venice and its minorities 465
an investigation of the registers of the Greek community reveals that in
1498 the scuola possessed 58 members (42 men and 16 women), a number
that by 1561–63 had greatly increased to 741 (613 men and 128 women).44
When in 1511 the Greeks again petitioned for the right to build a church
that would be large enough for their needs and to establish a cemetery,
they expressed their confidence that “your lordships will grant it, both
because you are men of honour and devotion, and to show us that in your
eyes we are no worse than the armenian heretics and the Jewish infidels
who here and in other parts of your lordships’ dominions have synagogues
and mosques for worshipping God in their own misguided way,”45 adding
their hope that the signoria would consider them to be true and catholic
christians and treat them as such by granting their request. although in
1514 the permission was granted with the approval of Pope Leo X, who
placed the Greeks directly under his supervision, the Venetians still sus-
pected that the Greeks, once they had their own church and priest and
were independent from the Venetian hierarchy, might revert back to their
previous schismatic practices. thus, in 1528 the Venetian patriarch Giro-
lamo Querino took steps to excommunicate the entire Greek commu-
nity and anyone associating with them, locked the worshippers in their
church during Holy Week, and considered the schismatic Greeks to be
worse than if they were Jews (pezzo che se fussino zudei).46 construction
on their church, known as san Giorgio dei Greci, located very near Piazza
san Marco and financed to a great extent by a tax imposed on all Greek
ships coming to Venice, commenced in 1539 and was completed only in
- in a very significant step, in 1577, the Venetian government allowed
the church to be placed under the jurisdiction of the Greek orthodox
patriarch in constantinople, with its bishop assuming the title of the
Metropolitan of Philadelphia and exercising jurisdiction over not only
the Greek orthodox in Venice but also the Greek orthodox communities
in dalmatia, istra, and the ionian islands.47 subsequently, in the middle
of the 17th century, two buildings designed by the prominent Venetian
architect Baldassare Longhena were constructed on land purchased next
to the church. one contained the scuola di san nicolò with a ospedale for
44 see Fedalto, “Le minoranze straniere,” p. 148 note 14, also note 15; also in Fedalto,
“stranieri a Venezia e a Padova,” p. 255.
45 see chambers and Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, pp. 334–35.
46 see d. J. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek
Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 67.
47 see Fedalto, “stranieri a Venezia e a Padova,” pp. 255–57.