Venice the Queen City of the Adriatic, hosted some 20,000,000 tourists this past year, and its narrow streets are thronged with visitors. It was therefore a relief late one afternoon when Alice and I walked away from the crush of the crowd into a district of narrow alleyways. Eventually we found a square where small children were playing soccer. The square was flanked by a 500-year-old church, that bore the title Santa Maria Formosa (“St Mary, the Beautiful”).
We stepped inside to find the rosary being recited in a side chapel by a dozen parishioners and a placard indicating that this church was “not for visiting but for praying.”
The recitation of the rosary prayer has special resonance in Venice. On October 7, 1571, a coalition of southern European Catholic maritime states met a powerful Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto. Venice provided the largest part of the Christian fleet, 110 oared warships, and suffered the brunt of the 16,000 Christian casualties suffered that day. Prior to the battle, Pope Pius V had called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for victory and led a rosary procession in Rome. Two years later, the Pope created the annual October “Feast of the Holy Rosary” to commemorate the great victory.
Alice and I filed into a pew and joined the small group of worshipers and, caught up in the rhythms of the familiar prayer, enjoyed a moment of pause. In the course of five decades each focused on a different aspect of Mary’s life, the prayer is repeated 50 times, lapping over us like gentle waves on the seashore.
In the late 1500’s Venice, with its Grand Canal lined with extravagant palaces was the cultural capital of Europe, but also the inheritor of long-established religious practices. Divided into 60 parish districts, each had its own mixtures of higher and lower classes with the Church serving as the melding place. The lower classes were a mélange of cultures from all over the Mediterranean, often suffering from malnutrition and prone to disease. The upper classes, dominated by the historic ten leading families of the city, were sequestered from daily life. Any public movements were accompanied by large numbers of liveried retainers to keep beggars back, and members of noble families were required to wear masks in public so that their faces could not be seen. Movement from place to place was virtually always done by gondola. On major feast days when the wealthy families left their private chapels to attend the public service, chairs were provided for them. The majority of the congregation, however, stood throughout the service.
The 16th century Venetians took for granted distinctions in social rank and had no hesitancy to attach themselves to spiritual intermediaries to plead their cause in the court of heaven. Of the many parishes in the city, almost all bore the name of a particular saint that the local community invoked for special protection. In the churches, side Mass altars proliferated, often attached to a particular confraternity or religious organization, each with its own artistic focus and with different saints or Madonnas.
Venetians lived an existence that was particularly receptive to dramatic moments. Drapes were often used to cover the artwork of side altars, and much was made of the moment, often with musical accompaniment, in which the curtains were pulled back to reveal the tryptic and frescoes that they had covered. Exposition of the blessed sacrament was also common, and the display of relics in jeweled cases or statuary in sumptuous robes was the norm on major feast days.
Aspects of Venetian spirituality were driven by the city’s extensive trading contacts with the east. Old testament figures such as Moses and Samuel were regarded as Saints. One parish borne the name “Holy wisdom” named after the great Orthodox Cathedral of Constantinople. When not fighting the Turks, the Venetians routinely traded with them. Many of the churches and buildings of the city are distinguished by their Islamic-Byzantine pointed window casings.
But maritime contact with other seaports also brought problems. Between 1629 and 1631 the bubonic plague – most likely carried by a trading vessel — struck the densely populated city, and led to the deaths of 46,000 Venetians, almost a third of its inhabitants. The result was a renewal of devotional life, particularly to the Blessed Virgin and the rosary. A city, already abounding with parish churches, convents and monasteries, now saw the introduction of elaborate new edifices, most notably that of Sancta Maria Della Salute (Holy Mary of Good Health) located adjacent to the city’s custom house.
Despite the proliferation of churches, the Liturgy of the Eucharist was not a central element of personal prayer life at this time. Because the 16th century Mass was regarded as a task of the priest in which the congregation waited expectedly for the moment of the elevation (thought to bring good fortune). Neither the distribution of the Eucharist (most Catholics received only once a year at Easter) or the sermon were considered as integral parts of the Mass. Scripture readings were in Latin, and sermons (when they took place at all) usually focused on moral conduct or abounded in references to classical pagan literature.
It was not surprising that devotional forms of expression, the rosary in particular, took on special significance. In the rosary the pronounced social differences of daily life no longer matter. The communal prayer of the rosary required no priest nor civic official and was addressed to a mother figure who it was felt would unfailingly intercede on behalf of the lowliest, most sinful of creatures, to her Divine Son. Whether a person was rich or poor did not matter. The prayer of the “Hail Mary” which Catholics take for granted today, was also relatively new. Although the first part of the prayer, based on the greeting to Mary by the Angel at Nazareth had long been in use, the responsory petition asking for the Virgin’s intercession “now and at the hour of our death” had only been officially promulgated a few years earlier.
The rosary service that afternoon at Santa Maria Formosa Church concluded with the traditional litany in which Mary is saluted under some 50 different titles. The closing prayer, adopted by the Church shortly after the Battle of Lepanto, invokes Mary as the “Gate of Heaven,” the “Morning Star,” the “Star of the Sea,” the “Health of the Sick,” the “Refuge of Sinners,” and the “Help of Christians.” Many titles had particular meaning to this community living on its historic islands in the sea — and once again we felt the healing waves lap over us.