education in the republic of venice 681
the school taught singing plus a rich humanistic curriculum that included
terence, ovid’s Metamorphoses, horace, caesar’s Gallic Wars, cicero’s let-
ters, and even plautus’ racy Aulularia.16
in the 16th century the Venetian church expanded clerical education.
patriarch antonio contarini (served 1508–24) founded six more schools
for future clerics, one for each of the six sestieri of the city, later reduced
to five, as the schools of the sestieri of Santa croce and San polo, the two
smallest in area and population, were combined. the patriarch appointed
a priest to teach in each school; the priest then chose an assistant and
paid him out of his own salary. the patriarchate assessed the parishes in
a sestiere for the funds to pay the teacher’s salary. in the academic year
1587–88, the five clerical sestieri schools enrolled 185 or more boys. the
high number suggests that the schools educated lay boys as well as future
clergymen.17 finally, in response to the canons of the council of trent,
Venice established two seminaries in 1579 and 1581. they enrolled about
110 students in 1581, some of them probably young men.18
despite the establishment of state and church schools in the Renaissance,
the vast majority of boys fortunate enough to receive formal educations
attended independent schools, a continuation of the medieval pattern.
in the academic year 1587–88, the only year for which school attendance
documentation is available, about 89 per cent of the boys studying in
formal schools attended independent schools. about 4 per cent of the
boys attended state sestieri schools, and about 7 per cent attended church
schools.19
While state and clerical schools taught the latin humanistic curricu-
lum, 60 per cent of the boys in independent schools in the academic year
1587–88 studied vernacular reading and writing, plus abbaco and account-
ing. for Venice as a whole, 53 per cent of the boys in school followed
the vernacular literature and abbaco curriculum, obviously to prepare for
merchant careers.20 Students in these schools read ludovico ariosto’s
Orlando furioso, chivalric romances, saints’ lives, and vernacular morality
works, instead of cicero and Virgil. they also learned how to calculate the
16 Grendler, Schooling, pp. 56–57.
17 Grendler, Schooling, pp. 57–60; baldo, Alunni, maestri, pp. 31–37.
18 Silvio tramontin, “Gli inizi dei due seminari di Venezia,” Studi veneziani 7 (1965),
363–77.
19 See table 2.1 in Grendler, Schooling, p. 43.
20 Grendler, Schooling, pp. 48–49.