Login
Login

Scuole Grandi of Venice

{{Short description|Confraternity or sodality institutions in Venice}}

{{more footnotes|date=August 2012}}

The Scuole Grandi (literally 'Great Schools', plural of {{Langx|it|Scuola Grande}}) were confraternity or sodality institutions in Venice, Italy. They were founded as early as the 13th century as charitable and religious organizations for the laity. These institutions had a key role in the history and development of music. The first groups of bowed instrument players named {{Lang|it|Violoni}} were born there in the early 16th century.{{cite book|last=Pio|first=Stefano|title=Viol and Lute Makers of Venice 1490 -1630|pages=Chap. III}}

Membership and responsibilities

Unlike the trade guilds or the numerous Scuole Piccolo of Venice, the Scuole Grandi included persons of many occupations, although citizenship was required. Unlike the rigidly aristocratic Venetian governmental Great Council of Venice, which for centuries only admitted a restricted number of noble families, membership in the Scuole Grandi was open to all citizens, and did not permit nobles to gain director roles. Citizens could include persons in the third generation of residency in the island republic, or persons who had paid taxes in Venice for fifteen years. The Scuole Grandi proved to be one of the few outlets for non-noble Venetian citizens to control powerful institutions. Members came from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds including Macedonians, Slavs, and Albanians and represented the working class such as artisans, tradesmen, and craftsmen like stonemasons, cobblers, and tanners.{{Cite book |last=Huguenin |first=Daniel |title=The Glory of Venice: Ten Centuries of Imagination and Invention |publisher=Terrail |year=1995 |isbn=9782879390963 |series=Glorious World of Art |location=Paris |page=80 |oclc=33497518}} However there were individual members who came from the more elite social classes (the patricians and the citizen) who represented more diverse occupations and were able to fund the meeting houses in which the Scuole would meet.{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=Lorenza |title=Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice |url=https://smarthistory.org/scuole-venice/ |access-date=2023-11-09 |website=Smarthistory}}

Their activities grew to encompass the organization of processions, sponsoring festivities, distribution of money, food and clothing to poorer members, provision of dowries to daughters, burial of paupers, and the supervision of hospitals. Among the Scuole Grandi's goals was to encourage living virtuously, and to offer both material and spiritual support to their members.{{Cite book |last=Chambers |first=D. S. |title=The Imperial Age of Venice: 1380-1580 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |year=1970 |isbn=978-0-15-144230-0 |series= |publication-place=London |pages=115–118}}

During the Middle Ages, each school had its own regulations, named capitulare or {{Lang|it|mariegola}}. While the Scuole Grandi functioned as independent fraternities, the Venetian state called upon them to distribute money for public purposes, like war, as well as playing a role in grand religious processions that took place throughout the city, like the one that took place every April 25, as depicted in Gentile Bellini's Procession in St. Mark's Square.

Their autonomy was lost during the Renaissance when the institutions were subjected to a specific magistracy that ruled the office of the leaders and oversaw the drafting of capitulars.{{cite web | url = https://www.invenicetoday.com/en/museums/Scuole-Grandi-Venice-Italy/History-of-Scuole-Grandi-of-Venice-Italy.htm#.XOX01RYzbIU | title = History of the Scuole Grandi of Venice Italy | archive-url = https://archive.today/20190523210620/https://www.invenicetoday.com/en/museums/Scuole-Grandi-Venice-Italy/History-of-Scuole-Grandi-of-Venice-Italy.htm | archive-date = May 23, 2019 | url-status = live}} After a process of secularization, charities lost their Christian identity and were absorbed into the Venetian structure of the state{{cite book | author = Manfredo Tafuri | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=7BYaBnsP5PMC&pg=PA82 | title = Venice and the Renaissance | publisher = MIT Press |year = 1995 | isbn = 9780262700542 | oclc = 19123670 |archive-url = https://archive.today/20190523212728/https://books.google.it/books?id=7BYaBnsP5PMC&pg=PA82&dq=%22Scuole+GRandi+of+Venice%22&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiv7LaLyrLiAhXSKlAKHRU9CS4Q6AEITjAF%23v=onepage&q=%22Scuole%20GRandi%20of%20Venice%22&f=false | archive-date = May 23, 2019 | url-status = live}} that encompassed an exhibiting unity-order among the social classes of the republic.{{cite web | author = Lorenza Smith |url = https://smarthistory.org/scuole-venice/ | title = Devotional confraternities (scuole) in Renaissance Venice | website = Smarthistory | archive-url = https://archive.today/20190523213708/https://smarthistory.org/scuole-venice/ | archive-date = May 23, 2019 | url-status = live}}

While Venice deleted the medieval ius commune from its hierarchy of the sources of law,{{cite journal | author = Laura Ikins Stern | title = Politics and Law in Renaissance Florence and Venice | journal = The American Journal of Legal History | publisher = Oxford University Press | volume = 46 | issue = 2 | date = Apr 2004 | pages = 209–234 | doi = 10.2307/3692441 | jstor =3692441 }} Grandi Scuole were divided into two opposite classes, and started to {{Clarify|date=August 2022|text=securitize their immobiliar investments}} under the central direction of private banks, even if within the bounds of their history redistribution rules.{{Clarify|reason=entire sentence needs clarification|date=August 2022}} The Poverty Laws approved in 1528–1529 entrusted from the state to the Grandi Scuole system all charitable and social activities, like handouts, drugs, burials of needy persons, hospices for widows and children, food and lodging for pilgrims, brotherhood for prisoners. The Serenissima kept for itself a residual role in social justice, uniquely related to those forms of poverty that may become a negative element for the new order of the aristocratic republic.{{cite journal | author = Gianmario Guidarelli | url = https://journals.openedition.org/mefrm/664 | title = The Scuole Grandi in Venice (xv-xvi century): organization; real estates and governmental strategies | language = it | journal = Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome - Moyen Âge | doi = 10.4000/mefrm.664 |series = 123 |issue = 1 | pages = 59–81 | date = Feb 20, 2013 | archive-url = https://archive.today/20180602134947/https://journals.openedition.org/mefrm/664 | archive-date = June 2, 2018 | url-status = live}}

Structure and physical layout

The Scuole Grandi were regulated by the Procurators of Venice, who set forth a complex balance of elected offices, mirroring the structures of the republic. Paying members could vote in the larger {{Lang|it|Capitolo}}, which in turn elected 16 members to a supervisory {{Lang|it|Banca}}: a chief officer, {{Lang|it|Vicario}} (first deputy), {{Lang|it|Guardian da Mattin}} (director of processions), a scribe and twelve officers known as the {{Lang|it|Degani}} (two for each sestiere). A second board, known as the {{Lang|it|Zonta}} was meant to examine the accounts of the {{Lang|it|Banca}}.

Typically the main building consisted of an {{Lang|it|androne}}, or meeting hall for the provision of charity; the upper floor contained the {{Lang|it|salone}} used for meeting of the {{Lang|it|Capitolo}} and a smaller room, the {{Lang|it|albergo}}, used for meetings of the {{Lang|it|Banca}} and {{Lang|it|Zonta}}. They often had an affiliated hospital and church. The Scuola often sheltered relics, commissioned famous works of art, or patronized musicians and composers.

List of Scuole Grandi

By 1552, there were six Scuole Grandi, but the first four arose out of flagellant societies of the thirteenth century:{{Cite book |last=Chambers |first=D. S. |title=The Imperial Age of Venice: 1380-1580 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |year=1970 |isbn=978-0-15-144230-0 |series= |publication-place=London |pages=115–118}}

The Scuola Grande dei Carmini was the last of its kind to be recognized as a Scuola Grande in 1767 by the Council of Ten.

References

{{reflist}}

Bibliography

  • {{cite book | first= Deborah| last= Howard| year=1975| title= Jacopo Sansovino; Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice| url= https://archive.org/details/orah00debo| url-access= registration| editor= Yale University press| pages= [https://archive.org/details/orah00debo/page/64 64–74]}}
  • "Viol and Lute Makers of Venice 1490 -1630" Ed. Venice research 2012, {{ISBN|9788890725203}}

{{Republic of Venice}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scuole Grandi Of Venice}}

Category:Buildings and structures in Venice

Category:Culture of the Republic of Venice

Category:13th-century establishments in the Republic of Venice

Category:Confraternities