Venetian Miracles of the Holy Cross

In the days of the Venetian Republic, one of the most important aspects of the city’s religious life was a group of large and prestigious confraternities known as the “scuole grandi – the great schools.” These associations engaged in a wide variety of devotional and charitable activities, and each of them had a large hall on which these activities were centered.

The entrance to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The interior of the upper hall, constructed in 1544. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)

In 1369, the scuola grande of St John the Evangelist, one of the oldest in the city, was given a relic of the True Cross, which soon became known for the miracles it effected. At the end of the 15th century, the confraternity commissioned a group of painters to make a series of panels celebrating nine of these miracles, which were to be displayed in the large hall where the relic was kept. One of these, a work by Raphael’s teacher Perugino (1446-1523), has been lost, but the other eight survive. Three were painted by Gentile Bellini (1429 ca. - 1507), scion of a family of painters who had long been among the most successful in the city; the rest are by artists who were in various ways his students or associates, who also assisted Bellini to varying degrees with his own canvases. (It is no small testament to the prestige which Perugino enjoyed throughout Italy in the late 15th century that he was invited to participate in this project, even though he was not a Venetian.) In 1797, the arch-criminal Napoleon, enemy of God and the Faith, overthrew the Republic and closed the scuole, whose properties were then plundered and dispersed; since 1820, the paintings have been displayed at the Galleria dell’ Accademia.

1. The Miraculous Healing of a Madman at the Rialto Bridge, ca. 1495, by Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65 - 1525 ca.) The principal scene, in the upper left part of the painting, shows the healing of a madman by the relic of the True Cross, which is held by Francesco Querini, Patriarch of Grado (1367-72) when the relic came to Venice. (From the time of its foundation in 774, the see of Venice was suffragan to the Patriarchate of Grado, a town roughly 55 miles to the east along the edge of the Adriatic. In 1451, shortly after St Lawrence Giustiniani was appointed bishop of Venice, the pope transferred the title of the patriarchate to his see.) This takes place on the loggia of a palace near the famous Rialto Bridge; most of the painting is taken up with the view of the surrounding area, a very busy scene very much to the taste of the times in Venice, as also seen in the remaining paintings. (The wooden bridge seen here collapsed in 1524; the central section of this older structure was movable so that taller ships could get up the canal.)

2. The Miracle in the Campo San Lio, ca. 1495, by Giovanni Mansueti (flor. 1485-1527). During the funeral procession of a member of the confraternity who had been but little devoted to the Holy Cross, the relic suddenly became too heavy to carry, until it was handed over to the parish priest.

3. The Relic of the True Cross is Given to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist, ca. 1495, by Lazzaro Bastiani (1429-1512). This picture is an important record of the appearance of the confraternity’s complex before a number of subsequent renovations. The relic had previously belonged to a French Carmelite named Pierre de Thomas (1305-66), who was the papal legate to “the churches of the East” from 1357 until his death. When he died on the island of Cyprus, it passed to Philippe de Mézières, the chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the successor state to the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem; it was de Mézières who in turn gave it to the confraternity.

4. A Miracle During the Procession on St Mark’s Day, 1496, by Gentile Bellini. On April 25th, the feast of Venice’s Patron Saint, the Evangelist Mark, the scuole grandi and many other pious associations would participate in a grand procession in front of the famous basilica that houses his relics. (In the days of the Republic, San Marco was not the cathedral of Venice, but the chapel of the doge and his court.) The members of the Scuola Grande of St John are seen in the lower middle of the painting, carrying the relic under a baldachin. Underneath the relic, a plaque is mounted into the pavement of the piazza, which commemorates the procession of 1444, during which a merchant from Brescia named Jacop de’ Salis knelt down and prayed before the relic, and his gravely injured son was immediately healed. This painting is also an important historical record of the mosaics on the façade of the basilica, and the older brick pavement of the piazza.

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St Gregory Barbarigo, One of John XXIII’s Favorite Saints

In various dioceses in northern Italy, today is the feast of St Gregory Barbarigo, a cardinal, bishop and confessor, who died on this day in 1697, at the age of 71.

Portrait of Cardinal Gregory Barbarigo by an unknown artist, ca. 1687.

Gregory was born in 1625 to a Venetian noble family which had two doges and several senators in its history, his father among the latter, and would give the Church three other cardinals. He received a typical education in mathematics, philosophy, and the classical languages, and while still quite young, served as secretary to a Venetian ambassador named Aloise Contarini. While accompanying the ambassador to Münster for the negotiations that led to the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire, he became friends with one of the papal nuncios, Archbishop Fabio Chigi. In 1652, Chigi was made a cardinal; the following year, Gregory came to visit him in Rome, and received his encouragement to embark on a career in the Church.

A portrait of Abp Fabio Chigi, the future Pope Alexander VII, made when he was papal nuncio to the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia, ca. 1646, by the Flemish painter Anselm van Hulle (1601-74.) Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

After obtaining the prestigious laurea utriusque (a degree in both civil and canon law), Barbarigo was ordained to the priesthood in his native city, but soon called to Rome by Chigi, who had been elected Pope with the name Alexander VII in 1655. After two years of distinguished service to the papacy, noteworthy especially for his charity to the poor and distressed, he was appointed bishop of Bergamo in Lombardy, which was then a territory of the Republic of Venice. There also he distinguished himself in his office, personally visiting all of the nearly 280 parishes in his diocese. In 1660, he was elevated to the cardinalate, and four years later, transferred to the diocese of Padua, far closer to his native place. Continuing as a model bishop, he visited all 320 of his parishes, and exercised the same pastoral charity for the poor that he had in Rome, even, on one occasion, selling his own bed. For these reason, he was routinely referred to as a second St Charles Borromeo.

Popular devotion to the holy bishop led to a process for his canonization, which was formally introduced at Rome almost exactly 25 years after his death. In 1725, his remains were exhumed, and found to be in a remarkably good state of preservation, though not miraculously so. He was beatified in 1751 by one of the great experts on the subject of canonizations, Pope Benedict XIV, after which his cause stalled for over a century and a half.

St Gregory Barbarigo’s tomb in the cathedral of Padua. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Harvey Kneeslapper, CC BY-SA 4.0.) 

Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope St John XXIII, was ordained a priest in 1904 for St Gregory’s first diocese, Bergamo. Both as priest and bishop, he had a great admiration for and devotion to the holy cardinal, and in 1911, he signed a petition to Pope St Pius X (an alumnus of the diocesan seminary of Padua, and former patriarch of Venice), asking that Barbarigo’s cause be renewed. A decree to that effect was issued the following year, and the cause resumed. Roncalli himself became patriarch of Venice in 1953, from which see he was elected to the papacy in 1958; as Pope, he would bring the cause to completion by canonizing St Gregory in May of 1960. Of the ten Saints whom he canonized, Gregory is the only one whom he added to the general calendar, but since his dies natalis was then occupied by St Ephrem the Syrian, he was assigned to the previous day, June 17th.

John XXIII, patron saint of unintended consequences, proved to be particularly unfortunate in his relations with the liturgical calendar. The feast which he specifically chose as the opening day of Vatican II was suppressed by the liturgical reform enacted in the wake and despite of that Council, while his favorite saintly bishop was deemed one Charles Borromeo too many, and relegated to the local calendars as a Saint “not of truly universal importance.” Gregory Barbarigo thus became the single most rapidly degraded canonized Saint in history, removed from the general calendar less than nine years after he was added to it.

London Oratory Schola Sings Gems from Venice: The Latest Fantastic Album by Charles Cole

It is a splendid thing to compile and record an album of late Renaissance Venetian choral music, especially since the ordinary forces of parish choirs (and even cathedral choirs) can only occasionally muster enough musical forces to mount this mostly polychoral repertoire. There is certainly much to choose from in the programming, for the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th witnessed a prodigious production of masterpieces emanating from the lofts of St Mark’s Basilica, many of which had a profound effect on the course of Western music history as it evolved into the various Baroque styles.

Even more splendid, however, is to produce an album with such an interesting and varied program, sung magnificently entirely by choristers brought up from within the ranks of just one school in London. 

We find such an album in the recent Sacred Treasures of Venice, released on the Hyperion label, with NLM’s own Charles Cole directing the boys of the London Oratory Schola Cantorum - no hired ringers here! Featuring the music of three Giovannis (Bassano, Croce, and Gabrieli), alongside the older Gabrieli (Andrea), Claudio Merulo, and Giacomo Finetti, this album draws together compositions which run the gamut of affective expressivity, and compass conventional harmonies as well as daring experiments in late Renaissance voice leading. The honesty of the sound accompanies the wonder of what the boys can produce under so able a tutor and conductor as they have in Mr. Cole. 

Some of my favorites on the album are Croce’s In spiritu humilitatis, a setting of the prayer from the Offertory of the Mass, with its earnestly homophonic setting of the text, a fitting musical offering to accompany the sacrifice offered at the altar by its priest composer. 

In spiritu humilitatis et in animo contrito suscipiamur a te, Domine: et sic fiat sacrificium nostrum in conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat tibi, Domine Deus.

In the spirit of humility and with contrite heart, may we be accepted by Thee, o Lord, and grant that the sacrifice which we offer this day in Thy sight may be pleasing to Thee, o Lord God.

And, of course, there is the masterpiece O quam suavis Giovanni Gabrieli, which paints the text in a harmonically sophisticated manner.

O quam suavis est, Domine, spiritus tuus,

qui ut dulcedinem tuam in filios demonstrares

pane suavissimo de caelo præstito,

esurientes reples bonis,

fastidiosos divites dimittens inanes. 

O how sweet, O Lord, is thy spirit,

who, to show thy tenderness to thy children,

feedest them with thy sweetest bread from heaven,

feeding the hungry with good things,

and sending the disdainful rich away empty.

I had the opportunity to chat with Charles about the album’s music, composers, and singers on a recent episode of Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast, which includes some clips from the album. Do give this latest album in the Sacred Treasures series produced by the schola a listen—it is inspiring in every aspect. 

The Life of St Mark the Evangelist in Art

St Mark, whose feast is kept today, is the only evangelist who records that when the soldiers came to arrest Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, “a certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and they laid hold on him. But he, casting off the linen cloth, fled from them naked.” (14, 51-52) In keeping with the common ancient practice of authorial anonymity, it has often been supposed that this young man was Mark himself, which would make this his first appearance in sacred history; such a figure often appears in pictures of this scene.

The Arrest of Christ in the Garden, ca 1597, by Giuseppe Cesari (1568-1640), usually known as “Cavaliere d’Arpino – the knight from Arpino”, the birthplace of his father. (He himself was born in Rome.) This is actually a studio copy, now in a museum in Kassel, Germany; the original hangs in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, in the same room as six works by the Cavaliere’s quondam employee, Caravaggio. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

A very ancient tradition, recorded by St Jerome (de Script. Eccl. 8) among others, says that Mark was St Peter’s interpreter, and came with him to Rome. Peter himself mentions this in his first epistle (5, 13): “The church that is in Babylon (i.e. Rome), elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth my son Mark.” After composing his Gospel, Mark went to Alexandria, where he established the Church, and died in the eighth year of the reign of Nero, 62 AD, being succeeded by a man named Anianus, who is noted in the martyrology on the same day as he.

St Mark Preaching in Alexandria, ca. 1505, by the Venetian painters and brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. The building in the background is an architectural fantasy based on St Mark’s basilica in Venice; the obelisks and minarets, and the clothing of the figures in the foreground, are likely based on descriptions by Venetian merchants who had traveled in the Middle East. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the 9th century, merchants from Venice (a city which specialized in pious thievery) stole the body of St Mark from a church in Alexandria, concealing it in their ship amid a load of pork products so that the Muslim custom inspectors would not discover it. This led to the creation of an expanded edition of the evangelist’s legend, by which St Peter first sent him to Aquileia, a town at the head of the Adriatic, where he established a patriarchate which would later be transferred to nearby Grado, and later still to Venice itself. The story has it that on setting foot on the shore of the Venetian lagoon, an angel spoke to him, saying, “Peace to thee, Mark, my evangelist; here thy body shall rest.” Mark then returned to Rome, bringing with him one of his converts, a man named Hermagoras, whom Peter ordained as his replacement so that Mark himself could go off to Egypt.

The Golden Legend of Bl Jacopo da Voragine tells the story that on entering Alexandria, Mark’s sandal broke, so he gave it to a cobbler to fix. The man badly wounded himself with his awl, and swore, “one God!”, at which Mark healed him, converted him, and later ordained him a bishop. This is the very Anianus mentioned above, who built the first church in Alexandria, and then preached the Gospel throughout the Libyan Pentapolis (the region to the west of Egypt, also known as Cyrenaica).

The Healing of Anianus, by Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano (1459-1517). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Mark in the meantime was seized by the pagan priests while celebrating Mass during Eastertide, and dragged off to prison by a rope around his neck. In prison, he was visited first by an angel, then by the Lord himself, who repeated to him the words he had heard at the future site of Venice, “Peace to thee, Mark, my evangelist; fear not, for I am with thee, to deliver thee.” Just as Christ was left in prison overnight, and His passion resumed in the morning, so also Mark was dragged “in the morning” out of the prison, again by a rope around his neck, and died along the way, saying, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” The pagans would have destroyed his body, but were driven away by a powerful storm of thunder, lightning and hail; it was then rescued by the Christians, and taken to the church built by Anianus, his successor.

The Martyrdom of St Mark, 1515, by Giovanni Bellini. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) 

Prior to the despoliation of Venice by Napoleon, the city had seven “Scuole Grandi – Great Schools”, confraternities which sponsored a wide variety of religious, charitable, social and cultural activities. In 1548, the oldest of these, named for Saint Mark, commissioned the painter Jacopo Robusti (1518-94), usually known by the nickname Tintoretto, to do a painting of one of the well-known posthumous miracles of their and their city’s patron, also narrated in the Golden Legend. A slave who had gone to visit Mark’s relics against his master’s orders was to be punished by having his eyes put out, but every instrument by which his master sought to injure him broke, until the master himself was converted, and became a devotee of the evangelist, frequently going to visit the relics himself.

Fourteen years later, three other paintings were commissioned from Tintoretto, which were completed by 1566. One of these represents yet another miracle from the Golden Legend. A Saracen pirate ship attacked a Venetian merchant vessel, but was wrecked by the sea, and all the pirates drowned save one, who called upon the evangelist to save him, promising to be baptized and make a pilgrimage to his tomb in Venice.

Another represents the first Christians of Alexandria recovering the Saint’s body right after his death, as explained above.

The fourth painting is often referred to as “the Finding of the Body of St Mark”, based an error of the Italian art historian Carlo Ridolfi (1594-1658). It actually represents St Mark, the standing figure at the left, performing various miracles in the first church of Alexandria.

The Relics of St Lucy

The written accounts of the virgin martyr St Lucy, whose feast has been kept on this day since at least the sixth century, are universally recognized to be historically unreliable, in no small part because of the very notable inconsistencies between the different versions. For example, the Roman breviary makes no mention of the well-known story that she was blinded during her sufferings, and for the sake of which she is often depicted holding her eyes on a plate. This is also missing from the version of her life in the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary. But one of the few details about her which is consistently stated is that she was from the port city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, where she was martyred during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the 4th century.

St Lucy and Stories of Her Life, by Quirizio da Murano, active in Venice 1463-78. Notice that there is no reference to the Saint’s blinding. (The artist’s native place, Murano, is a small town which was in his lifetime in the terraferma, the mainland territories controlled by the Venetian Republic. - Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)    

During the Arabic occupation of Sicily, which began in 827, the people of Syracuse had hidden her relics in a catacomb near the city, but in 1039, the location of the hiding place was betrayed to a Byzantine general who was on the island to fight against the Arabs, Georgios Maniaces, and who stole them and brought them to Constantinople. (He also took the relics of St Agatha, the patron of Catania, about 40 miles to the north, but she was stolen back and returned there in 1126.) When Constantinople was sacked by the Venetians in 1204, Lucy’s relics were brought back to Venice along with an immense number of other treasures. They were originally placed in one of the city’s most important churches, dedicated to St George, on a small island which faces the famous Piazza San Marco.

The church of St Lucy in Venice, photographed shortly before its demolition. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1279, however, a large number of pilgrims were killed when a bridge of boats made to link the island to the rest of the city for her feast day was overturned by choppy seas. It was then decided to build a new church to house them within the city. In 1860, when Venice had been part of the Austrian empire for several decades, the Austrian government decided to build a train station in the area, and the church was slated for demolition. Lucy’s relics were therefore transferred to a nearby church dedicated to the prophet Jeremiah, where they still remain. (The station itself was later demolished and replaced by a much uglier building, but the new structure is still called “Venezia Santa Lucia” in memory of the location of the old church.) In 1981, the relics were stolen from the crystal urn in which they rest, but recovered 5 weeks later, on her very feast day. More recently, they have been brought to Syracuse for a visit twice, in 2004, for the seventeenth centenary of her martyrdom, and again ten years later.

The shrine of St Lucy in the church of San Geremia. A silver mask was placed on her face in 1955, a gift of the patriarch of Venice Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope St John XXIII. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0

San Geremia, seen from the Gran Canal. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pol Grandmont, CC BY 4.0)

The Basilica of the Assumption on Torcello Island

The large lagoon at the top of the Adriatic Sea which is called “Venetian” from its most famous site and city also contains more than 60 other islands. There are several hidden treasures among them, one of the most interesting of which is the island of Torcello, about seven-and-a-half miles to the northeast of the city. An episcopal see was established on the island in the 7th century, and although it was suppressed two centuries ago, its cathedral remains, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, whose octave is today. (The entire lagoon, including Venice itself, has suffered from a notable decline in population over the last several decades, and the group of islands which includes Torcello is now in the parish of nearby Burano.)

Our good friends of the Schola Sainte Cécile are currently wrapping up a pilgrimage to Venice, Italy, joined by our Ambrosian expert Nicola de’ Grandi, who took these photos of this wonderful reminder of Venice’s long association with Byzantium and Byznatine art.

Mosaic of the Virgin Mary in the main apse, second half of the twelth century; the Apostles in the band below are about a century older.

Many churches within the former Republic of Venice ignored some of the common changes in church architecture which developed in the Counter-Reformation period, such as the removal of rood screens.

Last Judgment on the counterfaçade, also twelfth century. 

To the right of main apse, the mosaic of this secondary apse shows Christ the Pantocrator, with Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Martin of Tours and Gregory the Wonderworker beneath; the presence of St Gregory is another example of the strong Byzantine influence in Venice and environs. 

The pulpit on the left side of the rood screen,

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