education in the republic of venice 677
and more in the 15th, through an arduous search in notarial documents.4
a few of the notarial acts record contracts between teachers and parents,
and this information is very valuable. but most of the teachers named
in notarial acts served only as witnesses, because they could read latin.
hence, little is known about them and their schools.
thus, as the 15th century opened, Venice had numerous independent
teachers but no state or church schools, so far as can be determined. Veneto
towns also relied heavily on independent masters but had the occasional
communal master. Gherardo ortalli summarizes what is known about
late-medieval Venetian education.5
The Renaissance Expansion of Schoolingthe Renaissance brought significant changes, the most important of
which was the adoption of a humanistic curriculum based on the studia
humanitatis, defined by paul oskar Kristeller as grammar, rhetoric, history,
poetry, and moral philosophy, based on the reading and interpretation of
their standard ancient authors in latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek.6
the humanist curriculum arrived early in the century in Venice. the first
major humanist pedagogue to teach in the Venetian state was Gasparino
barzizza (c.1360–1431), who held an appointment as professor of rhetoric
and moral authors at the university of padua from 1407 to 1421. he also
presided over a boarding school in his home for boys of pre-university
and university age, whom he taught new approaches to the classics. Some
of his boarding students were young Venetian nobles, and a few of his
students became humanist scholars.7
in 1414, Guarino Guarini of Verona (1374–1460), a major pedagogical
humanist, opened an independent school in Venice. his pupils included
at least two Venetian nobles who became important humanists, fran-
cesco barbaro (1390–1454), already a young man when he studied with
Guarini, and the very young bernardo Giustiniani (1408–89). in addition,
4 Enrico bertanza and Giuseppe dalla Santa, Documenti per la storia della cultura in
Venezia, vol. 1: Maestri, scuole e scolari in Venezia fino al 1500 (Venice, 1907).
5 Gherardo ortalli, Scuole, maestri e istruzione di base tra Medioevo e Rinascimento
(Vicenza, 1993).
6 paul oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist
Strains (new York, 1961), p. 10. this definition is found in many of his other works as well.
7 R. G. G. Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza (london, 1979), is the fundamental
study. See also Silvia Marcucci, La scuola tra xiii e xv secolo. Figure esemplari di maestri,
pref. by luciana bellatalla (pisa/Rome, 2002), pp. 25–29, 46–48, 137–50 and passim.