426 david d’andrea
centuries. the scuola di san rocco was added in 1480 and san teodoro in
- a century later in 1687 the scuola di san fantin joined their ranks,
and in the 18th century, the number of scuole grandi grew to nine with the
elevation of the scuola di santa Maria del rosario in 1765 and santa Maria
del Carmine in 1767. the Venetian leadership responded to the changing
needs and devotions of the populace, but the changes would come slowly
and through established brotherhoods.
the scuole grandi were perhaps the most public and powerful broth-
erhoods, but they certainly were not the most ubiquitous. the scuole
grandi mainly cared for their own members, approximately five per cent
of Venice’s population. the rest of the population was served by hundreds
of religious brotherhoods known as the scuole piccole.16 Based on exist-
ing mariegole, francesca ortalli examines 58 scuole active in the Middle
ages, yet there were certainly more than one hundred active at any time.17
one eye witness counted 119 devotional confraternities in 1521.18 a list of
statutes compiled in the late 18th century listed 340 scuole piccole.19 the
difficulty in determining the number of confraternities in any one period
is the terminology used to describe them and their variable membership
and activities. Scuole piccole were formed to meet the changing religious
and material needs of craft guilds, parishes, foreign communities (such as
slavs, Greeks, and florentines), specific illnesses (lame, blind), or worthy
poor (such as prisoners).20
Pulling their membership from a wide geographic, economic, and social
range, the scuole piccole served to ease social tensions within the city.
their important civic function brought the scuole piccole under govern-
ment supervision, subject to various bodies, including the Council of ten
16 on the scuole piccole, see the works by richard Mackenney: “Continuity and Change
in the scuole Piccole of Venice,” Renaissance Studies 8 (1994), 388–403; “devotional Confra-
ternities in renaissance Venice,” in W. J. sheils and diana Wood, eds., Voluntary Religion
(oxford, 1986), studies in Church history, vol. 23, pp. 85–96; “the scuole piccole of Ven-
ice: formations and transformations,” in nicholas terpstra, ed., The Politics of Ritual Kin-
ship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 172–89;
and Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250–c.1650
(totowa, n.J., 1987). see also francesca ortalli, Per salute delle anime e delli corpi: Scuole
piccole a Venezia nel tardo Medioevo (Venice, 2001); Glixon, Honoring God and the City,
pp. 195–249; and Gastone Vio, Le scuole piccole nella Venezia dei dogi: Note d’archivio per la
storia delle confraternite veneziane (Vicenza, 2004).
17 ortalli, Per salute delle anime e delli corpi.
18 Mackenney, “devotional Confraternities,” p. 86.
19 Mackenney, “Continuity and Change,” p. 388.
20 on the care of prisoners, see Chiara traverso, La scuola di San Fantin o dei “Picai”:
Carità e guistizia a Venezia (Venice, 2000).