the anthropology of venice 495
announced that the earthquakes signaled divine anger with the sins of the
Venetians, especially sodomy, incest, blasphemy, and the failure to confess.
With the acquiescence of the doge and collegio, the patriarch ordered a
three-day fast of bread and water with morning and evening propitiatory
processions. Sanudo dryly observed, “i applaud these measures as far as
good habits and religion go, but as far as preventing earthquakes, they
accomplish nothing, for these are a phenomenon of nature.”21 When news
arrived from chioggia in May 1519 reporting that a spirit had manifest
itself by knocking under a bed in a room in the episcopal residence where
priests slept, Sanudo was at first doubtful: “for several days the news of
this has already been bruited about the city. But i did not want to record
it until i better understood the matter.” The priests reported the spirit
was warning the chioggians about a coming acqua alta, a warning that
threw the city into such a panic that pregnant women miscarried. The
frightened bishop abandoned his flock for the safety of Venice and refused
to return even after the council of Ten ordered him back. An investiga-
tion soon revealed the whole matter to have been a fraud, which Sanudo
termed, “a very ridiculous affair.”22
in other cases of the miraculous, Sanudo suspended his skepticism. in
1507 in anticipation of easter, news began to circulate about the many
miracles performed by the 35-year-old abbess of the poor clares in Venice.
“it is said that she goes forty days without eating, that on fridays she goes
into spiritual transports, and finally that she performs great miracles. it is
said that on good friday everything will be known, that she will certainly
die, etc.”23 Upon investigation, her father superior and cardinal grimani
both seemed to confirm the validity of the reports, but there is no record
of her predicted death on good friday.
The portends most revealing about the cultural assumptions of Sanudo’s
Venice came from reports of monstrous births.24 Sanudo seems to have
been especially fascinated by them, and he recorded detailed descriptions
of deformed babies from many places. in one case he pasted a printed
interpretation of the meaning of the monster of castelbaldo into his
diaries, and during the tense days of the War of the league of cambrai,
21 Sanuto, I diarii, 12: 84. Translations from Sanudo in Cità Excelentissima, p. 377.
22 Sanuto, I diarii, 27:267–68, 298–99, 320. Translations from Sanudo in Cità Excelentis-
sima, pp. 399–402.
23 Sanuto, I diarii, 7:40. Translations from Sanudo in Cità Excelentissima, pp. 392–93.
24 on monstrous births, see lorraine J. Daston and Katherine park, Wonders and the
Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (new york, 1997), pp. 173–90; and niccoli, Prophecy and People
in Renaissance Italy, pp. 30–60.