692 paul f. grendler
(ten in the lower school and nine in the upper school), all secular clergy-
men receiving good salaries. the curriculum looked very much like the
Jesuit curriculum, with the addition of lectures in law. Enrollment was
234 students in 1774, which grew to nearly 400 in 1796, at which time the
school had 21 teachers, including two to teach disegno (probably com-
mercial drafting) and one for medicine. the Senate promoted integration
with the university of padua by allowing a limited number of students
to count two years of study at the fondamenta nuove school toward the
required number of years of study for law and medicine degrees at the
university.52
one of the justifications for the seizure of church lands was to pro-
vide for the education of the nobility, obviously the poor nobility, because
wealthy nobles had no need of financial assistance. a boarding school
for poor noble boys founded in 1619 and located on the Giudecca, was
the chosen institution. in the early 1780s the government increased the
number of boarders from 46 to 60, confirmed the Somaschans as teachers,
added a lay administrator, and slightly modified the curriculum.53 but that
is all that the government did for the education of noble boys. the state
also promoted practical training through the establishment of specialized
schools. for example, in 1739 La Serenissima founded the first navigation
school in its history. the school initially enrolled 18 boys at the age of 14.
after two years of classroom study, they spent four years on a ship and
finished by taking examinations to acquire pilot licenses.54
despite the expansion of state schools, the majority of students still
attended independent schools, as they had in the 16th century. there
were 291 independent masters teaching about 2536 pupils, practically all
boys, in 1787.55 and enrollment figures for various schools in 1787 per-
mit a rough estimate of male schooling rates and literacy. about 1600
boys studied in schools directed and funded by the state. they included
the school at the fondamenta nuove, lay sestieri schools, clerical sestieri
schools, the two Venetian seminaries for the secular clergy, the Scuola di
San Marco, the school for nobles, and the navigation school. another 2536
students, almost all boys, studied in independent schools. hence, about
52 Gullino, “Educazione,” pp. 770–74, 791–92, 797 n. 42; Gullino, La politica scolastica,
p. 59.
53 the basic study, not yet superseded, is luigi Zenoni, Per la Storia della Cultura in
Venezia dal 1500 al 1797. L’Accademia dei Nobili alla Giudecca (1619–1797) (Venice, 1916). See
also Gullino, “Educazione,” pp. 749, 763–64.
54 Gullino, “Educazione,” pp. 754–57, 784.
55 Gullino, “Educazione,” p. 783; Gullino, La politica scolastica, p. 115.