charity and confraternities 437
greater attention to those on the margins of society: beggars, prostitutes,
and others in need of redemptive charity.49
the economic, political, and religious crises that shook 16th-century
europe brought about fundamental changes in european poverty and
welfare. Calls for moral renewal coupled with difficult economic circum-
stances meant increased surveillance of the poor, a crackdown on beg-
ging, and the creation of new charitable institutions that served spiritual
as well as the physical needs.50 We witness all of these developments in
Venice, where new institutions for beggars and the permanently ill were
established. for example, the temporary hospital erected near san Gio-
vanni and Paolo in 1528 became a permanent hospital for the destitute,
known as the derelitti, which housed the sick, orphans, and widows.
When another famine struck Venice in 1590, the result was the creation of
the poor hospital of san Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, founded in 1591 to house
beggars. instead of consigning the poor to the abandoned leper hospi-
tal on the island of san Lazzaro, the government moved the institution
to land near the dominican church of san Giovanni and Paolo and the
hospital of the derelitti. the large complex encompassing the dominican
monastery, the derelitti, and the Mendicanti would be transformed in the
19th century into the civic hospital, a role it still serves today.
always wary of outside influences, Venice nevertheless participated in
the reforming spirit that swept Christendom in the 16th century and left
a number of new brotherhoods and charities in its wake.51 one of these
brotherhoods, the oratory of divine Love, characterized the reforming
and charitable zeal of the new lay and clerical orders. the oratorians’
charitable activity focused on syphilitic patients and the establishment of
hospitals for these “incurables.” Gaetano da thiene (1480–1547) brought
this society from rome to Venice and established the hospital of the
49 on the concept of the new philanthropy, see Brian Pullan, “La nuova filantropia,” in
aikema and Meijers, Nel regno dei poveri, pp. 19–34.
50 Beat Kümin, ed., Reformations Old and New: Essays on the Socio-Economic Impact of
Religious Change, c. 1470–1630 (aldershot, 1996); robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994); o. P. Grell and a. Cunningham, eds., Health Care and
Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700 (London, 1997); Grell and Cunningham, eds.,
Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe (London, 1999); and thomas
Max safley, ed., The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern
Poor Relief (Boston, 2003).
51 John olin, ed., The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (new york,
1969); John donnelly, “the new religious orders, 1517–1648,” in thomas Brady, heiko
oberman, and James tracy, eds., Handbook of European History, 1400–1600. Vol. II: Visions,
Programs, and Outcomes (Leiden, 1995), pp. 283–315.