charity and confraternities 439
reformation—Gaetano da thiene, Gian Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul iV,
r. 1555–59), and Girolamo Miani—were all serving the poor in Venetian
hospitals. as the Venetian leadership had hoped, Venice had become a
refuge and example of Christian piety, evidence of the glory and honor
earned through good works.
Venetian leaders might have desired to project an image of Christian
morality, but in the early modern period Venice also developed a repu-
tation as a center of prostitution.56 several charitable institutions were
created to respond to this very public vice. the Convertite for reformed
prostitutes was established in the 1540s. the Casa delle Zitelle was founded
in 1550 to save young women from falling into prostitution. in 1577 the
Casa del soccorso was established for prostitutes and adulteresses. of the
few charitable institutions established after 1600, one was the hospital of
the Penitenti, founded in 1703 to care for repentant prostitutes. as Joanne
ferraro has recently argued, evangelical zeal was not the only motivat-
ing factor behind these initiatives. “the widespread movement to enclose
women signified something besides offering ‘asylum.’ it signaled a change
in the attitudes of the governing elites who wrote laws, rendered justice,
and donated funds to pay for foundling homes and convents for repen-
tant prostitutes. authorities feared disease and family disorder. they also
feared threats to the inheritance system of entail and primogeniture.”57
the maintenance of gender roles, with institutional disparity in enforce-
ment and condemnation, also played a critical role in early modern Vene-
tian charity.
the lack of major charitable initiatives in the last two centuries of the
Venetian republic is a reflection of a government content with its exist-
ing institutions. new confraternities or institutions that were approved
in the last two centuries of the republic represented efforts to preserve
the political and religious status quo, targeting specific groups considered
worthy of Christian charity. the strict regulation of begging and the grow-
ing number of institutions related to prostitution were in effect efforts
to shore up the political and social order. the expansion of the church
56 see M. V. Constable, Le Cortigiane di Venezia dal Trecento al Settecento: Catalogo della
mostra. Venezia, Casinò Municipale Ca’ Vendramin Calergi, 2 Febbraio–16 Aprile 1990 (Milan,
1990); and Guiliana Marcolini and Giulio Marcon, “Prostituzione e assistenza a Venezia
nel secolo XViii: il pio loco delle povere peccatrici penitenti di san iob,” Studi veneziani
10 (1985), 99–136.
57 ferraro, Joanne, Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the
Republic of Venice, 1557–1789 (Baltimore, 2008), p. 201.