religious life 399
The self-attribution of an otherworldly charisma by the state of st Mark
served to augment an antagonism between Venice and Rome which con-
stitutes the common thread of the Republic’s political history in the 15th
to the 17th centuries. Within the panorama of the early modern italian
states, conflicts with the papacy so regularly marked Venetian history
as to support the hypothesis that the ruling class of the state of st Mark
had developed a secularized perception of the sacred as far back as the
15th century.45
The authoritative scholars of Venetian history who launched this
hypothesis have, however, come to a reassuring conclusion. even the most
dramatic chapters of the antagonism that characterized the relationship
between Venice and Rome in the 15th to 17th centuries may be ascribed,
according to currently prevailing reconstructions, to a rivalry of a politi-
cal nature: the two cities were either competing for political hegemony in
italy (before it fell under spanish domination) or were aligned on opposite
fronts with respect to dominant spain (Venice being adverse to spanish
hegemony, Rome a spanish ally). The periodic conflicts that opposed the
city of the doges to the city of the popes ought then to be considered—
this current direction of studies tells us—as events that merely disturbed
the événementiel surface of history and which were regularly reabsorbed
into the great subterranean current that ran through the golden centuries
of the life of the Serenissima and conferred upon it a specific physiognomy:
the profound piety of its citizens and their unbreakable vocation of loyalty
to the Holy see. The expert eye of Philippe de Commynes, french ambas-
sador to Venice in the late 15th century and famous chronicler, discerned
in Venice “the most triumphant city that i have ever seen, that... where
most solemn is god’s service... i believe god helps them because they
reverently serve the church.”46
The affinity between the city of st Mark and the city of st Peter in the
early modern period will here be illustrated by way of three brief portraits
of eminent figures from Venetian history, all of whom left an enduring
mark on the panorama of Venezia sacra: saint lorenzo giustiniani (15th
century), Cardinal gasparo Contarini (16th century), and saint gregorio
Barbarigo (17th century).
Cracco, “ ‘e per tetto il cielo’ Dinamiche religiose di uno stato nascente,” in Storia di Vene-
zia, vol. 3 (1997): La formazione dello stato patrizio, eds. girolamo Arnaldi, giorgio Cracco,
and Alberto Tenenti, pp. 957–96.
45 Cracco, “e per tetto il cielo.”
46 elisabeth Crouzet Pavan, “immagini di un mito,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 4 (1996):
Il Rinascimento. Politica e cultura, eds. Alberto Tenenti and ugo Tucci, pp. 579–601.