396 cecilia cristellon and silvana seidel menchi
canonization of its saint. in terms of public piety, the laurentian cult
ceased with the fall of the Republic, but it was kept alive, though weak-
ened, in popular devotions.39
Both popular and official religiosity in the 17th and 18th centuries
reflected the theology that had been affirmed at Trent, arguing against
Protestants for the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host, and
promoting a greater frequenting of the sacraments and a more intense
approach to religious devotions. it was a religiosity still greatly condi-
tioned by fears of plague, but also—as had occurred in the 15th century—
by the ottoman peril, especially after the wars of Candia (1644–69) and
the Peloponnese (1648–99 and 1714–18). This piety was externalized in the
multiplication of masses, religious functions, and processions; and in the
erection of votive temples as in the flowering of capitelli, which attrib-
uted a central role to the eucharist (displayed in most churches on a daily
basis) both in the liturgy and in the lives of the faithful, in conformity
with the desire of patriarch giovanni Tiepolo (1619–31). it was, lastly, a
religiosity strongly Marian in nature, both in the rites of official piety and
in popular devotion, and further encouraged by the official institution of
the cult of the Nicopeia Madonna on the part of the primicerio and later
patriarch Tiepolo, who in 1617 had an altar and eventually homonymous
chapel constructed in the Basilica of st Mark. Also Marian in inspiration
was the temple of the salute commissioned at the end of the 1630 plague
by the senate, while in an analogous occasion in the 16th century it had
devoted the Palladian church to Christ il Redentore; to the Virgin were
dedicated the church of the Pianto (1647) in concurrence with the War of
the Peleponnesus and the temple of Pellestrina at the conclusion of the
War of the Morea: examples of a state piety in full step with the popu-
lar religiosity which saw the faithful invoke the aid of the Virgin Mary as
well as that of saint Anthony in the unequal struggle against the “infidels”
through processions, masses, devotions, and the recitation of the rosary
(a practice that reached its height in the 17th century).40 Popular devotion
to the Madonna also manifested itself in the older forms (documented
with certainty from the 15th century and belonging to the category of
magic by contact) of the madonne vestite. These were Marian simulacra,
39 Antonio Niero, “Pietà popolare e interessi politici nel culto di san lorenzo giusti-
niani,” Archivio Veneto 117 (1981), 197–224.
40 on st. Anthony of Padua, see Antonio Niero’s contribution in silvio Tramontin,
Antonio Niero, giovanni Musolino, and Carlo Candiani, Biblioteca agiografica veneziana,
vol. 2: Culto dei Santi a Venezia (Venice, 1965), pp. 81–82.