charity and confraternities 425
theorists and observers of Venice noted, one key to Venetian political sta-
bility was the scuole grandi, for not only did they provide for the poor
but they also compensated for the frustrated political ambitions of the
non-nobles. although nobles could join the scuole and benefit from their
religious works, the administrative offices of the scuole were reserved for
the citizen class. excluded from direct political power, citizens of Venice
could find respected and important positions as officials in these powerful
charitable institutions. the scuole grandi oversaw large endowments and
served as public symbols of Venetian piety with their participation in civic
processions and patronage of artists and architects.
as powerful players in Venetian civic life, the scuole grandi came to
be closely regulated, and by the middle of the 1300s they fell under the
jurisdiction of the Council of ten, the governmental body responsible for
state security. the statutes and membership lists of the scuole grandi had
to be approved by the ten, and their number was also closely regulated.
the government distrusted outside influence and kept the number of fla-
gellant confraternities (dei Battuti, as they were known) limited to four:
san Giovanni evangelista, santa Maria della Carità, san Marco, and santa
Maria Valverde della Misericordia. an example of the strict regulation of
religious brotherhoods was the suppression of the Bianchi Movement in
- a spontaneous religious reform movement, the Bianchi moved up the
italian peninsula calling for penance and healing, similar to the flagellant
movement in 1260 that had inspired the foundation of the scuole grandi.
the Council of ten deemed the reformers as a threat to Venetian political
stability and ordered the Bianchi expelled from Venetian territories.15 the
Venetian government had a well-established system of religious brother-
hoods, and innovations from outside the republic were viewed with sus-
picion. the number of scuole grandi, however, did increase through the
(Padua, 1970) (= Italia Sacra, 15–16), 2:715–63; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance
Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 33–193;
ruggero Maschio, “Le scuole grandi a Venezia,” in Girolamo arnaldi and Manlio Pastore
stocchi, eds., Storia della cultura veneta, 6 vols (Vicenza, 1976–86), vol. 3 (1981): Dal primo
Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 3, pp. 193–206; William Wurthmann, “the Council
of ten and the Scuole Grandi in early renaissance Venice,” Studi veneziani n.s. 18 (1989),
15–66; Patricia fortini Brown, “Le scuole,” in Gino Benzoni and antonio Menniti ippolito,
Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, 14 vols (rome, 1992–2002),
vol. 5 (1996): Il Rinascimento. Società ed economia, ed. alberto tenenti and Ugo tucci,
pp. 307–54; and Glixon, Honoring God and the City.
15 daniel Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (ithaca,
1993); and Bornstein, “Giovanni dominici, the Bianchi, and Venice: symbolic action and
interpretive Grids,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1993), 143–71.