The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

seven years when the body of the saint was brought to Venice from Germany, and
the consequent boom in donations was so great that in 1489 it acquired the status
of scuola grande.
The intervention of Saint Roch was held to be especially efficacious in cases of
bubonic plague, an illness from which he himself had been saved by the ministrations
of a divinely inspired dog, which brought him bread and licked his wounds
clean (which is why the churches of Venice are littered with paintings of the saint
pointing to a sore on his thigh, usually with a dog in attendance). When, in 1527,
the city was hit by an outbreak of plague, the Scuola’s revenue rocketed to record
levels as gifts poured in from people hoping to secure Saint Roch’s protection
The scuole
The Venetian institutions known as the scuole seem to have originated in the early
thirteenth century, with the formation of the flagellant orders, whose public scourgings
were intended to purge the sins of the world. The interaction between these societies
of flagellants and the lay brotherhoods established by the city’s branches of the mendicant
orders (the Franciscans and the Dominicans) gave rise in 1260 to the formation
of the confraternity called Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità, the first of the so-called
Scuole Grande. By the middle of the sixteenth century there were five more of these
major confraternities – San Giovanni Evangelista, San Marco, Santa Maria della
Misericordia, San Rocco and San Teodoro – plus scores of smaller bodies known as
the Scuole Minore, of which at one time there were as many as four hundred.
The Scuole Grande, drawing much of their membership from the wealthiest professional
and mercantile groups, and with rosters of up to six hundred men, received
subscriptions that allowed them to fund lavish architectural and artistic projects, of
which the Scuola Grande di San Rocco is the most spectacular example. The Scuole
Minore, united by membership of certain guilds (eg goldsmiths at the Scuola dei Battioro
e Tiraori, shoemakers at the Scuola dei Calerghi), or by common nationality (as
with San Giorgo degli Schiavoni, the Slavs’ scuola), generally operated from far more
modest bases. Yet all scuole had the same basic functions – to provide assistance for
their members (eg dowries and medical aid), to offer a place of communal worship,
and to distribute alms and services in emergencies (anything from plague relief to the
provision of troops). It was a frequently expressed complaint, however, that the Scuole
Grande were prone to lose sight of their original aims in their rush to outdo each other;
a piece of doggerel written in 1541 lays this accusation against the Misericordia:
These men have caused ruin, it’s easy to see,
Merely to satisfy whims on condition
Of giving San Rocco some stiff competition.
To an extent, the scuole also acted as a kind of political safety valve. The councils
of state were the unique preserve of the city’s self-designated patrician class, but
the scuole were administered by traders, doctors, lawyers, artisans and civil servants.
Technically they had no real power, but a wealthy private club like the Scuola
Grande di San Rocco could, if it chose, act as an effective pressure group. Like all
other Venetian institutions, the scuole came to an end with the coming of Napoleon,
who disbanded them in 1806. Most of their possessions were scattered, and
their headquarters were in time put to new uses – the Scuola Grande di San Marco
became the city hospital, the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità became
the galleries of the Accademia, the Scuola Grande di Maria della Misericordia has
become a sports hall. The Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni and Scuola Grande
di San Rocco, however, were revived in the middle of the nineteenth century and
continue to function as charitable bodies in the magnificently decorated buildings
they commissioned centuries ago. A third scuola, San Giovanni Evangelista, was
reinstituted in the twentieth century.
San Polo and Santa Croce
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From the Frari to the Tolentini
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