424 david d’andrea
that the life of a completely virtuous republic might actually be without
end.”11 as Jonathan Glixon has recently demonstrated for Venice, the reli-
gious brotherhoods of Venice repeatedly expressed their desire to honor
God and the city through their actions.12
the destiny of Venice, however, was not an egalitarian Christian society;
social disparity formed part of the natural order. the wealthy had a moral
obligation to relieve the physical miseries of the poor, who in turn were
obligated to pray for the souls of their benefactors. ideally, this theological
formula bound rich and poor together in a harmonious Christian state,
where social justice and charity governed all. state policy aimed not to
eradicate the causes of poverty (considered its own deterrent) but to alle-
viate the suffering of the deserving poor and enforce religious orthodoxy.
Basic theological concepts of poverty and charity framed the Venetian
noble understanding of how states merited divine favor. Venetian leaders
implemented poor policies and regulated charitable organizations based
on common Christian ideals but adapted them to address specific prag-
matic goals of the Venetian state.
Confraternities (scuole)the most common expression of religious and civic devotion in italian
states was the confraternity, a voluntary lay association organized to pro-
vide charity for the living and the dead.13 in Venice these religious broth-
erhoods, called scuole, were divided into major and minor confraternities,
or the scuole grandi and piccole, that operated according to a set of rules
copied into a book called the mariegola. the scuole grandi, whose wealth-
ier members provided charity to their poor brethren, were established in
the wake of a penitential movement that swept italy in 1260.14 as political
11 Quentin skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols, vol. 1: The
Renaissance (Cambridge, 1978), p. 180.
12 Jonathan Glixon, Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities,
1260–1807 (oxford, 2003), pp. 3–9.
13 on the structure, organization, and political role of italian confraternities, see Black,
Italian Confraternitie; Konrad eisenbichler, “italian scholarship on Pre-Modern Confrater-
nities in italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997), 567–80; nicholas terpstra, ed., The Poli-
tics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order In Early Modern Italy (Cambridge,
2000); and david d’andrea, Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso,
1400–1530 (rochester, n.y., 2007), especially pp. 1–5.
14 on the Venetian scuole grandi, see Lia sbriziolo, “Per la storia delle confraternite
veneziane: dalle deliberazioni miste (1310–1476) del Consiglio dei dieci. Le scuole dei bat-
tuti,” in Michele Maccarrone, et al., eds., Miscellanea Gilles Gerard Meersseman, 2 vols