discussion of Lightbown, Carlo Grivelli, 37–45. For a resolute Venetian critic of the miraculous transportations of the shrine, the Franciscan Francesco Suriano, custodian of the Holy Land and apostolic delegate for the Orient, see Floriano Grimaldi, ed., La chiesa di Santa Maria di Loreto nei documenti dei secoli XII–XV (Ancona: Archivio di Stato, 1984), 147–8. the miracle of antonio rizzo 225

Ivan Crnoevic (1465–1490) made a pilgrimage to Loreto and promoted the cult in his family mausoleum. Little wonder, then, that one of the earliest surviving pictorial representations of the Madonna of Loreto comes from Zara, Venice’s earliest and most treasured possession on the Croa- tian coast, just across the Adriatic from Loreto and a major stopover for the republic’s Levantine commercial lines. In 1476, Lazzaro Bastiani, the author of the Donation of the Cross painting for San Giovanni Evangelista, executed a canvas dedicated to the Madonna of Loreto for the Francis- can church in Zara. The painting, The Prayer to the Madonna of Loreto, was specifically designed to highlight the image of the Virgin as defender against the Ottoman threat. Under the pala with the Virgin in Heaven, Bastiani depicted the shrine of the Holy House at Loreto enveloped by the newly constructed chapel by Giovanni Alberti Montenegrino, and surrounded it with the potentates expected to align against the Ottomans: Pope Sixtus IV, a promoter of the feast of the Immaculate Conception to the left, and Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus, to the right; behind these leading figures crowd the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (the future Pope Julius II); Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, the commander of the papal fleet against the Ottomans; Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, and his fiancée Beatrice of Aragon; the monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella; and Doge Pietro Mocenigo, next to the Duke of Montenegro, Ivan Crnoevic, Niccolo of Modrush, as well as other dignitaries of Italian and Dalmatian extraction.60 The earliest preserved copy of the Litany of Loreto (dated to 1558), extolls Mary as “Queen of Peace” and adds to it the qualification “Help of Christians” as well.61 The motive of unity, concord, and peace between Christian powers under the sponsorship of the Madonna of Loreto now incorporated an anti-Ottoman, crusading dimension. The idea is as old as Urban II’s sermon at Clermont in 1095, but the expanding cult of the Virgin of Loreto appears to have consolidated its pan-European and pan-Christian appeal partly by fusing devotional resurgence with ecu- menical spirituality and aspects of crusading. The mariners on board the Filomati ship thus forwent the local Vir- gins, such as the Nicopeia in Venice, and turned to Marian representations

60 See Ivan Prijatelj-Pavičić, Loretske teme. Novi podaci o štovanju loretske Bogorodice u likovnum umjetnostima na području “Ilirica” (Rijeka: Vita Graf, 1994), 12–13, and the identi- fications on pp. 18–30; for background see Josip Kolanović, “Le relazioni tra le due sponde dell’Adriatico e il culto lauretano in Croazia,” in Citterio and Vaccaro, eds., Loreto: Crocevia religioso tra Italia, 165–91, esp. 184–6. 61 Santi, Le litanie lauretane, passim. 226 chapter ten that had connotations deeply embedded in the ideology of the Venetian maritime empire. Although she was explicitly connected to victory in war, delivery from the plague, and succor in drought and famine, the appeal of the Nicopeia does not seem to have become strong before the later sixteenth century.62 Neither was that of other Marian shrines and images that did not have a crusading dimension or that of concord. For the time, they all lost to the two Virgins that had connotations of pan-Christian, Cath- olic-Orthodox cleavage-healing unity and peace, as well as anti-Ottoman appeal. The sailors’ choices, while fully justified by the meanings inherent in the generic image of the Virgin as succor for mariners and their personal allegiances and identities, suggest linkages to the political situation in the eastern Mediterranean in the 1460s and thereafter, which generated major anxieties in Venice and its overseas dominions. Three major areas of utmost importance for the metropolis, the Aegean with Crete, Negroponte, and the Archipelago; the Balkans along the eastern coast of the Adriatic; and central and southern Italy, saw rapid deterioration of political stability. Commerce, the maritime empire on whose infrastructure it depended, and the economic and social prospects of the Venetian citizens willing and expected to vest themselves in the traditional affairs of the republic came under serious threats by the Ottomans, by the fallout between Latin Catholic Venetian administration and local Greek Ortho- dox population, and by the constant vying for power between Italians and outside parties that sapped the resources of the metropolis. The reflexive fallback on numinous protectors capable of facing and neutralizing these specific dangers, the Madonna of Loreto, the Cretan Virgin, and the Cross, was the outcome of the inchoate but rather tangible anxieties that the status quo engendered. In the decade that preceded the miracle, two challenges to the Vene- tian control of Crete made such meanings of the Candian Virgin even more pertinent. In 1453, right after the fall of Constantinople, and at a time when Byzantine Greek immigrants streamed into Crete, Siphis Vlas- tos, a local magnate of Rhetymno, led a conspiracy of prominent refugees and Greek Cretans to regain the island. The plan was to cut to pieces the Venetian rectors and nobles, arrest or kill all Latin Catholic foreigners, and proclaim the restoration of the Byzantine Empire. The plot was betrayed by a Greek priest and a Jewish merchant of the town and quashed a year

62 See Fenlon, The Ceremonial City, 226–9 and 322 for a discussion of the cult of the Nicopeia. the miracle of antonio rizzo 227 later. The motivation of the conspirators may have been political, but it was fueled by the bitter religious controversies sparked by the encroachment of Latin Catholicism on the turf of Greek Orthodoxy. The tensions were not allayed by the suppression of Vlastos’ organization, members of which were still being tracked down in 1460. In that year, after a fresh wave of refugees from the Morea arrived in Crete in the wake of its conquest by Mehmet II, another plot was conjured up. It steadily grew throughout the next year, until the ducal government got on top of it, arrested the plot- ters, and executed the principal instigator, Ioannis Gavalas, in early 1462.63 The stress on the religious unity symbolized by the Mesopanditissa thus pointed to the key reason for the destabilization of the Venetian presence in Crete, exacerbated as it was by the stepped-up demands on the local Greek populations’ resources in the fight with the Ottomans. It is indicative that when the Venetian-affiliated members of the Cretan Great Council petitioned the Senate to grant them aid for the fortification of Candia, especially its Latin quarters, the borgo, ostensibly for protecting the capital in the event of Ottoman invasion, the Senate demurred, cor- rectly guessing perhaps that the nobles’ fears were about a potential rebellion of the Greek Orthodox population.64 The Senate, however, was far away, and the locals knew better. The vessel with Antonio Rizzo cleared Venice as the Cretan government was rounding up the last conspirers, but Rizzo had also undertaken to serve the duchy of the Archipelago in a particularly difficult time. Among Guillelmo II’s first acts as a ruler was to dispatch an embassy to congratulate Mehmet II on the capture of Constantinople. The Conqueror was apparently not satisfied, since a fleet commanded by Yunus Pasha soon took off for the Cyclades. Only a massive storm that sunk several ships prevented it from endangering the duchy. In the treaty of 1454, Ven- ice managed to get the duchy excluded from the list of the sultan’s tribute- paying vassals, on the argument that the dukes were Venetian subjects. The reprieve was brief, and the Ottoman pressure continued. Three years

63 See the account in BNM Ms. It. VI. 286 (5985), Andrea Cornaro, Storia di Candia, Book 14, f. 47 and the inquiries of Manoussos Manoussacas, Hē en Krētē Synōmosia tou Sēphē Vlastou 1453–1454 kai ē néa Synōmotikē kinēsis tou 1460–1462 [The Conspiracy of Siphis Vlastos in Crete (1453–1454) and the New Conspiracy of 1460–1462] (PhD Thesis, Univer- sity of Athens, 1960). See also Avery D. Andrews, The Turkish Threat to Venice, 1453–1463 (PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1962), 235 and Monique O’Connell, Men of Empire, 105. 64 ASV Senato Mar, Reg. 7, f. 74v–79 from August–September 1462 and f. 88v, November 24, 1462; discussion in Andrews, The Turkish Threat to Venice, 233–4. 228 chapter ten later, under the threat of another invasion, Guillelmo II appears to have followed the example of Genoese Chios and began paying tribute—and this in spite of the long cruise of a papal fleet commanded by Cardinal Lodovico Camerlengo in 1456–1458, accompanied by the posting of small garrisons in the Archipelago, including Naxos.65 Worn out by age and constant tribulations, the old duke passed away in 1461 (or 1463, since Gradenigo’s note is inconclusive), perhaps as a result of overexposure to the heat and strong waters of the mineral baths on Milos.66 If the news that reached Candia in April 1461 had been true and he had indeed died in April of that year, the timeframe would explain the urgency of Rizzo’s departure, which happened in a highly unusual season for long-distance travel. If his death occurred in 1463 it was just as the sixteen-year long Venetian war with the Ottomans, which had by then been in the brewing for several years, had broken out. In January 1462 the war was still in the future, but signs of trouble mul- tiplied. Early in 1461 the Senate had decided to raise the number of warships under commission to twenty, and the number of galleys operating in the Aegean to sixteen.67 In the spring, it instructed Vettor Capello, the Captain of the Sea or commander of the Venetian navy, to undertake a visit to all Venetian ports in the Eastern Mediterranean to reassure their denizens. By June 12, Capello was already in the Aegean.68 His orders specifically included defense of the Archipelago against potential Ottoman threat, since it flew the banner of San Marco and was therefore a Vene- tian protectorate.69 During high summer, as the Ottoman fleet departed for the Black Sea to capture Sinope and put an end to Trebizond, the last branch of Byzantium, the situation calmed. Even so, Capello was reluctant to detach a galley from his squadron and opted to send Emanuele

65 William Miller, The Latins in the Levant, 610, on the authority of Ducas and Krito- bouls, whose chronology is very confused; repeated in Kenneth Setton, Harvey Hazard, and Norman Zacour, A History of the Crusades: The Impact of the Crusade on Europe, 320. On the activities of the papal fleet see Alberto Guglielmonti, Storia della marina pontificia nel medio evo dal 728 al 1499, vol. 2 (Rome, 1886), 259–62 and Pio Paschini, “La flotta di Callisto III,” Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, vols. 53–55 (1930–1932), 177–254, at 218–19. 66 Sauger, Histoire nouvelle, 230, considers him outright incapable of governing. B.J. Slot thinks the dates of Guillielmo II’s reign are actually 1453–1461, on the strength of the note in Guillelmo’s will, see his “Le cas de Philoti: Aspects de l’exploitation d’une grande pro- priété foncière dans le duché de Naxos avant et après la conquête turque,” Rivista di studi bizantini e slavi 3 (1983), 198, note 32. 67 ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 32, February 18, 1461. 68 ASV Senato, Mar, Reg. 7, f. 21v. 69 ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 46, May 28, 1461. the miracle of antonio rizzo 229

Gerardo, an official Venetian envoy, to Ibrahim Beg, the lord of Stalamira, without escort.70 His and the government’s nervousness were exacerbated by the lack of an official communication and intelligence channel to Constantinople. In 1461 the republic lacked representative in the Otto- man capital because Paolo Barbarigo, who was elected bailo in the summer, did not receive his commission until late in the following year.71 In October 1461 the Ottoman navy returned to their bases in the capital, but even though the fleet disarmed for the winter, Capello was ordered to visit the Archipelago. In addition, in November the Captain of Crete was ordered to reinforce the defenses of Candia.72 In spite of the seasonal lull in activity and the superiority on the high seas that the Venetian navy still enjoyed, the anxiety of the government was clearly mounting. There are no reasons to think that the ordinary citizen felt differently. Meanwhile, in 1459 war had broken out in southern Italy, pitting Gio- vanni Orsini, prince of Taranto, and his Anjou allies against Ferrante of Naples. The conflict dragged on until 1464 and embroiled France, Spain, the Albanian lord Scanderbeg, the papacy, Milan, and several condot- tiere captains. Venice remained neutral but kept a wary eye on the war’s developments and had to commit much needed resources to monitor the area. After the Senate dispatched Capello to the Aegean with the bulk of the available warships, it turned to problems closer to home. In August 1461 Capello was asked to dispatch three of his galleys to Corfu, where the Vice-captain of the Gulf or commander of the Adriatic fleet, Giacomo Venier, was to take them on a cruise of the lower Adriatic to protect Venetian shipping.73 The weakening of the Aegean forces likely increased the demands on the local princes to contribute to the naval squadron in the area. The rectors in Negroponte had already made such requests of Guillelmo II in the summer of 1460.74 Like Pope Pious II, the crusading enthusiast, the republic preferred a peace that would allow if not an Ital- ian league against the Ottomans then at least the full use of its navy in the Aegean and would ease the strain on its manpower; but that did not occur until 1464. The war exacerbated the complicated political affairs of the period and added to the list of distractions affecting the republic’s

70 ASV Senato, Mar, Reg. 7, f. 47v, February 8, 1462. 71 ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 109v–111, September 22, 1462 for the authorization to leave. 72 Freddy Thiriet, ed., Régestes des delibérations du Sénat de Venise concernant la Romanie, vol. 3 (Paris: Mouton & Co, 1961), 236–9. 73 ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 55v, August 20, 1461. 74 Andrews, The Turkish Threat to Venice, 250. 230 chapter ten ability to focus on the Ottoman threat. The inheritance struggle in Cyprus, the perennial confrontations with the Knights Hospitaler in Rhodes, the occasional trouble affecting relations with Egypt, the frictions with the imperial city of Trieste in the Friuli, and the Neapolitan house’s designs on the Balkans were smaller but ongoing matters of concern contributing to a sense of siege on all fronts. Quite the only benefit for Venice from the war was the absence of Scan- derbeg from Albania during the better part of 1460–1462, for relations with him had been strained since the 1440s. His inconsistency vis-à-vis the Otto- mans caused serious consternation in Venice, especially after 1460, when the republic began a strategic reorientation of her policies in the western Balkans. Hitherto preoccupied mostly with its possessions on the Dalma- tian coast and Ionian Islands, the government ratcheted up its efforts to form an anti-Ottoman alliance of the still independent or autonomous Balkan princes under the leadership of the major Catholic power in the area, Hungary—or at least to convince them to stop their self-destructive wars against each other and against Venice herself—to counter Mehmet II’s steady progress westward. In the winter of 1459–1460 an agreement was reached with Duke Stephen of Herzegovina, who had already become a Hungarian vassal and in 1461 received the papal promise for help as well. In the summer of the same year, Ban Pavel of Croatia decided to cease and desist in harassing Venetian subjects around Split, Shibenik, and Trogir and seek a peace with the Serenissima. Finally, with Venetian assistance in 1462 Stephen Tomašević of Bosnia reached an agreement with Matthias Corvinus.75 Using diplomatic interventions, shows of naval force, financial outlays, and promises of protection, within the period of 1460–1462 the republic had managed to forge an uneasy alliance in the western Balkans involving a modicum of unity and peace between the local rulers and their union with the stronger Catholic powers, Hungary and Venice herself. It was all based on the Ottoman threat, which would indeed materialize in 1463 and put an end to the Balkan principalities. They were doomed, but in 1460–1461 that was still in the future. The strategy of political reconciliation, Christian alliance, and regional unity was a major preoccupation in the beginning of the decade and the effort put into it appeared to have paid off. The newly shaping effort was predicated on a habitual project, the crusade. Still the only initiative capable of bringing policy makers of East

75 Ibid., 333–43. the miracle of antonio rizzo 231 and West to at least profess community of interest, the crusade received a great boost during the pontificate of Pious II (1458–1464). The Venetian government had been cautious in stirring up the crusading spirit in its domains bordering Ottoman territories, and Capello’s squadron stood by in late 1462 as an Ottoman fleet descended upon Mytilene or Lesbos.76 Out West, however, Venice was the staunchest standard-bearer of the crusade. In 1460–1461 Venetian embassies hammered that point in the courts of the pope, the duke of Burgundy, and the King of France, Louis XI; in Hungary where they kept the pressure on Matthias Corvinus; and indeed to anyone willing to entertain the proposition. In the interest of the crusade the Senate compromised the republic’s reputation and lifted a trade embargo on Rhodes twice in two years, despite damage suffered by Vene- tian subjects at the hands of the Knights of St. John.77 Venetian envoys exhorted the pope to act to end the war in southern Italy and dedicate funding and manpower collected in Central Europe to the aid of Hungary and the defense of Bosnia, and warned that an Ottoman invasion of Italy across the Adriatic was not unthinkable.78 No amount of cajoling was to change Venetian neutrality in the Italian war or its resolve to contribute to or participate in any real crusading expedition; the republic stayed fully focused on what mattered most for its maritime domains in the Eastern Mediterranean. The troubles in the Aegean notwithstanding, Rizzo’s destinations, the Archipelago, remained in the hands of the Crispo and under Venetian suzerainty. The Duchy weathered the war of 1463–1479, the fall of Negro- ponte in 1470, and periodic Ottoman raids, but the smoldering frictions between the upper class Latins and the local Greeks and their lay and religious leadership came closer to tearing apart the social and political fabric of the Archipelago. More than once, the stress on the duchy’s resources generated major confrontations between Greeks and Latins, a situation that replicated the Cretan rebellions in mid-century. In 1494 the Greek archonts succeeded in assassinating the duke, Giovanni III, and requested direct rule from Venice. Three Venetian rectors governed the island group before restoring authority to the next Crispo, Francesco. As it turned out, the duke suffered from mental illness, and after a frightening episode in

76 See the cautious refusal to permit the preaching of the crusade in Dalmatia in 1462, in ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 89v, May 22, 1462. 77 ASV Senato, Secreta, Reg. 21, f. 11v, July 1, 1460, and f. 43v, April 18, 1461, f. 102v, August 9, 1462. 78 Andrews, The Turkish Threat, 389–404. 232 chapter ten which he killed his spouse and sought to murder his son the locals in the castro intervened and deposed him. Venice had to take over again in 1511– 1518 until the son, Giovanni IV, came of age. The new duke’s long reign (1518–1564) saw the fall of Rhodes in 1522 and the massive invasion of the Cyclades by the fleet of Haireddin Barbarossa in 1537, which solidified the duchy’s status as a tributary vassal of the Ottomans. Duke Giovanni’s pleas for help to Venice, to the pope, and to other Christian potentates brought no relief. The new Ottoman demands further depleted the duchy’s wealth, and the Greek population responded with violent resistance to the inevitable tax hikes. Once again, Latins and Greeks fell apart. The confrontation soon took on a religious dimension as well since the Ottomans’ suzerainty entailed native religious representation for the Greek population. The newly arrived Orthodox priests stoked Greek resentment of the Latins. By the time of Giovanni’s death, economic hardship, continuing Ottoman extractions, and religious and social frictions had led a Venetian observer to consider the situation deplorable, and the seventy year-old duke a shadow of a ruler. Tellingly, he contrasted Naxos to Tinos, where the locals were notoriously loyal to Venice.79 Indeed, Tinos was the last possession in the Cyclades to fly the banner of San Marco, holding out against the Ottomans until 1714. The new Duke Giacomo IV had been in power a little over a year when the local Greeks sent to Istanbul with an offer to surrender the island to Selim III. The duke attempted to forestall the transfer by appealing personally to the sultan, only to be imprisoned, while his duchy received an Ottoman-appointed governor. Giacomo IV was later released, managed to reach Venice, and ceded his rights to the Archipelago to the republic. The Serenissima briefly occupied Naxos during the wars following the battle of Lepanto and the loss of Cyprus, but the era of her supremacy in the Archipelago was over.80 The Ottoman pressure had been too much to bear, but it is nonetheless instructive that the republic deemed its strong alliance with the local Greeks and their gentle treatment the crucial factor for maintaining its long presence on Tinos. Some decades before the miracle cycle was reprinted in 1590, the theme of the cultural, political, and religious affinity among Christians,

79 Report of a councilman of Canea of 1563, see Vladimir Lamanski, Secrets d’état de Venice: documents, extraits, notices et etudes servant à eclaireir les rapports de la Seigneurie avec les Grecs, les Slaves, et la Porte Ottomane a la fin du XVe et au XVIe siècle (Saint Peters- burg, 1884), 654–55; F.W. Hasluck, “Depopulation in the Aegean Islands and the Turkish Conquest,” Annual of the British School in Athens, 17 (1910–11), 158. 80 Frazee & Frazee, The Island Princes, 77–88, and 101–108; Lamanski, Secrets, 655. the miracle of antonio rizzo 233 reinforced by the threat of the common Ottoman foe and signified by the Mesopanditissa and the Madonna of Loreto, sounded as relevant as ever. The Mesopanditissa remained in Crete until the fall of the island in 1669, but in the meantime the cult of the Loretan Virgin flourished in the metropolis. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, at the time the incunabulum with San Giovanni’s miracles was printed, at least four editions of Tolomei’s account were produced in Venice. The city was a stopover on the journey to Loreto and many Hungarian, Polish, and French noble pilgrims were received and entertained by the government on their way to or from the shrine. Caterina Cornaro, the principal female devotee on Bastiani’s painting of 1476, made a personal pilgrimage in 1489. According to Marin Sanudo, Venetian ambassadors to Rome had made the road to Loreto an obligatory part of their journeys back home. In 1597, Petro Tor- sellino recorded an already old and established tradition of a steady trick- ling of pious visitors from the dominion of the Serenissima on both sides of the Adriatic. Pardoned officials, such as Marco Basadonna in 1501, made pilgrimages of thanks, and Venetian navy captains patrolling the Adriatic used to regularly frequent the shrine. Precious gifts and votive offerings from prominent Venetian patrician clans, among them the Barbaro, the Contarini, and the Venier, are documented throughout the sixteenth century. In keeping with the anti-Ottoman meaning of the devotion, Giovanni Barbo, the commander of the Adriatic fleet, sent a silver model of a galley to give thanks for the Virgin’ help in suppressing Ottoman corsairs in the region. By mid-century the cult had become so popular that at the insti- gation of Giovanni Loredan a large model of the shrine was constructed in Venice. Loredan became its first supervisor in 1561; other nobles inherited the task in an uninterrupted sequence until 1588. The Madonna of Loreto became the refuge of first instance for the state in its hours of need, the manifestation of the divine to supplicate when enemies of all stripes pressed upon the republic. In 1509, in the dark days after the disaster of Agnadello, the Senate authorized Andrea Gritti to make a special state offering to the Virgin of Loreto in order to obtain her intercession in the defense of Padua. In 1585 the government exempted from taxation building material purchased in Venice and destined for the construction of the religious complex around the basilica of Loreto.81 In the perception of the state, as in that of the individual faithful, the Madonna of Loreto continued to exemplify the strong association of the Virgin with succor

81 Portugruaro, “Devozione di popolo,” 220, 232. 234 chapter ten in political and military affairs. The trend continued in the seventeenth century while the miracle cycle went through new printings. Back in the early 1460s, when Rizzo’s voyage and the miracle took part, the situation in the Aegean and in Venice’s maritime empire, then at its expansionist peak, was a tangled web of pushing and pulling from all sides, outbursts of dangerous pressure on the Serenissima’s resources punctuated with periods of peace and even triumphs, such as the acquisition of Cyprus a few years later. The impression is of a protracted, drawn- out struggle, dangerous and debilitating, but not without an optimistic slant to it. Distilling the political environment in which the search for employment, economic opportunity, and social progress threw Antonio Rizzo into his predicament of December 1461 in such terms offers a parallel with the narrative logic of the miracle account. The storm that the Filo- mati ship had to fight in the apparent safety of the harbor of Ragusa was nothing like the quick-come, quicker-gone turbulence that endangered Frumento’s vessel in 1421 or the gale that hit Vendramin’s craft in 1370. It was a long buffeting, with winds descending upon ship and crew from every point of the compass and the vessel losing its moorings and on the verge of capsizing. Long, desperate struggle and serious danger comprise the conceptual theme of the narrative. In the end, danger was neutralized by the combined forces of unity between East and West, but only under the guidance of the Cross. Antonio Rizzo shared the devotion to the Virgin in the imagery of concord, personal and public, she presented to him, but he knew all too well that the fusion of interests in the island world of the Venetian empire he was entering and the empire’s continuous existence were ultimately predicated on the overarching presence of the Cross. Only under the sign of the cross, mobilized in crusade, upon delivery of a proper contribution vowed beforehand, did the Western political powers and Christians of all stripes in the Levant subsume their differences and coexist to face the Ottoman danger of obliterating them all. The miracle with the ship belonging to and manned by Cretan-Venetians and carrying a Latin man about to govern a Greek population proved that right, for the time being. Chapter Eleven

The Miracle of Alvise Finetti’s Boy: Finance, the State, and the Future of the cittadini originarii

On March 10, 1480, a near tragedy occurred in the household of Alvise Finetti, a scribe in the State Loans Office. His four-year old son, while playing by a windowsill on the piano nobile, slipped and fell to the ground. He landed badly. His head was severely injured and his face was spattered with blood. His terrified mother ran to cradle him in her arms, carried him up to his crib and, desperate as she was over the condition of her son, thought of just the right thing to do. She had been deeply devoted to San Giovanni’s Cross and was in possession of two candles, obtained from Policreto Cortese, then vicar of the confraternity, that had been in contact with the relic. She made the sign of the Cross over the injured boy with the candles and for an hour or so proceeded to pray fervently for his recovery. At last she turned back to see the boy safe and sane, as if there had been no accident at all. It was a miracle. If it was, it may have been due to the involvement of a person with an avid interest in recognition of divine intervention. The man from whom Alvise Finetti’s unnamed spouse obtained the candles, Policreto (de) Cor- tese of the parish of San Geremia, was a long-standing member of San Giovanni’s. Policreto was a notary active from 1465 to 1481, most likely the year he passed away.1 He was also a state functionary, employed in the curia maior.2 Policreto was admitted to the scuola in March 1444. In 1458 he entered service and sat regularly on the banca: deacon for San Polo in

1 His notarial record is in ASV ANT, b. 887. A roaster of current brothers of San Gio- vanni’s compiled in 1486 does not list Policreto, see ASV SG SGE Reg. 11. He must have died before that date, and as his notarial record cuts off in 1481, that must have been the last year of his life. It is unclear whether Policreto was related to Pietro Cortese, son of Cortese of San Julian, who guaranteed his wife’s dowry on February 27, 1439, ASV, CIN, b. 215, paper register for 1438 (m.v.), f. 347r, Odorico Tabarini. 2 Or at least he was in 1450, when he is identified as notary in the curia maior, the court dealing with civil cases of less than 10 lire di grossi in a document with which Agnesina Dragano offered security for the 50 ducats she had borrowed from him, ASV CIN, b. 195, register of Antonio de Serenis, no foliation, at February 9, 1450. For the curia maior see Melchiorre Roberti, Le magistrature giudiziarie veneziane e i loro capitolari fino al 1300. Vol. 1. Procedura e ordinamento giudiziario veneziano dai tempi piu antichi all fine del secolo decimoterzo (Padua: Seminario, 1907), 214–15. 236 chapter eleven

1458–1459, then scribe in 1460–1461, on the eve of the miracle with Antonio Rizzo. In 1466 he was elected guardian da matin, and between March 17, 1479, and March 4, 1480, served as vicar.3 He may have been poised for the top executive position, but death cut that prospect short. Policreto had the credentials and went the extra mile, participating in the fundraising campaigns and paying out of pocket.4 He was also well connected, in and out of the confraternity. His nephew, Nicolo son of Domenico, had married a gentlewoman from the Bon family.5 Policreto’s wife Franceschina was a Rizzo, the daughter of a large family in San Martin at least one of whose members was on San Giovanni’s banca during the last decade of Policreto’s tenure.6 Policreto may well have sponsored the Rizzo. He was childless and must have had a special fondness for his in-laws. Although a resident of Cannaregio, he willed to be buried in San Giovanni and Paolo, where his brother Domenico was laid to rest and where the Antonio Rizzo who drew up his will in December 1461, the man with the best claim to be the chancellor of the miracle of 1461–1462, had a hereditary burial place. In his thirty-six years of service, Policreto had been the contemporary of three miracles, those of 1447, 1461, and 1480. All of them involved the use of candles that had been in contact with the relic. Given that he was related to the Rizzo and had handed over the candles to the wife of Finetti, Poli- creto may have been instrumental in the recognition of the occurrence as a miracle of the Cross. As the accounts mention it as “recently” occurred, he may have still been alive at the time it was recorded. As a long-term notary, state servant, and ranking confraternal officer, he carried enough weight when it came to acknowledging the legitimacy of the event as a miracle. He was also personally involved and at the time must have had an eye on the guardianship. As second-in-charge of the scuola and a man

3 ASV SG SGE Reg. 72, f. 51r for Policreto’s enrolment in March 1444. The cognomen and parish are missing, but the name is rare, and the dates fit; 97r, deacon for San Polo in 1458–1459; 99r, scribe in 1460–1461; f. 240r, March 1461 elected scribe for a half term; ASV SG SGE Reg. 73 Registro di banche, 1465–1690, f. 2: March 1466, Policreto di Cortesi elected guardian di matin, replacing Marocho Stella; fol. 15r, March 1479 elected vicar and serving until March 4, 1480. He was replaced regularly, which means he was still alive at the time. 4 ASV SG SGE Reg. 72, f. 230r, Policreto contributed eight ducats in 1458 for a project of the confraternity, in a group of boni homines a few of whom gave 30 ducats, but most limited themselves to a five-ducats subvention. 5 Pellegrina Cortese, wife of Nicolo, left a will that identifies her paternal family in December 1490, ASV ANT, b. 71, # 159: 40, notary Borgi. 6 See ASV ANT, b. 1238, # 274, dated February 27, 1471, notary Tomaso Tomei, and the previous chapter. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 237 familiar with its finances, he may have had a compelling reason to support its immediate recognition as well. While the accounts are definitive that a new miracle had just occurred, the story as told is not very conducive to such a conclusion. Unlike the case of Giacomo of Brescia, there were no medics on the case and, apart from the statement that the boy severely injured his head, no clinical descriptions of the child’s condition. It all happened so suddenly and developed so quickly that there was no time for human involvement. The insistence on speedy supernatural intervention suggests that the confraternity was under unusual stress to promote the event on very slim grounds. Pecu- niary matters provide an already familiar environment to explain the urgency. In early 1479, the Council of Ten conducted an audit of the scuole grande’s membership. The report came back that San Giovanni’s was about 200 members above the legal limit of 550.7 In March, just as Policreto Cortese took over as vicar, the magistracy ordered the confraternal officials to drop the excess members from its rolls or face severe penalties, including exile and the stiff fine of a thousand ducats a head.8 Two years later, in March 1481, the Ten repeated the injunction, suggesting that the confraternity had not implemented it.9 If the scuola’s leadership was dragging its feet in the face of such threats, there must have been serious reasons. It is not clear whether the designs for the new pictorial program with large canvases depicting the miracles of the Cross had been already underway, but a sudden drop of about one third of the scuola’s steady revenues was a heavy financial blow. Furthermore, as prosperous as the confraternity might have been in the latter part of the century, the 1470s saw mounting demands on its resources by the government. In 1474, in the middle of the sixteen-year war with the Ottomans (1463–1479), the Ten served a notice to all scuole that they would be called upon to provide men for the fleet and support them while serving.10 On at least one occasion, in 1478, the government made good on the warning and ordered twenty five men from San Giovanni’s to join the troops in Albania. Given such demands, it is not a surprise that San Giovanni had to increase their numbers. The scuola continued to receive bequests from a larger group of the population, but this action of the Ten, designed as both a sump- tuary regulation and to avoid the concentration of public wealth in one

7 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 140, f. 185v. 8 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 19, f. 61v, and Wurthmann, The scuole grandi, 100. 9 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 20, f. 50. 10 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 18, f. 82v. 238 chapter eleven institution with such a small group of overseers, cut drastically into its revenues. There was financial stress just as the demand on the scuola’s services and the competition for funds to meet them and to embellish its headquarters was increasing. Furthermore, the number of direct competitors to the scuola’s Cross as a miracle-working relic and a fundraising device rose in the wake of the fall of Constantinople. In 1463, Cardinal Bessarion, patriarch of Constanti- nople and papal legate a latere, arrived in Venice. Received with honors, he was promptly added to the list of patricians and joined the scuola of Santa Maria della Carità. In gratitude for the hospitality, he offered the confraternity a gift of relics, among them two fragments of the True Cross, which he reserved the right to host until his death. Bessarion kept the reliquary until 1472 when, anxious lest a planned mission to France jeop- ardize his commitment, he sent it to the scuola. The reception took on a high profile. The Senate declared a public festivity and on June 7, 1472, the precious reliquary was ceremoniously transported from its temporary seat in San Marco to the confraternity.11 Meanwhile, on the mainland fragments of the Cross had been operating in Padua, where the Santo hosted a fragment in the Chapel of the Relics, and in Treviso, where a local brotherhood had its own True Cross.12 Within the city, in the late 1470s and in 1480 two new magnets of devotional piety stressed the appeal of numinous agents dedicated to healing and serving a larger slice of the population. The first was the near institu- tionalization of the last of the scuole grande, that of San Rocco. As a wave of the ubiquitous plague swept through the city in the summer of 1478, a mixed group of pious men (and women) gained the Ten’s permission to establish a confraternity specifically designed to deal with the effects of the pestilence. In the fall, the Ten granted that new corporation the statute of a scuola piccola, but with special privileges normally allowed to the scuole grande.13 Another small confraternity under the patronage of San Rocco operated at the same time at the Frari; in August 1480 the Ten

11 G. Cozza Luzi, “La croce in Venezia di Cardinal Bessarione,” Bessarione 2:8 (1904), 1–8, 223–36. 12 The Padua fragment can still be seen in the Chapel of the Relics in the basilica of San Antony in Padua, enclosed in a silver reliquary crafted by Giovanni Fabro c. 1437 and placed above the more impressive reliquaries with the saint’s tongue and jaw. For the Cross of Treviso see David Michael D’Andrea, Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso 1400–1530 (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer and the University of Rochester Press, 2007). 13 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 19, f. 73v, f. 98. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 239 gave their blessing to the union of the two corporations under the same patron.14 By early 1481 the new confraternity had acquired high status: it had the privileges of special uniform, public procession, and direct supervision of the Ten rather than the Giustizia Vecchia, which monitored the professional and parish corporations. In just three years, the confraternity had gained major traction, and siphoned off prestige, membership, and funds from the other scuole.15 The acquisition of the body of San Rocco, brought to Venice and authenticated de facto by Patriarch Maffeo Girardo in May 1485, sealed its position.16 The explosive growth of San Rocco testi- fies to the existence of a strong current of anxieties linked to disease, an angst which had not been addressed by San Giovanni’s relic at all. The second was an entirely new phenomenon. In the summer of 1480, another thaumaturgical power burst forcefully onto the scene of miracle making. Beginning in July, the Virgin of the future Madonna dei Miracoli enacted a series of interventions that lasted for several months and bore close resemblance to the miracles of the Cross. On the first occasion she saved from drowning a person who could not swim. In August, the pace of miracles quickened. A man who had been hit on the head, his skull so badly shattered that doctors had given up, recovered. A gravely ill noble virgin was cured of her ailment. A youth who was nearly crushed by a heavy weight escaped unscathed. In October, a boat loaded with soaps got caught in a storm in the Gulf of Trieste. The mariners threw the cargo overboard but in the end a supplication to the Virgin calmed the storm. Even more poignantly, in November 1480 a young boy, the son of nobleman Andrea Bragadin of San Severo, tumbled out a high window and broke several bones. A desperate plea to the Virgin made him whole at once. Two more miracles with ships on mid-winter voyages rounded out the Virgin’s accomplishments. In February 1481, the ship of two men from Zara was saved from the fury of the stormy seas. Somewhat later, the crew of another vessel caught in a fierce night tempest saw no other recourse

14 ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 20, f. 21. 15 Aware of that, the Ten insisted that brothers belonging to other confraternities had to march with their original brotherhoods, see ibid., Reg. 20, f. 46. 16 By that time the Ten had authorized the scuola to collect alms from those who came to see the body in Venice, and in the name of the saint on the mainland, to enroll two hundred brothers who were not already members of another confraternity, and to march in flagellant processions with the other scuole, ASV Concilio di Dieci, Misti, Reg. 22, f. 138, f. 173–74. Wurthmann, The Scuole Grandi, 118–22, provides good summary of San Rocco’s quick ascendance. On San Rocco see now Franco Posocco and Salvatore Settis, eds., La Scuola Grande di San Rocco a Venezia/The Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2008). 240 chapter eleven but to commend themselves to the Virgin. The winds calmed, and a light appeared from on high to lead them for three hours to safety in the port of Caorle, a distance of some forty miles.17 These were miraculous feats that solidified the already strong reputation of the Virgin, but the dense, persistent, and systematic unfolding of her salvific interventions in this short period clearly encroached on, in fact replicated, the turf occupied by the Cross. The miracle of Alvise Finetti’s son corresponded to the healings enacted by the Virgin but kept strictly within the tradition of San Giovanni’s in terms of its beneficiary.18 As scribe in the State Loans Office, Alvise Finetti served in the intermediary bureaucracy. The offices in that tier were below the Ducal Chancellery and the doge’s magistracies, but a good cut above minor city officials. The Loans Office was exempt from the supervision of the Quarantia Criminal in its appointments, presumably to allow for the magistrates’ better control. By 1480 the majority of its positions went to cittadini originarii though the laws that reserved the upper-tier offices exclusively for that social group and the procedures that determined their recruitment had not yet taken hold on that level of employment.19 Evi- dence about the institutional architecture of the Office, due to the loss of practically all its archives, is lacking, but it must have followed the general structure of the republic’s bureaucracy. In financial magistracies scribes were in charge of much more than what their humble title implies, as illustrated in the description of a similar office, the Dieci Savi alle Decime

17 James A. Grubb, ed., with a contribution by Anna Bellavitis, Family Memoirs from Venice, 15th–17th Centuries (Rome: Viella, 2009), 16–28. The account was composed by Angelo Amadi as a part of the Amadi family chronicle, and is related to the foundation of the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. Angelo, who was born in 1425, covered the part from July 1480 to February 1490 (1489 more veneto); the memoirs were likely reworked by another family member, Francesco Amadi (+ ca. 1566), who covered the middle decades of the sixteenth century. 18 I was unable to locate any information about Alvise Finetti in his professional capacity, or his personal will. The archive of the State Loans Office, which would have contained documents he handled and notices of appointment, burned almost entirely in the Great Fire of 1514. What is left of the period of Alvise’s service are capitularies, the technical documentation is all gone. Even those are late copies, so even the chance that one may read something written in Finetti’s hand is minimal. He does not appear on the incomplete lists of cittadini subjected to scrutiny for state positions, see ASV Collegio, Notatorio, Reg. 4–12, covering the period between 1406 and 1481. After that date the Notatorio did not enter the lists any longer. The records of the Quarantia are late, and in any case his appointment was not subjected to that magistracy’s scrutiny. 19 See Zannini, Buracrati e burocrazia, “I cittadini nella buracrazia intermedia,” 185 and n. 2. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 241 in Realto.20 Working alongside an array of staff, ranging from the notaries to intendants to the coauditore to the more technical ragionato, scontro, or quadernier, the scribes were at the hub of office action. Traces of their activity show them writing all types of documents, updating them with information streaming from different sources, moving them to the magistrates or to other institutions, keeping the accounts in order, and writing receipts and quittances on their own authority. The direct appointment by the rotating magistrates implies a strong connection with the patrician heads of the offices and a reputation for reliability. In the seventeenth century, there were between fifty and one hundred intermediary positions available, the scribes constituting a respective percentage of that staff. In short, the scribes were not a large group, not ubiquitous office furniture, and no mere paper pushers. They were appreciated and carried authority and social prestige commensurate with their duties.21 Their intimate knowledge of the financial, administrative, and legal affairs of the city and their connections to magistrates led the Council of Ten in 1462 to forbid them to sit on the banche of the great confraternities.22 That, perhaps, is the reason why Alvise Finetti does not show up on the extant lists of San Giovanni’s governing bodies. To offer more employment possibilities to the elite cittadini the scribes and the intendants in the offices of San Marco and Rialto were limited to four-year terms with a law of 1444, repeated in 1481.23 That would have hardly allowed Alvise to join San Giovanni’s banca since he was a professional and would have moved to another position within the system. Therefore, unlike the interventions of the Virgin, which did not dis- criminate socially, the miracle with Finetti’s son did not break free from the convention that tied the Cross to the upper crust of cittadini. In the time of the miracle the Finetti, a large clan with several stems, were solid Venetians, but a century back they would have been considered newcom- ers. Their origins were in Ferrara (or from Monte Lupo in the Marca of Ancona), where other Finetti remained, and from where the progenitors

20 Bernardo Canal, “Il Collegio, l’ufficio, e l’archivio dei Dieci Savi alle Decime in Rialto,” in Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s., vol. 16:1 (1908), 115–50 and 16:2, 279–310; see 2 at 297. 21 The men seeking employment in state offices were not accidental applicants. In the scrutiny for positions in 1472, a man noted as qualification that he had already held the chancellorship at Rhetimno, see Collegio, Notatorio, Reg. 11, f. 128r. Another listed himself as the son of someone who had already served precisely in the Loans Office, idem, f. 104 (entry 397) of September 21, 1471: “Alvisius Tincto filius Jacobi a camera Imprestitorum.” 22 Bellavitis, Identite, 121. 23 Ibid., 75 and ASV Maggior Consiglio, Deliberazioni, Reg. 24, Libro Stela, f. 20v. 242 chapter eleven of Alvise had emigrated some time before the middle of the fourteenth century. No grazia granting them citizenship had surfaced so far, which may be an indication that their roots in the city went back long enough to warrant citizenship “by ancient custom,” as the sixteenth century officials involved in determining the confines of the class of cittadini originarii referred to the alternative to the law of 1569.24 Their presence in San Giovanni’s, however, was minimal. The extant lists of the brotherhood, more or less integral for the mid- and late fifteenth century, feature few Finetti. One Giacomo da Finetti is recorded in 1466 and the next year as a deacon for San Marco.25 The proper name Giacomo, while common, does not appear on any of the known Finetti family stems. Another member of San Giovanni’s was Andrea di Giovanni Finetti, a graduate of the Uni- versity of Padua, doctor of civil and cannon law (1514–1516), and father of Giovanni Finneti (1526–1612), a lawyer and financially very successful state attorney as well as a part-time humanist.26 Andrea must have joined in the early 1500s and figures on two lists extending to the 1530s.27 His son, Giovanni, got his degrees in 1551, took civil service, did a term as vicar in Brescia, where he met and wedded a local gentlewoman, Elena Albrizzi, and then went back to Venice to continue as a brilliant attorney and speaker. Giovanni’s elder son, Andrea, continued in his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps as an attorney at law; his other three sons were well educated civil servants as well. His daughters married well. Members

24 There are three Finetti stems in Tassini, Notizie storiche e genealogiche, BMC, Ms P.D. 4/2-213–15 (online at http://lettere2.unive.it/manoscritti/tassini/), f. 213–15. The Finetti are not to be confused with another well-established cittadino family, the Felleti. A Felleti who was elected a Grand Chancellor of Crete in 1509, Alvise, applied unsuccessfully three times for the position of Grand Chancellor of the republic, in 1517, 1523, and 1524, and his son Francesco did the same in 1529. Misled by the transcription of Sanudo, who refers to Alvise one time as “Finati” and then as “Feleto” and “Feletto,” Ana Bellavitis, Identite, 290, n. 26, notes that the Cretan chancellor’s name was Alvise Finetti. The families are completely different and not related at all. Tassini offers another short note in Giuseppe Tassini, Curiosita Veneziane ovvero Origini delle denominazioni stradali a Venezia (repr., Venice: Filippi, 1990), 243. On Finetti see also BMC Memorie cencernanti l’origine delle famiglie de veneti cittadini, estratte da due codici del XVI secolo (Venice: Bettinelli, 1775), which dates to 1540; the original is in BMC, Ms. Codice Cicogna 2156, f. 170; BMC Codice Gradenigo, 192 (dated to 1536), 113v–114r, which lists several Finetti; and BNM Ms. It. VII 90 (8029). Marco Foscarini, Della litteratura veneziana libri otto, vol. 1 (Venice, 1752), 22, n. 45: “La famiglia Finetti tra le populari or sia cittadinesche in Venezia e antichissima, trovan- dosi presso il Zamberti ne I Registri de Libri dei Pregadi un Niccoletto, fin del 1374.” 25 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 10, for 1466 where he is listed as having paid eleven ducats, and Reg. 73, f. 3–4r for his deaconship for San Marco. 26 For Giovanni Finetti see Gino Benzoni “Giovanni Finetti: Un Ulpiano mancato” in Studi veneziani xxv (1993), 35–71, spec. 48 for Andrea. 27 ASV SG SGE, Reg. 13, f. 60, and Reg. 14. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 243 of other branches of the clan, too, prided themselves on being well educated and attuned to gentle living. None of them joined San Giovanni’s. A third member of the extended family, Benedetto de Finetti, son of Andrea, of the parish of San Cassian, is not on the extant confraternal lists, but must have been among the brothers in 1431 when he had his will drawn up. Although he had debts, he was well-off. He requested to be buried in San Giovanni’s and left to the poor brothers of the confraternity five hundred ducats for his soul. Married to a certain Fiordalicia, he had two sons, Andrea and Alvise.28 In the absence of positive identification it is a fair assumption that Alvise Finetti, the scribe in the State Loans Office, was Benedetto’s younger son Alvise, named in the will. Alvise had therefore been born not long before 1431, which makes him a mature adult in 1480. His connection to a confirmed family stem can be only tentative but the link can be made, based on the strong consistency in the appearance, across several generations of a family branch, of three proper names, Alvise, Giovanni, and Almoro. Its members, while not as brilliant in the legal domain as their cousins of doctor Andrea’s branch, were established and very well connected cittadini orginarii. The confirmed progenitor of that branch, a certain Giovanni, is not otherwise attested but he had a son, Alvise, who married a della Torre lady, Camilla.29 Alvise was alive in 1544 and had already fathered several children. Two of his sons were named, respectively, Giovanni and Almoro. The later, in his turn, had a son named Alvise, who married into the patrician Valier clan. That Alvise too named two of his sons Giovanni and Almoro.30 Together with their brothers Francesco and Ottaviano, all Alvise’s sons were acknowledged as cittadini originarii by Avogaria di Comun in a prova dated May 4, 1629. The decision was justified with the law of 1569, which means that their father and grandfather, also named in the proceedings, had been citizens of good standing themselves.31 That is no surprise, as their paternal grandfather Almoro had been a notary in the

28 ASV ANT, b. 486, notary Francesco Gibellini, # 65, dated August 12, 1431. Benedetto named Fiordalicia and a certain Bartolomeo Spiron, his associate, as his will’s executors. Spiron, in his turn, was married to Caterina who made a will on August 30, 1427, ASV ANT, b. 1157, notary Croce, Protocol I, # 69. Andrea must have been the older son, since Benedetto entrusted him with the handling of his debts, while Alvise was to receive some cloth of “good quality.” 29 Camilla’s will in ASV ANT, b. 63, # 34, dated May 20, 1544, notary Pietro Bartoli. 30 See the genealogy in Tassini, Cittadini, f. 215. 31 ASV Avogaria di Comun, Reg. 440, Cittadinanze originarii, Indice 1569–1801, f. 44r. 244 chapter eleven

Salt Office.32 He is listed in the Redecima of 1582 as father of the younger Alvise or Alvisetto, who must have been indeed quite young at the time of the assessment. It is most likely Giovanni Finetti of that branch who, as notary of the Provveditori di Comun, recorded the officials’ approval of the constitution of the wool cloth guild in 1556.33 At that time the family resided in Castello, in San Severo. His brother Almoro had a son by the name of Alvise, who became a priest and had a will drawn in 1633. It is unclear if the notary Almoro Finetti, active 1637–1656 in recording wills and acts, is to be identified with the same generation or was a still younger member of the family who entered into the legal profession.34 The perfect regularity in the stem’s name register suggests strongly that the father of the recorded patriarch, Giovanni, was also named Alvise. The absence of the name from other stems leaves only one option for identification open: Benedetto’s son, Alvise Finetti of the miracle, was the father of Giovanni. In 1480 Alvise Finetti must have been in his fifties, which fits neatly the chronology of the branch. The reconstruction posits the intriguing possibility that the eldest Giovanni from that stem was the child who was the beneficiary of the intervention of the Cross in 1480. But who was Gio- vanni? Besides being the doctor Andrea Finetti’s patronym, in the same period the name is linked to a Finetti woman, Andrianna q. Giovanni, recorded in the Redecima of 1514 in the parish of Santa Sofia.35 It is plausible to conclude that Andrianna was Andrea’s sister and that since the tax receipt had been done in 1516, Giovanni had passed away and Andrea was at Padua studying. The name register of that stem implies an Andrea as their grandfather. The chronology suggests that the elder Andrea was Benedetto Finetti’s other son, named in the will of 1431, if he had, indeed, a son named Giovanni who became the father of Andrea and Andrianna. It is a tenuous assumption, but if correct, it leaves two Finetti men with the first name of Giovanni, for Andrea Finetti the doctor of law was too old to have been the son of Alvise the scribe’s son. The latter, as the miracle states, had been born in 1476. In any case, Benedetto and Fiordalicia Finet- ti’s sons started two branches of the family, one through Alvise producing Giovanni the son of the miracle, the other through Andrea, Giovanni,

32 According to Tassini’s note, ibid., f. 215. 33 Muzzato, Arte della lana, 2, 499. 34 ASV ANT, bb. 357–359, # 439, notary Andrea di Erculis, dated September 24, 1633. For the notary Almoro Finetti see ASV ANT, b. 474–475 and Atti, 6089. 35 Andrianna quondam Giovanni is listed on card 49, see Redecima of 1514, “Indice delle partite,” alongside a certain Finetta, who does not have a patronymic identification. The parish is specified by Tassini, Curiosita, 243. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 245

Andrea the doctor, Andrianna, and then Giovanni the doctor and lawyer and his offspring. Giovanni of the former stem may have married Paola, daughter of Pietro Vianolli, shortly before 1497 and resided in the parish of San Gregory, having not yet produced offspring by that date.36 By the turn of the sixteenth century there is evidence of one Giovanni Finetti and he fits in both Finetti stems: Giovanni Finetti, ragionator and then coauditor in the office of the Provveditori di Comun. All that is known about him is that he was assassinated on August 16, 1516, by a certain Giovanni Firmano, a scribe in the office of the Caduze.37 Giovanni the coauditor could have been either Alvise’s son, for being born in 1476 he would have been too young to be the father of Andrea and Andrianna, or he could have been the son of the elder Andrea de Benedetto de Finetti.38 The assumption that he was the boy of the miracle is quite plausible. If Giovanni was indeed the son of Alvise, he had followed in the footsteps of his father. He took a job in financial management, got commended by his magistrate superior who sought to give him a raise as Sanudo records, and was promoted for his skill and expertise. It is not clear what was the occupation of his son Alvise, but the latter’s son Almoro’s position in the Provveditori al Sale’s office suggests a strong hereditary tradition for employment in the financial administration of the republic. The next generation of that stem built up on that accomplishment and branched out in other administrative and legal services. Already at the turn of the sixteenth century, therefore, the Finetti were a perfect example of the evolution of the top section of the cittadini originarii, product of governmental

36 Paola left a will in 1497, in which she appointed her husband and father as executors. I infer that the marriage was recent since she listed no children and was hopeful that she would have offspring soon, which implies a young bride who is setting her affairs in order before pregnancy taxes her health, ASV ANT, b. 66, # 349, dated June 18, 1497, notary Priame Busenello. 37 The case is mentioned by Sanudo, Diarii, vol. XXI, c. 514; vol. XXII, c. 436, 450; vol. XXIII, c. 506. The sentence is in Avogaria di Comun, Raspe 3662, f. f. 271v, January 21, 1517, but it gives no details on Giovanni Finetti. Firmano skipped town and later pleaded for a grazia; the Council of Ten rescinded the sentence on November 20, 1536. 38 Gino Benzoni suggests that Giovanni, the father of Andrea Finetti is to be identified with Giovanni Finneti, the coauditore of the Provveditori di Comun who was assassinated in 1516 by Giovanni Fermani, a scribe in the Caduze, see Benzoni, “Un Ulpiano mancato: Giovanni Finetti,” 49 note 12. If Giovanni Finetti the coauditor was the father of Andrea he could not have been the little son of Alvise Finetti in the miracle, for he would have been too young to have a son that graduated with a degree in both laws in 1514–1516. However, the presence of the proper name “Alvise” in the stem of San Severo suggests that Giovanni the coauditor is more likely to have been a son of Alvise Finetti of the miracle, whether the one who was restored to health or not. Benzoni does not consider the possibility of Giovanni Finetti in the Alvise the scribe’s branch of the family. 246 chapter eleven policies and family strategies that vested them entirely and hereditarily in public service in the offices of the republic. Back in 1480, the destiny of the family depended on Giovanni’s survival. Accidentally, the destiny of so many Venetians depended on the stability and the survival of the magistracy that employed his father. The child’s fall nearly cut that Finetti stem, but at the same time the near fall of the State Loans Office was about to provide a similar shock to the citizenry at large. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the state’s needs for extra ordinary revenues led to a dramatic rise in the imposition of forced loans that affected nearly every Venetian, and to a no less conspicuous failure to pay back the extractions or even provide interest payments. The latter part was especially important, since so many people depended on the returns as a source of modest but steady income and because large institutions, such as the scuola of San Giovanni’s, had their capital tied up in state bonds and financed their operational budgets with the interest. Indeed, the State Loans Office, referred to as “the life and death of this blessed Signoria” and “the main foundation of our existence” in 1434, was still considered a fundamentally sound institution in 1458. The sad reality was that by that time it had all but broken down under the pressure of financial stress brought about by a string of forced loans. Instituted sometime between 1224 and 1252, the Office was established to pay off forced loans and had for centuries operated successfully to supply the funds that the republic’s normal exactions in terms of fees, customs, and dues were unable to provide. By 1262 the loans earned five percent yearly interest, paid semiannually, and a fund was set aside to service the debt, financed largely by the state salt monopoly. The fund was more or less perpetual since inception, and by 1375 amortization of principal had practically ceased. The forced loans continued however, since the state had no method of direct taxation and resistance to pay, first registered in 1442, mounted. By the time of the miracle, the fund and the Office were reaching the end of their useful existence. The government began falling in arrears on interest in 1432, and was seven years back in 1450. In 1480 paying interest was 20 years behind schedule. Most importantly for the context of the miracle, in that year the Loans Office did not pay a single remittance on the old public debt, Monte Vecchio. Interest distribution was suspended. The news must have gone out beforehand but it must have been confirmed on March 1, ten days before the miracle, when the payment of half the interest for the year was due to the stakeholders. The inadequacy of the system was evident and under the strain from a long period of uninterrupted war with the Ottomans the government flirted the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 247 with direct taxation based on the decima, the real estate tax. In 1482 they reversed course and the Monte Nuovo was established, renewing the forced loan system. The affluent preferred it because, like Monte Vecchio, it promised to pay interest on taxation. The decima did not, so people were somewhat enthusiastic to loan to Monte Nuovo. Issues of the old system, the Monte Vecchio, continued to be traded on the open market. That gave new life to the Office, but it continued to decline, especially since the re-introduction of the direct taxation after 1514. In sum, even though there had been suspension of interest payment before, the suspension of 1480 showed that the system was in really bad shape, and only a miracle could have saved it—and with it the investments of all those who expected return on the loans they made to the state and their bonds investments. The market value of the bonds had declined to ten percent of their peak a century earlier.39 The impact was widespread but did not affect everyone the same way. The elite cittadini would not have depended on interest to meet their everyday expenses. But by the last decade of the century, concurrent with the redefinition of their status, a large segment of them had come to live exclusively on fixed income, their governmental sala- ries. Economic difficulties that brought price hikes and the drying up of additional revenues provided by interest on bonds could not have failed to affect them. Those better-off financially would have speculated with credits on the open market and garnished better returns, but as the calls for loans on the part of the state mounted, even they had to sell credits below market value to satisfy the demand. Institutional investors such as the scuola of San Giovanni’s must have felt the pinch as well. The failure of the Loans Office in 1480 was largely caused by the strain of the sixteen-year-long war with the Ottomans, a particularly taxing and bleak period for Venice that provides additional background to the miracle. The war of 1463–1479 was the first of three long and exhaustive wars, the other two following in 1499–1503 and 1537–1540. It ended with the peace of January 25, 1479, which stabilized the two Mediterranean powers’ relations for a while, but the Serenissima paid dearly for it. Venice gave up Scutari, Lemnos, Maina and the mainland of Morea. Reparation of one hundred thousand gold ducats had to be paid in two years, and ten thousand ducats were to be rendered as an annual fee for carrying out commerce in

39 I sum up the findings of Reinhold Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200–1500 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 453–87, especially 462 and 469 with the graph of the value of the bonds. 248 chapter eleven

Ottoman territories and waters. Apart from the inevitable expenditure of men, funds, and resources and the disruption of commerce, Negroponte was lost in 1470, and the Turks took over Albania in 1479, as well as the hinterland of Venice’s strip of Dalmatian coastal territories. Ominously enough, the peace of 1479 freed the Ottomans to descend upon Rhodes in the next year, and only the heroic resistance of the Knights Hospitallers led by Pierre d’Aubusson saved the long-time Levantine stronghold of Western warfare and commerce. In a surprising move, the Ottomans then reversed direction and attacked Otranto, their first assault on Italian soil.40 The Serenissima remained aloof on both occasions and stood by its peace with the Turks, while other Italian powers diverted scarce resources to the succor of the Hospitallers and Terra d’Otranto.41 In fact, the Venetian stand was a calibrated response to what amounted to a concerted effort to undercut the republic’s interests in the Levant. The initiative belonged to Ferrante of Naples, who in the 1470s and the early 1480s attempted to orchestrate a coalition of Naples, the Mam- luks in Cairo, and the Rhodian knights against Venice. In the 1470s the king had made a series of marriage alliances with Balkan and Central European rulers encircling the Venetian dominions, aligning with Mat- thias Corvinus of Hungary, Duke Vlatko of Herzegovina, and Leonardo II Tocco, despot of Arta, Duke of Cefalonia, and ruler of Ithaca and Zante. Negotiations were conducted with Dubrovnik and the leading Albanian lords. Sold as an effort against the Ottomans, these alliances were just as much a potential threat to Venetian control of the eastern Adriatic and the communication lines that stretched along its shores. In the spring of 1479 the king, supporting the claim of Charlotte de Lusignan to the crown of Cyprus, was implicated in the conspiracy of Marco Venier against the reigning Queen, Caterina Cornaro.42 The same year, Venetian and Nea- politan troops fought on opposite sides in a confrontation between the pope and Lorenzo the Magnificent of Florence. To complicate things further, in December 1479 Italian powers began realigning yet again, a freshly built Naples-Florence-Milan league facing the pontifical-Venetian alliance, officially ratified in April 1480. In light of all this, the Signoria had

40 Overview in Kenneth M. Setton, The papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. II (Phila- delphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1978), 346sq. 41 On the Venetian position of strict neutrality, see ibid., 365sq. See also Alessio Bom- bacci, “Venezia e la impresa Turca di Otranto,” Rivista Storica Italiana, 66 (1954), 159–203. 42 See Hill, History of Cyprus, 730–32, and Bombacci, “Venezia e la impresa Turca,” passim. the miracle of alvise finetti’s boy 249 few good choices left on the peninsula and in the Levant. The Venetian forces standing by as an Ottoman fleet attacked Tocco in the fall of 1479, in the spirit of the peace and in the hope of acquiring Zante, illustrate well the Venetian predicament in eastern Mediterranean politics. Exhausted by the long war of 1463–1479, the republic was in dire straights, squeezed between ambitious powers in Italy and abroad. The twenty-year respite granted by the peace of 1479 allowed her to recuperate and concentrate effort on the terraferma and the territorial and political squabbles on the peninsula. By March 1480, despite the continuing machinations of the future leader of the expedition against Otranto, Valona governor Ahmed Pasha, Ferrante had grown distracted, rival Italians were neutralized, and, for the time being, there were reasons for cautious optimism in relations with the Ottomans. Ottoman embassies were present in Venice on two occasions in 1479–1480. In April, Lüfti Bey arrived to witness the Doge swearing to the peace; in August Ahmed Pasha sent an envoy of his own. On March 8, 1480, another Ottoman emissary, Hasan Bey, disembarked in Venice to negotiate borders and request that the Signoria allow passage of Ottoman forces through her ports. In April 1480 he was followed by Sinan Bay, who brought missives from both the sultan and Ahmed Pasha. On July 10, 1480, a few days before the Otranto expedition set sail, Mehmet II issued an edict that confirmed the peace and conceded adequate borders to the ports of Antivari, Dulcigno, and Nauplion.43 In November, Gentile Bellini, sent by the Signoria to the Ottoman court, completed his famous portrait of the sultan, having busied himself with frescoing some of the harem rooms as well. Although hostilities continued in Dalmatia and the Morea, the relations with the Porte had changed as the all-out war effort gave way to a sort of normalcy. The Venetian future in the Levant was not free of anxieties, but looked better than ever before. For a short period of about two years, before the war with Ferrara broke out in 1482 and the establishment of Monte Nuovo announced a new round of forced loans, the republic got a breather. The miracle with Alvise Finetti’s son therefore occurred against a background of financial and political shocks that affected the Venetian population as a whole and the cittadini in the service of the republic perhaps more than other social classes. Financial and other sacrifices in time of war were expected, but the near failure of the “foundation of [Venetian]

43 Bombacci, ibid., 186. For the events of 1480 see also Marin Sanudo, Le vite dei dogi, ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò, vol. I (Rome, 1989), 142–44, 148. 250 chapter eleven existence,” the State Loans Office, must have generated unusual uncer- tainty and apprehension. Supernatural intervention absorbed these into its miracle. The micro-narrative categories in which the accounts operate—domestic space, crashing to the ground, the future in jeopardy (through the imminent loss of a male child), recovery, intervention of large force, identification with the government, and affiliation with the financial sphere—dovetail neatly with and correspond fully to the marco- economic categories that determined social conditions and security for a large section of the Venetian cittadini originarii in 1480. The misfortunes of the state produced a stress which demonstrates that the three components that made Alvise Finetti, his individual self, his role at home, and his role in society, have fused. The state had narrowed the options of its leading citizen class to the point where other identities became irrelevant, and the cittadini had acquiesced. In such conditions, societal troubles projected back onto what contemporary moral and political theorists hailed as the other foundation of political existence, the household. It was there that the gnawing anxiety of the time could be freely expressed without suggesting societal disruption. There, the divine encountered and resolved them instantaneously with the unspoken anticipation that the relief would filter outward into the world of politics and finance. And it did, with the peace with the Ottomans, the restructuring of state finances, and the steady enlargement of the role of the cittadini originarii in the practical management of the republic’s affairs. Conclusion

Method, at Last

The reconstruction of the social identities of the elite citizens involved in the interventions of the True Cross of San Giovanni’s and the suggested linkages of the miracles to signal developments in their lifetimes, min- imally adequate and apposite as they are, allow for a few conclusions. Three fields transpire clearly in the socio-cultural environments of the miracle cycle: the categories that inform the gestation of the elite citizens into a social class, the importance of the institutionalized devotion embodied in the confraternal organizations for that process, and the socio-cultural meanings of the miracles as an articulation of their perception of the social world. The first conclusion is the presence of a consistency throughout the record that does not appear due exclusively to editorial intervention. Indeed, the strong common thread that carries through the cycle is the result of both careful editing and shared experiences and expectations. The first-person reports incorporated verbatim in the 1590 dossier, those of Piero di Lodovico and Antonio Rizzo, speak for similarity of social perceptions alongside editorial work. The manner in which these two fit typologically with the rest of the narratives suggests that even if the cycle was a syncretic assemblage, put together over time and smoothed over on two occasions, in the 1490s and the 1590s, to expunge what in the meantime had become socially and doctrinally unacceptable, the minds that created it were informed by related preoccupations. The editorial hand is certainly visible in the correspondence which has already been pointed out, between the sequence of the miracles in the cycle and Christ’s miracles in the Gospel tradition. But a uniform perception appears within the cycle’s units as well, in the theologically structured timeframes of several of the miracles that would have been too sophisticated an editorial design to be attributed to consistent editing alone. The events prompting a miracle typically occur on or around a fixed feast day. In religious time unmov- able feasts associated with the life of the Virgin or the saints signify earthly mortality and perdition. The deliverance through the Cross’s interventions fell on or close to moveable feasts related to the life and ministry of Christ; 252 conclusion they suggest links to immortality and salvation.1 The miracles with Piero di Lodovico in 1447 and the delivery of the ship with Antonio Rizzo in 1462 bear testimony to that regularity. Piero fell ill on August 15, Assumption Day, and was healed at Christmas. The ship with Rizzo was endangered on January 1, 1462 (which had no specific meaning in the Venetian calendar) and was delivered during the days of the exposition of the sacrament. Fur- thermore, throughout the cycle the interaction between humans, nature, and the divine are predicated on consistent reading of theological categories such as grace, free will, and the scope of divine agency that bear on markedly social concerns linked to the experience of the elite citizens. Most importantly, the typological parallels between the accounts’ narrative logic and the visual covers’ cognitive aesthetics on the one hand, and structural developments in the social world on the other, betray a unity of purpose throughout the cycle. The congruence presents the miracles project as instances of a homogenous mentality that articulated agency through consistent selection of perceptions typical of social actors sharing socio-economic and political preoccupations. The morphology of the cycle delineates miracle clusters that articulate principal components of that agency as it evolved between 1370 and 1480. First, there is the definition of the elite citizens’ social essence, of what they were and what they were not. At the bridges of San Lorenzo, where an upward-bound elite citizen’s social trajectory was ratified by the Cross and at San Lio, where a line was drawn to marginalize those who did not belong, the relic demonstrated as efficient a social engineering as the patrician state. Second, there are the socio-economic foundations of the cittadini. Divine intervention was precipitated by jeopardy to a highly sea-vested economy, efficient caring for the unfortunate in the community, and service to the state: all three primary pivots of the elite citizens’ identity as a segment of the Venetian society. Third, there is the cluster of preoccupations with the constitution of the political community: the relative role of sacred and secular powers, the balance between terraferma and maritime orientation, and the destiny of the seaborne empire. The sequences in which those three sectors of socio-economic involvement came into contact with the numinous in the cycle capture the dynamic of the elite citizens’ evolution during their formative period. Economic

1 For a succinct juxtaposition of the two referential time frames I use Eleanor Selfridge- Field, Song and Season: Service, Culture, and Theological Time in early Modern Venice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 31. method 253 preoccupations came first, both chronologically and in terms of relative weight in the composite narrative. They gave way to involvement with the community, this to be replaced in its turn with preoccupations over civil service. Each sphere of activity is showcased by more than one miracle and the clusters in each group overlap, but the general transition from economy to community to state service is undeniable. Each time a miracle occurs on a point of that broad trajectory it sig- nals a problem experienced by the elite citizenship in the field affected. The narratives define the sources of these problems as nature, disease, and accident. All three appear as faceless, random, irrational, and unethi- cal forces wreaking havoc in the human world. There is nothing unusual or case-specific in the elite citizens’ call to the divine when assaulted by such powers. That the pre-modern condition was conducive to reifying these phenomena since it had limited or no means to neutralize them is a commonplace. But the concurrent postulate that the onslaught of such primal forces showcases condensed social tensions opens a window into the heuristic worth of the miracles.2 The starting premise of this inquiry is that the reification of primal or accidental agents occurred because of a double lack, of control and options. Similar lack of control and a high level of dependence affected the elite citizens in their primary areas of economic, social, and political activity. These became increasingly important features of their lives during the century spanned by the cycle. The simile, hinging on the shared category of dependence, opened a conceptual space of the untheorized sort in which uncontrollable social pressures got transmuted into instances of equally unmanageable afflictions outside the human sphere. The miracles duly reflect this development. The focus of the relic’s action shifted as time went on, from economic engagements that were an independent or at least autonomous sphere of life, to entrepreneurial and commercial activity, to the much more heavily circumscribed living as civil servants of the patrician state. With the latter development came involvement in the political affairs of the republic and, correspondingly, exposure to even larger structural forces that confronted the Venetian body politic with which the elite cittadini bureaucrats came to identify their fortunes. On that level of meaning, the miracles’ beneficiaries were both living men and social types confronted with structural problems. In each case, the primary social identity of the

2 The most notable discussion is by Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, trans. by Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988). 254 conclusion citizen beneficiary was vested in the principal source of social standing for the group as a whole at the time of the supernatural occurrence. For the Vendramin and the Rabia it was trade and industry. For Nicolo di Benvegnudo it was whether the elite could acquire identity through social service. For Giacomo de Salis it was cooptation. For Piero di Lodovico it was straddling maritime and overland interests. For Rizzo and Finetti it was legal, bureaucratic, and administrative service, with its specifics without and within the city. Implicitly, the miracles follow the trajectory of the extraction of the cittadini originarii from the mass of the commoners and the sealing of their status as servants of the state as it unfolded throughout the later fourteenth and fifteenth century. What they highlight like no other source however is the apprehensions that accompanied every mode of the elite citizens’ social being and transformation of identity in their interaction with the political and social powers in control of their world and the intensification of their perception of uneasiness. Traditional social inquiries rest on the supposition that the transition from market to status, so eagerly sought out by the classes just underneath established noble leaderships, leads to a condition of social fulfillment with the corresponding experiences and perceptions. As the argument goes, it is the opposite transformation, which in the Western tradition occurred on the verge of modernity, the shift from status to market, that robbed social identities of the security of their allegedly immutable qualities and induced the permanent condition of apprehension that characterizes the middle classes in modern individualistic capitalist societies. The experiences of the elite cittadini call for a qualification of that generic assumption. If the perception of social fulfillment is a factor of control, conferred status destabilizes identity as much as the vagaries of the market. There is no need here to fall back on reduction and proclaim, in Freud’s manner, that all religion is the effect of neurosis.3 Still, if the miracles of the Cross are any indication, in the case of the Venetian elite citizen members of that proto-industrial and commercial-capitalist society, the solidifica- tion of status identity vested in state services did not result in serenity of existence. At the end of the trajectory the typical elite cittadino was as troubled as in its beginning—or perhaps more. Poignantly, a recalibra- tion of the cittadini’s perception of the social promise of time occurred.

3 Sigmund Freud, “Obsessive Action and Religious Practices,” in James Strachey with Anna Freud, eds. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9 (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 126. method 255

In the miracle with Alvise Finetti the nagging fear is not about forces that could wreck one’s economic fortunes and the social standing depending on it in the here and now. The same anxiety affected Giacomo de Salis in 1443, in a time when the Brescian citizen elite expected the Serenissima to reciprocate for their sacrifice. In both cases the problem is grave danger to a male heir, in which uneasiness about the future of the bloodline is condensed. Inheritance, we should be reminded, was in the 1480s not just the inherent drive to transmit the accumulated material and social accomplishment down one’s own bloodline but a major category of the citizen elite’s status as cittadini originarii as well. The stress here is unmistakable. In pure conceptual terms, from Vendramin to Finetti present and transient worries had mutated into existential anxiety about the future of the social type. Since the miracles ceased in 1480 it is not clear whether the apprehensions in the end were temporary and idiosyncratic, generated by the particularly troubling period since the 1470s, or had become a permanent condition of the elite cittadini’s social existence. There are reasons to think it was the latter. The shifts in the sources of social identification over the course of the elite citttadini’s progressive distillation as a social class did not eliminate trouble and continued to call for miracles because the underlying reason for anxiety remained. Supplementing and then giving up their economically defined existence at the mercy of the market forces and the blind fury of nature on the high seas in exchange for the alleged security and status of state employment saw the twin problem of their options diminishing and their ability to control their predicament through self- definition drastically curtailed. The principal source of trouble therefore was the closing of the options for self-identification, economic, social, and political. Hence one of the primary functions of the miracles was to reassure the elite citizens that their options had not been exhausted. One venue of identification—like that of Finetti—made them anxious. They clamored for independence and options of their own make as much as they desired the status of nobility that went with state service. That desire is detectable in the narrative logic of the accounts and the messages of individual miracles. On a structural plane, all miracles operate in open- ended situations. The Cross intervened in the undetermined time frame when developments were momentarily suspended and could have gone either way, to salvation or perdition, when ships could have gone under or could have made it through the storm, children could have died or recovered. The narrative accounts are careful to specify that the condition of the men in danger or the conclusions of those observing or attending to 256 conclusion them was a matter of perception. The ships hit by storms were not going under and the youngsters in danger were not dying. They “thought” they were going to drown or that the injured child would perish. In terms of individual occurrences the assertion of alternatives, another expression of open-endedness, is the norm. The Vendramin sought ratification of their upward-bound careers not just in patrician recognition and state acknowledgment, the only recognized agencies that were qualified to confer such distinction, but in supernatural blessing and their position as suppliers for the common good (in the texts) who were linked to royal status (in the visual cover). The elite parishioners in the exorcising of the demoniac opined that their corporate agency acting through the Cross has a voice in negotiating the sacred-secular relations in their polity and made the point forcefully in decentering the focus of the visual representation of the miracle. Men of Nicolo di Benvegnudo’s cast formulated an alternative to the patrician state’s definition of service. In what are perhaps the most complex cases, those of Piero di Lodovico and Giacomo de Salis, the involvement of the Cross constructs a polyvalent reality with choices in all directions. The miracle with Rizzo unfolds in a syncretic world, each segment of it riddled with trouble, but with options for those willing to try. By Alvise Finetti’s time these opportunities have been closed, hence the justifiable concern with the future. The state gave the citizen elite the security and status of governmental service but precluded any manner of alternative self-fashioning.4 Losing access to state employment was coterminous with extinction in that social category. Small wonder that the cittadini experienced apprehension, which only a miracle was capable of articulating and assuaging. However that may be, from beginning to end the fundamental identity-related aspects of the elite citizens’ lives were plagued by anxieties of a magnitude that human agency seemed incapable to handle. It appears that the single basic and continuing characteristic of the sociological group that was to become the class and then the quasi-caste of the Venetian cittadini originarii in the process of their incorporation was progressively increasing existential anxiety. The aggregate elite citizens fused together into a group through the development of a shared constraints-satisfaction process designed to deal with their anxiety-inducing predicament, the experience that marked them all.

4 On the progressive hardening of the definition of the class of cittadini in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries see succinctly James S. Grubb, “Elite citizens,” in Romano and Martin, eds., Venice Reconsidered, 339–64; and Grubb’s Introduction to Fam- ily Memoirs from Venice (15th–17th Centuries) (Rome: Viella, 2009), xxii–xxvii. method 257

Much of it was because the elite citizens could not hedge adequately against the agency of the state, the pre-eminent factor that structured their lives. By the 1480s the patrician state had become the hegemon of the social realm. No alternatives for social mobility were available for the elite citizenship and none would have been tolerated. The elite citizens craved, emulated, and embraced the status of the noble oligarchy as the state shaped them in the latter’s image and likeness, but they could not overcome the fact that the incorporation was done by an outside force that they could not even contest. A tension-generating paradigm enveloped the cittadini: the more they were affiliated with the state the less they were able to exercise control over their destiny. Three conditions invited resolution of these tensions through the miracles. First, the level of impact of the intrusion of the fifteenth-century state assimilated it to the impact of extra-human forces. This permitted the transmutation of social tensions into manifestations of accident, disease, and nature. Sec- ond, for reasons inherent in the constitution and operation of the Vene- tian state, the citizen elite could not openly vent the fears that plagued them. Third, the miracles allowed a fallback on the one institution that the citizen elite could draw upon for a modicum of autonomous social identity, the scuola of San Giovanni, which the Cross signified. The result is the miracles cycle, a continuing and adjustable sub-rationalization of the socially induced tensions permeating the elite citizens’ experiences of their world. The miracles endowed the cittadini with agency that the social reality in which they were wrapped denied them. They were also a safe expression of contestation of the state’s hegemony and the nagging condition of inability to extricate themselves, consciously or unconsciously, from its impact. Social (or, to generalize in terms of social identity, existential) tensions created psychological pressure. The quest for relief activated a search into the complex mix of magical belief, ancient vestiges, popular lore, and religious precepts. The search yielded examples that could be brought to bear, through the deep-seated principles of similarity and contagion, to the real-life problems confronting the elite citizens.5 It should be noted that there was no direct translation

5 The primary principles of action through resemblance and contact were first out- lined by Edward B. Taylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1903) and have withstood the withering of his grand anthropological theory fairly well; for an elegant contemporary deployment see Stanley Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 258 conclusion into somatic absorption of the social pressures. Piero di Lodovico did not contract malaria because Venice was in the middle of a hot discussion about how to better enact its imperial destiny, on sea or over land. But the search for an instrument that would allow the handling of apprehension on a plane where a force would become operative that would be capable of matching in scope the agent that produced the tension, the state, yielded the category of disease in general and fever specifically; correspondingly, the case of Piero already being affected by the quartan was singled out as a miraculous intervention. How exactly the chain of associations operated between the starting point, the impact of territorial expansion on the elite citizens, and the end point, the recognition of Piero’s recovery as a miracle, is a question for psychology and perhaps neuroscience. Neuropsychology, with allowance for the restructuring of brain architecture under social and cultural pressures during the past five hundred years, suggests that the appearance of a caring factor that was considered an affiliate of the closing group of the elite cittadini who were aware of their relatedness stimulated neurochemical reactions that alleviate anxiety.6 What this inquiry meant to show is that although the chain may be untraceable at this point of our knowledge, in cultural terms the causality of the link and the identifiable components that took part in the transmutation are indisputable. Perhaps the most critical aspect of the miracles is the behavior that demonstrates causality as an essential parameter of the basic principles of do ut des, similarity and contact. If that is the case, then the dictum that all thinking is comparing and, fundamentally, phenomenological, acquires a very specific meaning. On a basic level, principles witnessed in behavior cannot fail but be principles operating in cognition and belief as well. The same congruity that leads one to apply a candle that had touched the Cross to the injured body and expect healing must function on the level of thinking and belief. There, it links not material objects but cultural forms sedimented on the brain and the mind—I stress both—as discrete thought objects and mental experiences, and creates causally informed associations between them. This is how the humoral theory translates political conditions, fever becomes a concept applied to the biological body and the body politic, syncretic cults come to express the need for political unity, social dependence is

6 Patricia S. Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality (Prince ton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), esp. Chapter 4: “Cooperating and Trusting.” method 259 embodied in an incapacitated young female, and anxiety about the future of a socio-cultural-political system is projected as anxiety about the survival of a male child. The difference between the spheres of operation of the basic principles, in the mind, on the one hand, and in the social and spiritual worlds, on the other, is irrelevant. For as long as we can detect their existence and operation in any observable reality, there is no doubt that they are functional in causally associating similar and/or contigu- ous mind forms. To take a cue from Thorstein Veblen, “A habitual line of action constitutes a habitual line of thought, and gives the point of view from which facts and events are apprehended and reduced to a body of knowledge.”7 Wherever we observe practices in which contingency and likeness are invested with causality, there associative mentality of the type proposed in this study must have been in operation as well. And for as long as that is the case, we have a clue to decipher any reality, provided that we have derived the categories and key concepts operated by the basic principles in practice. The statement is historically specific because it is grounded in the historical reality that first endowed contingency and similarity with efficacy, but it is also generally applicable to the extent that individuals and cultures carry simultaneously several disparate time segments encoded in mental habits and thus actions. That of course is the general foil. Within it, a number of associations between aspects of structural reality and individual choice are possible. Which ones are most apposite and appertaining depends on what we can devise about those involved in the miracle experience and its recording, on the one hand, and the structural logic of the evidence, on the other. I have chosen cor- relatives in cultural forms and developments in the material world whose structural logic overlaps most fully with that of the miracles’ narratives, in keeping with the principle of linking like to like causally. This, in short, is the heuristic dimension of the method proposed here. If correct, it per- mits us to gauge components, such as linkages and correspondences, of the thought process of the miracle mentality, as well as the corresponding developments in the culture that had been drawn into that mentality, through the matrix of the narrative logic of textual and visual evidence. Thus the permeability between the social and the sacred worlds, the signal feature of the miracle as a phenomenon, and the absolute funda- mentality of the operative mode of “contiguity is causality” provided a

7 Thorstein Veblen, Essays on Our Changing Order, ed. by Leon Ardzrooni (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), 88. 260 conclusion double service. They allowed the citizens to call on the divine to confront the sources of the fears which they had translated from the realm of social experience into that of extra-human occurrence.8 They also permitted the alternative force to confront and neutralize their primal angst, dependence. The transposition resolved a principal nagging issue for the fifteenth-century Venetian, the impossibility to rationalize socially or politically and vent openly fears and anxieties of the sort experienced by the citizen elite. The hegemonic socio-political realm which they inhabited precluded that option. The continuing creation, enactment, and reception of the miracles functioned as exposure therapy. Translating their anxieties from the socially informed language of causality to that of representation transported the unsettling feelings into a field where the friendly divine confronted them. Repeatedly commemorating such occurrences in text, ceremony, and image over the long term inserted the anxious citizen into a safe environment where he could see his fears acted upon and neutralized. What is more, the latter were dealt with through the True Cross, an agent that had become coterminous with the scuola. In other words, the resolving of the tensions in miracles endowed San Giovanni’s citizen leadership with agency, that of their very own corporate identity that was being continuously enacted through the Cross, a feat that overcame the existential anxiety of increasing dependence on the state they did not control. Were the elite cittadini aware of this? Perhaps not. But they did not have to be to feel soothed.

8 In the huge and bourgeoning field of miracle studies the “permeability” phenomenon is perhaps best illustrated by Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). See also Michael Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle 1150– 1350 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) and now Graham H. Twelftree, ed., The Cambridge Com- panion to Miracles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Appendix

Incunabulum 249bis (ex. 222), Museo Civico Correr, Venice, ca. 1490

Questi sono i miracoli de la santissima croce de la scola de misier san zuane euangelista

(165r) nel nome del omnipotente dio Amen. Questi sono i miracoli de la croce de la benedeta scola de misier san Ioane euangeli sta ne la quale e del santissimo & uerace legno de la croce sopra la qual el nostro signor missier Iesu Xristo porto passion & morte per redimer la humana generatione: fra laltre degne Reliquie che al presente si trouano in uenetia ueramente La croce de la scola de misier san Ioane euangelista e la piu degna & piu excellente che sia ne la qual certissima & indubi lmente si crede eser del Legno de la croce doue pendere il nostros al uator per nui saluar & questo si proua per molti miracoli intrauenuti in diuersi tempi i qual qe sotto sarano notati ordinate mente ma prima per dar cognition a li deuoti de questa sacratissima croce in che modo la fu portata in uenetia & donata a la benedeta scola de misier san Io anne tuto qui soto si notera nel 1368 essendo Guardiano de la scola misier andrea uendra mino hom deuotissimo & molto da bene capito in uenetia uno nobilissimo caualier chiamato misier felipo di massari doctissimo cancelario del regno de Ierusalem & de cipro el quale essendo stato con la beata memoria del reuerendissimo frar piero tomado patriarcha constantinopolitano nelle parte di Ierusalem tanta beniuolentia aqui sto apo di lui che uenendo a morte el dicto patriarcha constitui suo conmessario el prefato misier felipo di massari Al quale oltra le altre co se che li lasso li dono uno inconperabile thesauro che fu una particu la del uerace legno de la santissima croce sopra la quale il nostro redeem ptore pari per nui morte e pasione. Dopo le qual cose essendo pasato di questa uita el predicto monsignor misier felipo se ne uene a uenetia Doue hauendo udito per fama Le cose deuote & sancte che si adope rauano nelle quarto scole di uenetia & maxime in quella de misier sancto Ioanne conmosso si per deuotione del glorioso euangelista come etiam per la bona fama del dignissimo guardiano de la scola misi er Andrea uendramino si delibero di dotar la predicta scola de no inextimabel dono & pretiosa gema cioe di apresentarli quella particula (165v) del sacratissimo legno de la croce el qual hauea dal sopra dicto Reuerendissimo patriarcha constantinopolitano. Et cosi deliberatose nel di .23. de dezembrio senando nella chiesia di misier san Ioanne euangeli sta. Doue essendo presente el uenerabel religioso maestro Lodouico fra menor professor de la sacra theologia con el suo cancelario cantata prima la messa de la sacratissima croce dono la dicta particula del santissimo legno de la croce a misier Andrea uendramino uardiano per nome de la scola essendo quiui presente inumerabil moltitudine di persone tra le quale ui fu misier helia zustignan misier marco moresini misier franzesco zu stignan & molti altri oltra i testemoni de dicta donatione i quali erano uenuti per uedere tanto thesoro quanto era el pretiosissimo legno de la croce 262 appendix sopra la quale pendete il saluator per la nostra salute. Da po le qual cose uolendose mostrar contento il nostro signor che nella sancta scola del suo caro disipulo & euangelista Ioanne riposasse il sacratissimo legno so pra del quale sostene passione per quello mostro molti miracoli degni di memoria & di ueneratione che qui soto serano notadi.

Miracolo como la croce cade in aqua & non toco l aqua ma stete di so pra nel aiere & dal guardiano de la scola fu recuperate. essendo andata la predicta scola in processione a la festa del beato martire sancto Laurentio trouandose esser colui che portaua el penelo con la croce sopra el ponte de piera del monestier di san Lauren tio non posendo andar oltra per la grandissima moltitudine di gente che era sopra el ponte essendo spento lui da la gente hora in qua hora in la como piaque al omnipotente dio el qual spesse fiate uole che le sue magne cose e meraueglie siano a noi manifestate acio che in creduli non siamo ma ne la sua sanctissima fede se refermiamo la dicta croce ne la quale e del uerace legno de la croce sopra la quale el nostro signor misier iesu cristo porto passion e morte per redentione de la humana natura per il penger de la gente uene as ussire del suo festo per tal modo che la salto for a de la maza del penelo & casco zoso del ponte uerso l agua & non toco quella essendo dreta di sopra de l aqua Molte persone che erano sopra la fondamenta & sopra le ripe del (166r) canale e ancora molti di batudi de la scola uedendo tanto miracola se gitono al aqua nudando uerso la croce sanctissima per recuperarla & a costandose loro ad essa nudando per pigliarla ler hora si alzaua hora si a bassaua hora andaua in qua & hora in la per modo che niuno la pote pi gliar. Et uedendo questa tale meraueglia el guardiano & i offitiali de la scola she erano li dubitando loro che per tal miracolo la non si uolesse lassar tocar ad algun mondano mando do dicti offitiali nella chiesia de sancto laurentio per uno prete che la uenisse a recuperare. Venuto el pre te ando con una barca uerso la dicta croce & uolendola pigliare lei se lutanaua in tanto chel prete no la potea hauere. Onde el dicto uardiano de la dicta scola el qual hauea nome misier Andrea uendra mino com grande deuotione se gito nell aqua & ando uerso la dicta croce & aproximandose ad essa lei si apresento al dicto uardiano e fu recuperate. Et per che la scola solea andar ogni annno a la predicta fes ta de santo Laurentio. alor fo deliberato che ella non douesse piu andar in tal di ma fo permutato & ordinato che in memoria de que sto miracolo sopradicto la scola andasse ogni anno nel di del corpo de Xristo in processione a uisitar la chiesia del beato misier santo Lau rentio & cosi e stato obseruato da quel tempo fino al di presente & cosi se obseruera in perpetua memoria del miracolo sopra dicto el qual fo nel 1369.

Miracolo come la dicta croce delibero do nauilii da grande fortuna de mare essendo ancora el dicto misier Andrea uendramin uardian de la dicta scola in lecto uno sabato uegnendo la domenica dormendo se uene ad insuniar che a lui pareua che la sua casa ardesse per modo che li aduene uno grande batimento de core. Onde in questo ba timento tuto anxioso si uene adesedar & leuandosse de lecto descalzo & in camisa se messe in genochioni dinanci a la sua ancona & ricordan dose del predicto miracolo che la dita croce fece a. s. laurentio la hebe ad in uocare dicendo con l animo suo con grande fede & deuotione. O croce santissi ma ti prego habi misiricordia che se alcuno incendio me de aueni re a mi ouero a casa mia per la tua sanctissima misericordia & pietade incunabulum 249bis (ex. 222), museo civico correr, venice 263

(166v) me lo debi scampare & leuare uia. Et in questo senti grandissimo uento et uno pessimo tempo. Or abonazato el tempo perche era guardian de la scola inanci giorno se ne uene a la scola second usanza perche tuti li o ffitiali ueniano ogni domenica per proueder a le facende de la scola. E facto el giorno essendo nel albergo I offitiali con i suoi compagni el sopra uene do patroni de naue domandando miser Andrea uendramino. Inonzo li subito bate a la porta de l albergo dicendoli. Sono qui alcuni marinari che dimanda misier lo guardiano el quale udito questo poi che l aspetaua do suo nauilii cargi d olio da far sauoni: subito usi fuora del dicto albergo per saper nouelle de i diti sui nauilii. E uenuto for a uide quelli che erano i suo patroni & alora li hebbe adomandar como sta ua i facti suo i quali cosi risposeno. Questa nocte habiamo hauuto la pegior che mai hauessemo & se siano creduti anegare & del tuto pericolar. Tanta scurita e uento e tempesta tanta fortuna de mare non fu mai quanta hauemo hauuto questa nocte per modo che gitassemo fora casse e bote e tuto quello che era di sopra de la coperta. I arbori e timoni se rupe e le uele se squarzo che ueramente se credessemo del tuto esser pericolati ma per la gratia di una croce che ci aparse con uno grandissimo splendor siamo saluati. Questa croce fo mostro timone. questa fo nostri arbori nostra uela e nostro pelota che secondo che l auenia auan ti cosi ne conducea drieto la sua grandissima luce & splendor Et a questo modo ne conduisse fina nel canale de sancto marco. Et cusi per essa tutti siamo salui. Alora dimando el dicto misier Andrea uendrami no li patroni del suo cargo li quali resposeno. El cargo e tutto & uien saluo per la gratia de l omnipotente dio & de questa croce benedecta. Onde misier Andrea uendramino dimando li patroni marinari che croce era quella. Et loro rispose che non lo saperia dir perche i non la uide mai ne saperiano dir de che ne como la fusse facta. Alora i me no dentro al albergo doue subito como i uide la croce de cristalo che era nel tabernaculo i patroni marinari se gitono tuti in terra inzeno chioni dauanti & disseno ueramente questa e quella croce che ne ha aiu tati. questa e ueramente quella che ne ha saluati. Et non possendo (167r) satiarli di guardarla lacrimando l adorono con grandissima deuocione.

Miracolo como la dicta croce delibero uno indemoniato. el tempo del patriarca da cha querini de l ordene de frati me nori el quale era deuotissimo & sancto homo atrouandose uno indemoniato in questa cita lo suoi parenti procurando per ogni mo do la sua deliberatione ricorseno al sancto patriarcha predicto pre gandolo per la carita de dio & per la sua sancta deuotione li piacesse far oratione per el dicto indemoniato & sconiurar el spirito & ueder se per uerum modo si potesse scazarlo & liberar el dicto indemoniato. El patriarcha che hauea in grande deuotione questa santissima cro ce disse io non son di tanta auctorita che tal cosa potesse far. Ma le una santissima croce a la scola de san Ioanne euangelista con la quale uederemo se lo potremo deliberar. Et dato l ordine li fu portata que sta benedecta croce al patriarchato Et con essa di presente delibero el ditto indemoniato.

Miracolo como la dicta croce non uolse andar a sepellir uno dissoluto huomo el qual hauea dicto che non uolea conpagnar la dicta croce poi che non uolea che la dicta croce aconpagnasse lui a la soa sepoltura. era in questa scola e fraternita Vno homo molto dissolute e de trista uita el quale sempre si trouaua in tauerne & luochi de shonesti. Costui hauea uno suo conpadre che era homo da bene & 264 appendix costumato che ancor lui era di questa benedecta scola El qual como fano le persone da bene con ogni modo & uia el potea cercaua de ritrar questo suo conpadre dal mal fare & di redurlo a le bone opera Et fra l altre lo con fortaua molto a frequenter la scola alhora si solea portare etiam dio a li cor pi. Or aduene che un giorno costui seneua dal conpadre e dice ui prego carissima mente conpadre uogliate uegnir aconpagnar la beneta croce che poi quando uui morirete lei ue uegnera ad aconpagnar a la se pultura. Alhora quel conpadre scelerato como mal disposto & obsti nato rispose. Io non la uoglio uegnir aconpagnar ne uoglio la mi ue gni as conpagnar mi quando saro morto. Or passando alqun tempo segon (167v) do el corso de la natura el uene a morte. Et perche lui stantiaua nela con trada de sancto lio la scola secondo usanza se mosse & ando per leuar el cor po. Et essendo giovanoto quello portaua el penelo sopra el qual era questa sacratissima croce apresso el ponte di san lio doue se fila oro uolendo mon tare sopra el ponte non potea montare anci parea che fusse spento i drieto. Et cosi stando el guardiano de la scola credendo che li fusse uenuto qua lche accidente dice al conpagno suo. Toli el penelo el qual lo tolse. Et uolendo ancor lui montare sopra el ponte non potea anci parea che l fusse spento indietro. E uedendo questo uno di fradeli de la schola robusto & for te & ualente tolse lui el penelo credendo montare sopra el ponte ma non potte anci fece pegio degli altri doi che prima non haueano posuto pa sare. El guardiano non sa che si fare. In questa longa distantia di tempo la scola sta ferma. Quelli de drieto diceuano. che stano a fare che non uano oltra. La uoce ua como quello dal penelo non pol montar so pra el ponte. El conpadre del morto trouandose esser ne la conpa gnia si ricorda de le parole usate tra lui el conpadre & uole uegnir a ueder questo facto Et uedendo questo miracolo si apresento al uardia no e disseli. Questo e expresso miracolo impo che costui el qual e morto era mio conpadre & era homo dissoluto e de trista uita onde io uolendo redure al ben fare lo pregai chel douesse uegnir a la scola ad acompagnar questa croce santissima porche a la sua morte lei lacompa gneria ancor lui. Et esso mi rispose io non uoglio uegnir acompagnar la ne uoglio la mi uegni acompagnar mi. Alhora El uardiano e i conpagni deliberono di farse prestare al piouano la croce de la chiesia de san lio El quale uolentiera li porto la soa croce Et subito tolta gioso questa santissima croce de la maza del penelo misseno i suo scambio quella del piouane fuso. Et post ache la fu fuso el penelo monto sopra el ponte senza alcuna resistentia & andosene de steso al suo Viazo a sepelir dic to corpo. Et per questo nobelissimo miracolo che fece questa santissima croce fo deliberato che la non se portasse se non alguni di solenni como apar nell mariegola

Miracolo como la dicta croce libero una fantolina la qual era sempre sta ta in cuna arsirata & ciecha con gli ochi riuersati. (168r) nel tempo che misier Bortalamio di archangeli era uardiano grando de questa benedecta scola del 1414 uno sier nicolo de benuegnudo de san polo si ritrouo esser di suoi conpagni officiali el quale alhora hauea una figliola picolina di anni tre che dal giorno de la soa natiuita fina a quell tempo sempre era stata in cuna con grande tremore arsirata & cieca con gli ochi riuersati per modo che altro non si uedea se non el bianco del l ochio che el negro era tuto coperto. Onde il padre & la madre cercando sempre la sanita di questa soa figliola mai la pos seno guarire ne con medici ne per uia di strige ne con altri modi Et final mente essendo el dicto sier nicolo di benuegnudo di conpagni offitiali incunabulum 249bis (ex. 222), museo civico correr, venice 265 de la scola come dicto di sopra ritrouandose nel albergo con li altri conpagni si ricordo de la figliola Et sperando in questa sanctissima croce che li fa ria gratia di liberar la sua figliola subito chiamo uno nonzolo chiama do tomado de le uerigole e disseli fame uno seruitio dame tre candelete & lui ge le dete E qual hauute le candelete con grande deuotione se ne ando a la dicta croce & con quelle la toco. Poi secondo usanza li officiali de la dicta scola & del dicto sier nicolo se nandono a casa a disnar. E disna to che lui hebe uolendo usir de casa la madre como piaque al omnipoten te dio hebe a dire como douemo nui fare de questa nostra fantolina uo ria che la fusse auanti mort ache uederla stentar a questo modo. Alhora el marito disse Lassa far a misier domenedio e misse man in manega e trasse fora le tre candelete sopre dicte e proffese i zenochioni dauanti la cuna de la fantolina e con grandissima deuotion toco la dicta nel fronte fa cendoli con quelle el segno de la sancta croce dicendo. Como ueramente queste candele hano tocato el legno de la sancta croce sopra del qual el nostro signor dio misier Iesu Xristo soferse pasion e morte per reconperare la hu mana generatione cosi io prego el nostro signor misier Iesu Xristo che ti restituisca la tua sanita I nomine patri & filli & spiritus sancti Amen E dicte queste parole la dicta puta trasse tre grandi chridi ai quali Subito se drizono gli ochi & sono reduti ne la debita forma & poi disse madre leuame suso. Et cosi lauata de presente la dicta fantolina che mai la soa natiuita fina quel giorno non era (168v) stata se non in cuna comenzo ad andare como se mai hauesse hauu to male alcuno & cosi la dicta fantolina da questa sanctissima croce fu sanata si de gli ochi como di la persona.

Miracolo como la dicta croce delibero una naue de la fortuna. el 1421 a di 18 aprile cerca ore 6 di nocte essendo una naue de la qual era patrone sier Iacomo formento nel quarnaro uenendo de candia a uenetia li sopra gionse una grandissima & terri bile fortuna tale & si grande che del tuto se credeteno anegar. E tro uandose esser in questa fortuna sopra la dicta naue uno marcadante fradelo di questa scola e fraternita che si chiamaua sier polo rabia lui se uene a ricordare de questa sanctissima croce & dei miracoli che haue a facto onde se hebe a ricomandar a lei. Et non si tosto facta la oratione che subito uide la dicta croce & alhola la fortuna cesso per tal modo che subito funo deliberati da la fortuna & questo fu nel tempo de misier Anzoleto di minoti trouandose esser uardiano de questa benedeta scola

Miracolo como la dicta croce delibero uno figliolo de uno citadino da bressa de una ferita che se fece sopra la testa. el 1443 nella festa di misier san marco che uien a di 25 aprile de mostro l altissimo dio grandissimo miracolo di questa croce sanctissima impero che esendo in tal giorno andata la scola a la chie sia de misier san Marco come e usanza essendo nella piazza se tro uo uno citadino de bressa homo marcadante de bona fama e con ditione che hauea nome sier Iacomo da Sali al quale era occorso uno stranio caso cioe che essendo uno suo figliolo a bressa e coren do per la piaza uerso la loza de la dicta citade uiene ad urtar con la testa e con el fronte in una balestrada de piera in uno cantone de la dita loza per mo do chel sessesse & auerse la testa: Onde li bisogno trar molte osse de la testa. De qual caso intrauenuto el dito sier Iacomo hauea hauuto no titia la uigilia di san Marco Et trouandose el giorno seguente che fu nel dicto di de san Marco in su la piaza molto melinconico e pien 266 appendix di afano hauendo udito di grandi miracoli che hauea demonstrato l al tissimo dio de la dicta croce sanctissima portandole la dicta croce per piazza (169r) con la scola se inline e butose in genochioni pregando l omnipotente dio che per quella croce santissima piatosamente se degnase monstrar mira colo di suo figliolo & liberarlo da tanto male & pericolo. Et cusi segui te per la potentia diuina. che essendo andati i medici el di sequente per medegar lo leuatoli el pano de sopra la testa trouono le piaghe salde e nete sen za macula alcuna & cosi de que da poi fu reuelato & haue la noua el di gnissimo uardiano che fu misier francesco di agoiosi e conpagni al quale el sopra dicto sier Iacomo si oferse far uegnir nel dicto loco di misier san Zuane el dicto suo figliolo ad inclinarese & adorar la dicta croce .s.

Miracolo come questa benedecta croce libero uno da la febre quartana. nel 1447 a di 15 di agosto el di de la nostra dona sier piero de lo douico di piero fradelo de dicta scola se infermo greuemente da una febre quartana molto teribele la quale tra el fredo el caldo li du raua hore 5 sempre con uomito hauendo manzato o non li uenia quasi sempre ad una hora zoe a hore 23. Et essendo el dicto stato a padoa per la mortalita da zerca mesi 2 e mezzo tutauia con grandissimo male nele mane di maistro bortolamio di sancta sofia solenissimo medico che niente li havea giouato se ne uene a uenetia con picola speranza de la sua per sona di mai guarire. Et cosi stando grauato da la febre la prima dome nica da zener ando a la scola di misier san zuane euangelista doue tolse el suo pane & la sua candela como e di costume di tuor e con quella candela an do dauanti quella benedecta croce di cristalo la quale ha dietro di quel uerace legno che sostene el nostro signor misier Iesu Cristo a receuer pena e passion per nui. Et cosi dauanti quella sacratissima croce in genochioni la prego con grandissima deuotion che li douesse piacer di liberarlo di quella febre & facta tale oratione si leuo & ando con la dicta candela a tocar la dicta croce & ando a casa cerca le 22 ore & misesse nel leto peroche era el giorno che li douea uegnir la febre e stando con la dicta candela in ma no tutauia chiamando la dicta croce con bona deuotione quando fu lo ra usata che li douea uenir la febre a hore 23 non li uene cosa alcuna saluo che cerca una hora de nocte li uene fredo e duroli meza hora e mai piu non li uene che li solea durar come e dicto sopra ore 5 tra (169v) el fredo el caldo & a questo modo fu liberato da questa santissima croce.

Miracolo come questa benedecta croce libero uno putino che si ha uea fracassato el capo. questa benedecta croce oltra gli altri innumerabili miracoli che se ha dignato adoperare non e da tacere l infrascripto che noua mente e acaduto. Nel 1480 a di 10 marzo sier Aluuise fineti scriuan a la camera di imprestedi ha uno figliolo de anni .4. el qualm on to sopra uno solaruolo nella sua cusina et giocando casco gioso del dicto solaruolo et ronpesse e fracasso la testa con efusion di sangue et infiose tuta la testa e la faza che mal si potea conoser. la madre come afanata e tribulata del figliolo subito corse et aferolo in brazo et por tolo in cuna et come deuota de questa sanctissima croce fece uodo ad essa e tolse 2 candele che hauea tocato del legno de la croce le qual can dele li dete ser policreto essendo uicario de dicta scola quando fo recorza da dicta croce et lie con grandissima deuotione el segno et couerse el dicto suo figliolo et poi per spatio de una hora sempre ricomandandolo a la dicta croce sanctissima torno la dicta soa madre a ueder il suo fiol et trouolo sano e saluo et tolselo de cuna in modo che non parea l ha uesse hauuto male alcuno incunabulum 249bis (ex. 222), museo civico correr, venice 267

Molti altri miracoli ha facto e fa de giorno i giorno questa benedeta croce che qui non sono scripti. a la deuotione de la quale ciascuno doue ria esser assai acceso per questi pochi di sopra scripti la quale pregiamo che per i meriti de la passione del nostro signor misier iesu xristo ci difenda da ogni mortal pericolo de la anima & del corpo Amen.

Oratio ad crucem domini

O crux admirabilis. O crux uenerabilis. O crux inextrimabilis. Eua cuatio criminis & restitution sanitatis O crux splendidior cunctis astris mundo celebris hominibus multum amabilis sanctior uniuersis que sola fuisti digna portare talentum mundi Iesus Xristum dominum nostrum. Dulce li gnum dulces clauos dulcis mucro dulcis spongia dulcis spina dulcia fe rens pondera Iesum Xristum dominum nostrum marie filium. Salua me miserus pe ccatores affines meos & omnes in tuis laudibus hodie congregatos & tuo uexillo & crucis signo signatos. Amen

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INDEX

Albert the Great 197 Benvegnudo, Giacomella 110, 111 Ahmed Pasha, Ottoman governor 248 Benvegnudo, Antonia 110 Alexander III, pope 74 Benvegnudo, Eufemia 110, 111 Alexander VI, pope 79 Bernardino da Siena 159 Alexandria 18, 62 Besarion, cardinal 238 Anglicus, Bartholomeus 196 Bondumier, Bondumiera 132 Aquilea, patriarch of 125 Bondumier, Francesca 132 Archangeli, Bartolomeo, guardian 105, Bondumier, Leonardo 133 105n Bondumier, Maria 125 Archipelago, Duchy of 214sq Boniface VIII, pope 75 Argoiosi, Francesco, guardian 151 Bragadin, Andrea 239 Arsago, Giovanni, wool trader 134 Brescia 151sq Averroes 189 Avicenna 189, 192–93 Caldera, Giovanni, moralist 117 Avignon 18 Campo, Giovanni, priest 25 Avogadro, Pietro, Brescian notable 153 Canal, Bartolomeo, donor of San Giovanni 111 Badoer, nobles and clan, priors of San Camerlengo, Lodovico 227 Giovanni 15, 68, 107, 125, 171, 202–203 Candia 30, 123, 146, 152, 205, 212, 214sq, Balduino, Francesco, rebel 114–115 228, 229 Balsha, Albanian potentate 149 Cantimpré, Thomas 196 Barbaro, Marco 38, 135 Capella, Febo, Grand Chancellor 7 Barbaro, Francesco, humanist 117, 153, Capello, Vettor, Captain of the Sea 200–201 228–229 Barbarigo, Paolo, bailo 229 Carafa, Oliviero 225 Bari 59 Carlo, Marin, wealthy draper 111 Barozzi, Angelo, patriarch 72 Carpaccio, Vittore 9, 80sq Barbarossa, Haireddin, Ottoman admiral Celsi, Lorenzo, doge 17–18 232 Celsius 184 Barbo, Giovanni 233 Charles of Naples, king 23 Basadonna, Marco 233 Chauliac, Guy, surgeon Bascio, Toma, Candian businessman Chioggia, port, war of 53, 57, 61, 109, 147 112–113, 129, 131 Bastiani, Lazzaro 9, 225 Christina, wife of Simon de Michiel 98 Beatrice of Aragon 225 Colona, Nadal, priest of San Lio 103 Beccio, Giacobello 129 Columela, Lucius 182 Beccio, Nasimbene, massarius 129 Contarini, Francesco, patriarch 86 Bellegno, Marco 129 Conte, Pietro, Chancellor or Canea 218 Bellini, Gentile 9, 29, 40–45, 101, 158, 176, Contis, Philippe, inquisitor 22 202–203 Corfu 123 Bellini, Jacopo 43 Cornaro, Caterina, queen of Cyprus 42, Beltrame, notary 16 225, 233, 248 Beltrame, wool producer 131 Cornaro, Cornelia 42 Bembo, Francesco, bishop 79 Cornaro, Marco 42, 183, 185 Benvegnudo, Niccolo 8, 105sq, 154, 195, Corvinus, Matthias, king of Hungary 225, 254, 256 230–231 Benvegnudo, Marcolina 109–110 Cortese, Dominico 236 Benvegnudo, Cataruzza 110, 111 Cortese, Niccolo 236 286 index

Cortese, Policreto, official of San Filomati, Alvise 214 Giovanni’s 235–236 Filomati, Andrea 213 Cortese (Rizzo), Franceschina, spouse of Filomati, Antonio 212–214 Policreto 236 Filomati, Demetrius 213–214 Cotrugli, Benedetto, merchant writer 30, Filomati, Georgio 213 62 Filomati, Marco 214 Council of Ten 5, 6, 81, 90, 99–100, 126, Filosofi, Domenico, notary 144 181, 206, 237 Finetti, Andrianna, daughter of Giovanni Crete 23, 31, 69, 123, 213–214, 218, 226, 229 244 Crispo, Francesco the elder, duke of the Finetti, Alvise 243–244 Archipelago 215 Finetti, Alvise of miracle fame 235sq, Crispo, Francesco the younger, duke of the 254–256 Archipelago 231 Finetti, Almoro 243 Crispo, Giacomo IV, duke of the Finetti, Andrea di Giovanni 242 Archipelago 232 Finetti, Benedetto, Alvise’s father Crispo, Giovanni III, duke of the 243–244 Archipelago 231 Finetti, Fiordalicia, Alvise’s mother 2244 Crispo, Giovanni IV, duke of the Finetti, Francesco 243 Archipelago 232 Finetti, Giacomo 242 Crispo, Guillielmo II, duke of the Finetti, Giovanni, Alvise’s son 242–244, Archipelago 216sq, 227 245 Crnoevich, Ivan, Duke of Montenegro Finetti, Ottaviano 243–244 214–215 Fioravante, Agnola, wife of Alo Rabia 138 Cyclades 205sq Fioravante, Alvise 138 Cythera, Chancellor of 218 Fioravante, Benedetto 138 Cyprus 15, 17–18, 20, 29, 43 Fioravante, Gian Pietro 138 Foligno, Gentile 191–192 D’Abano, Pietro 189 Foscari, Francesco, doge 154, 186, 191, 200 Dalmatia 8, 50, 123, annexation of, 148, Foscari, Francesco, bishop of Castello 25 224 Foscari, Jacopo 186 Dandolo, Andrea, doge 74 Foscari, Marco, podestà of Brescia 172 Dandolo, Enrico, patriarch 71 Foscari, Paolo, bishop of Castello 73sq Dandolo, Gherardo 174 Foscarini, Giovanni, priest 25 Diana, Benedetto 9 Franceschin, priest 25 Diedo, Vincenzo, patriarch 86 Frederic III, emperor 44 Dolfin, Orso, patriarch 73 Frignano, Tomaso, patriarch 78 Dolfin, Leonardo, bishop of Castello 79 Friuli 30 Dolfin, Zorzi, chronicler 200 Frumento, Giacomo, ship patron 123sq, Domenici, Giovanni, writer 117 146, 149, 234 Donà, Lodovico (Alvise), inquisitor 16, Frumento, Ginevra 127 17, 23 Frumento, Marietta 127 Donà, Pietro, bishop of Castello 79 Donà, Tomaso, patriarch 80–82 Galen 184, 188–89 Duchy of the Archipelago 8 Gavalas, Ioannis, Cretan Greek 227 Giacomo, Danielle of Giudeca 110 Eugenius III, pope 72 Giovita, Brescian saint 159, 169 Eugenuis IV, pope 158 Girardo, Maffeo, patriarch 239 Giustiniani, nobles 17, 24–25 Falieri, Tomaso 18 Giustiniani, Lorenzo, patriarch 68, 79 Faustino, Brescian saint 159, 169 Gradenigo, Niccolo, Candian notary 216, Feleto, Antonio 39 220 Ferdinand of Aragon 225 Gregory IX, pope 72 Ficino, Marcilio 161 Gregory XI, pope 76 Filomati, family 205, 212–214 Gregory XII, pope 79 index 287

Grioni, Niccolo 31 Michiel, Domenico, patriarch 78 Gritti, Andrea 233 Michiel, Marco, bishop 72 Minio, Lorenzo 174 Hasan Bey, Ottoman envoy 249 Mocenigo, Tommaso, doge 199 Hippocrates 188 Mocenigo, Pietro, doge 225 Molin, Andrea 180 Innocent IV, pope 24, 72 Mondeville, Henry, surgeon 155 Inzegneri, Gianetta 31 Monte, Pietro, bishop of Brescia 158 Inzegneri, Mafio 31 Monza 128 Isabella of Castile 225 Morosini, Andrea 186 Isidor of Seville 196 Morosini, Marco 17, 18, 24 Morosini, noble house 31 Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere) 225 Morosini, Niccolo, bishop 75 Morosini, Paolo 135 Lando, Marco, bishop of Castello 78 Muazzo, Giovanni 3 Langoburgo, Bruno, surgeon 155 Lanfranco, surgeon 155 Nani, Giovanni, chaplain 25 Lefkara 20 Naxos, island 214sq Lezze, Michele 62 Nuova, Marco woolens producer 131 Lodovico, Chiara 180 Lodovico, Daniele 180 Orsini, Giovanni, prince of Taranto 229 Lodovico, Giorgio 180 Lodovico, Niccolo 180–81 Paolino, friar, writer 117 Lodovico, Piero of miracle fame 8, 177sq, Pavel, ban of Croatia 230 251–252, 254, 256, 258 Perugino, Pietro, painter 61, 138 Lodovico, Piero the younger 179–81 Petrarch 197 Lodovici, Antonio 179–81 Philip of Ferrara, Dominican writer 197 Lodovici, Lodovico 180 Piero, Antonio 178 Lodovici, Piero 179–80 Piero, Lodovoco 178–79 Lodovici, Helena 179–81 Pious II, pope 229, 231 Lombardo, Tullio 40 Pious IV, pope 86 Loredan, Giovanni 233 Pliny the Elder 196 Loreto, Madonna of 205, 212, 221–224, Pollani, Giovanni, bishop 72 233 Polo, Niccolo 30 Louis of Hungary, king 23 Polybus 188 Lüfti Bey, Ottoman envoy 248 Priuli, Lorenzo, patriarch 86–87 Lusignan, Peter I, King of Cyprus 17–18 Puglia 53–55, 59–60 Lusignan, Charlotte 248 Quarnaro, Gulf of 124, 125 Madonna dei Miracoli 239 Quartari, Diana 31 Malamocco 57 Quartari, Niccolo 31 Malipiero, Pasquale 200 Querini, Francesco, patriarch 8, 67sq Mansueti, Giovanni 9, 100sq, 119–122 Querini, Girolamo, patriarch 86 marciliana, type of ship 53 Querini, Lauro, writer 117 Marcello, Bernardo, abbot in Brescia 160 Querini, Marco 68 Marcello, Jacopo 200 Marerio, Francesco, bishop of Brescia 157 Rabanus Maurus 196 Mehmet II, Ottoman sultan 44 Rabia, Lombard branch of the clan 145 Mesopanditissa, Madonna of Candia Rabia, Alesio 140 222–223, 225, 227, 233 Rabia, Alvise 137, 138, 139 Mézières, Philippe 15–18, 29, 35, 70–71 Rabia, Alo 137, 138 Mezzi, Giacomo, guardian 9, 13 Rabia, Antonio 128, 134, 136, 187 Michiel, Betha 31 Rabia, Antonio, not of miracle stem 140 Michiel, noble house 31 Rabia, Chiara wife of Antonio 128 288 index

Rabia, Elizabeta 139 Santa Sofia, Niccolo 191–93 Rabia, Francesco, Paolo’s father 123sq Sanudo, Giovanni 130 Rabia, Giovanna 129 Sanudo, Giovanni I, duke of the Rabia, Giovanni 139 Archipelago 215 Rabia, Helena 135 Sanudo, Marco, lord of the Archipelago Rabia, Lucrezia 139 214 Rabia, Mafeo 128 Sanudo, Marin the younger 139–140, 199, Rabia, Marco 133, 141 233 Rabia, Paolo, of miracle fame 8, 123sq, Sarteano, Alberto 159 152, 210 Scacchi, Lorenzo, Chancellor of the Rabia, Paolo, the elder 128 Archipelago 217 Rabia, Stefano 128 Scanderbeg 229 Rabia, Tomaso 136, 150 Sforza, Francesco 200 Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 30, 205–206, 224 Siano, cittadini 180 Rizzo, Antonio, merchant 219 Siano, Giorgio 179–80 Rizzo, Antonio of Santa Fosca 210 Siena 22 Rizzo, Antonio, Chancellor of the Simon, piovan 25 Archipelago 8, 205sq, 251–252, 254, Simon de Michiel, tun maker 98 256 Sinan Bey, Ottoman envoy 249 Rizzo, Giovanni, Antonio’s father 207, Sixtus IV, pope 225 211, 212 Solinus 196 Rizzo, Giovanni, Antonio’s son 210 Somnium Danielis 49 Rizzo, Giovanni, archdeacon 211 Soranzo, Pietro 130 Rizzo, Giovanni, merchant 219 Spinola, Genoese corsair 149 Rizzo, Elizabetta, Antonio’s wife 211 Stephen, Duke of Herzegovina 230 Rizzo, Francesco, Antonio’s uncle 208 Stavro Vuoni, monastery 20–21 Rizzo, Francesco, Antonio’s son 210 Rizzo, Giacomo, Antonio’s grandfather Tasso, Torquato 197 207, 208, 211 Ternaria Vecchia, office 58 Rizzo, Giacomo, Antonio’s son 210 Tiepolo, Lucia 131 Rizzo, Giacomo, merchant 219 Tocco, Leonardo, despot of Arta 248 Rizzo, Marco, merchant 219 Thomas, Peter, Carmelite 17, 19–22, 70–71 Rizzo, Marietta 208 Tomasini, Alvise 139 Rizzo, Nicoletto, feudatory of Naxos 219 Tomazini, Fazio 139 Rizzo, Zaccaria 208 Tomaso dale Verigole, nonzolo 105n, 106 Rizzo, members of San Giovanni 208–209 Tomašević, Stephen, ban of Bosnia 230 Tiepolo, Baiamonte 68 Sajabianca, Niccolo 25 Trevisan, Giovanni, patriarch 86 Salis, Brescian clan 163sq Trivan, Antonio, historian 223 Salis, Agostino, son of Giacomo 167, 169 Salis, Filippo, nephew (son?) or Giacomo Udine 125 167, 168 Urban IV, pope 23, 69 Salis, Geronimo, son of Giacomo 167, 169 Urban V, pope 16, 18 Salis, Giacomo merchant of Brescia 8, 151sq, 202, 237, 256 Varis, Manolis, Cretan Greek 212 Salis, Pietro, Giacomo’s father 163sq Varro, Marcus Terentius 182 San Apolinare, church 4 Vasari, Giorgio 43 San Lio, church 11, 89sq Veglia, Pantalon 132 San Lorenzo, church 8, 9, 11, 27sq, 90, Vendramin, Alvise 38 95–96 Vendramin, Andrea, doge 32, 36–40, 210 Santa Maria dei Servi, church 31 Vendramin, Andrea, guardian 8, 16, 17, Santa Sofia, Bartolomeo 177–78, 190–94 27sq, 47sq, 132, 152, 220, 234, 255–256 Santa Sofia, Galeazzo 191–94 Vendramin, Bartolomeo 31–33 Santa Sofia, Marsiglio 191–94 Vendramin, Gianetta 35 index 289

Vendramin, Giacomo 127 Venier, Maffeo, bailo 21 Vendramin, Girolamo 37 Venier, Marco 248 Vendramin, Giovanni 37 Vianoli, Paola 245 Vendramin, Luca the elder 31 Vianoli, Pietro 245 Vendramin, Luca the younger 36, 62, 210 Vincenzo, Lorenzo of Mestre 111 Vendramin, Lucia 31 Visconti, Bernabo 18 Vendramin, Marina 31 Visconti, Filippo Maria 199 Vendramin, Paolo 38 Vitturi, Leonardo 129 Vendramin, Zaccaria 31–33, 210 Vlastos, Shiphis, Cretan Greek 226 Venier, Giacomello 31 Vlatko of Herzegovina, duke 248