History of religious life in Vicenza

[3] It was Aquileia, a great city and commercial port, the center of the spread of Christianity in the X Regio Venetia et Histria;[4] the first followers of the new faith were not so much the common people, but the military, travelers, and merchants who had frequent contacts with the East and had cultural openness: it was among these few that presbyters were chosen in the second half of the third century.

[6] The fact that Christianity had already arrived in the territory of Vicenza towards the end of the 3rd century[7] would be attested by the martyrdom – which occurred in 303-304 during the period of Diocletian's persecutions – of the two brothers Felix and Fortunatus, who were beheaded in Aquileia for not wanting to renounce their faith.

Toward the end of the same century the basilica of Saints Felix and Fortunatus was joined by a martyrion dedicated to Sancta Maria Mater Domini, in the name of the devotion to Mary, Mother of God that spread after the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

Many bishops of Northern Italy – including those of Milan and Aquileia – had been unwilling to endure this imposition, and their dissent had deepened at the time of Pope Pelagius I, who had not only accepted the edict but had addressed an epistle to the Byzantine general Narses – who, however, did not want to obey the request – inviting him to crush the rebellion by force.

Aquileia no longer recognized the pope's authority and vigorously contested to the point of rupture – hence the name Schism of the Three Chapters – his attitude, which they felt was wavering on the issue of the three condemned theologians, as it did not counter the interference of the Byzantine emperor's power in doctrinal matters.

Free communes emerged which freed themselves from the lordship of the bishops, a new social class, the bourgeoisie, was formed, which due to the needs of travel and trade had the opportunity to meet other cultures and claimed greater freedom of thought, including in matters of faith.

[33] It was the favorable environment for the very rapid growth and spread of the Mendicant Orders: the friars, trained in the study of sacred texts, capable of expressing their contents in a concrete everyday language appropriate to daily life, rigorous in their lifestyle – all qualities in which the diocesan clergy were instead lacking – stirred up the crowds, exhorting them to repent and to follow Christ.

[39] In Vicenza, a domus Patarinorum, i.e., a community of Humiliati was settled in Borgo Berga just outside the early medieval city walls in the spring of 1190,[40] that is, at a time when this movement had been excommunicated by Pope Lucius III with the bull Ad abolendam, promulgated at the synod of Verona in 1184, which lumped it in with the Cathars and Patarians.

[41] Within a few years of their establishment, therefore, all these communities of lay people, either because they were considered dangerous to orthodoxy or criticized for their lifestyle, were either dissolved or regularized – that is, a very precise rule was imposed on them, approved by the Church, which involved in particular the clear separation of men and women.

[42] In 1184 Lucius III issued in Verona the decretal Ad abolendam diversarum haeresium pravitatem – by which a whole series of dissent movements, considered heretical, were excommunicated and inquisitorial proceedings were instituted against them, the management of which was entrusted to the bishops.

In 1276 the brothers Mastino and Alberto della Scala conquered with their troops the fortress of Sirmione, where numerous Perfects had barricaded themselves together with the Cathar bishops of Desenzano and Bagnolo San Vito; the prisoners were taken to Verona where 166 of them were burned on February 13, 1278, with the addition of another forty or so dissidents.

[48] According to the regulations of the time, the expenses for the investigation and trial had to be covered by the inquisitor, and for this reason, among the punishments imposed were numerous pecuniary penalties and confiscations of property of deceased heretics, while capital executions and prison sentences were very rare.

Especially at the end of the thirteenth century there were many posthumous trials in the city against rich and powerful families, during the period when Paduan friars, appointed by the provincial minister Bartolomeo Mascara of Padua (1289 – 1299), were inquisitors, who unduly spent a part of the income for personal uses and favors to relatives.

[48] In the two severe papal inquiries of 1302 and 1308 the special judges sent by Boniface VIII and Clement V collected abundant data on economic management, preserved in Rome in the Collectoriae of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, while the records of the trials held in the local offices almost all disappeared over the centuries.

The Dominicans in the 30s – the heyday of Giovanni da Schio is recalled – and especially in the five-year period following the fall of Ezzelino III, when they were strongly supported by their confrere, Bishop Bartholomew of Breganze, but also by the municipality, which purchased the area for the construction of Santa Corona.

[52] The bishops of Vicenza were also men of their time: often elected under pressure if not actually appointed by the ruling dynasties, first the Scaligeri and then the Visconti, continually involved in the struggles between the seigniories that contended for the territory as well as between them and the papacy, they were also often opposed by the city factions and the cathedral chapter itself.

[55] According to some authors, it was also the time when Vicenza – which by then had lost all political autonomy, first under the rule of the Scaligeri and Visconti families, then with its dedication to the Serenissima – built its own identity, exalting with a whole series of rituals and devotions the saints it considered to be typically local.

[56] Formed probably within the renewed Cistercian spirituality, Bartholomew of Breganze fostered the rebirth of the Marian cult in Vicenza; he placed under the protection of Mater misericordiae the Congregationes Mariae – to which he alludes in his writings – which, about two centuries later became the Company of Mercy, which became common throughout Italy, following the example of the one founded by Antoninus of Florence.

[57] During the first half of the 15th century, town confraternities named after her spread: their devotional forms are unknown – probably related to the penance movement – but they were supposed to consist of thanksgiving for the narrow escape from danger, especially from recurring famines and pestilences, and deeds of mercy toward one's neighbor.

This was a system that had become well-established in Venice where, since 1363, the Venetian Senate had been responsible for signaling candidates for ecclesiastical benefices to the Roman Curia; although it was not always accommodated, 80 percent of the bishops of the mainland dioceses between 1400 and 1550 were chosen from members of the patrician families of the Dominant.

[67] His successor, Francesco Malipiero, engaged in the reform of the regular clergy – which was reduced to a minimum both due to the scarcity of vocations and the laxity of customs – favoring the settlement of religious men and women from outside and imposing the rule of observance on existing monasteries and convents.

With very rare exceptions and contrary to the terms of the pact of devotion, bishops had been non-residents for over a century: always welcomed upon their installation in the diocese by cheering crowds and the municipality at great expense, they did not reside in the city – viewing their appointment as a transitory moment in their diplomatic or cardinal's career within the Church – and were represented by vicars.

The latter, more flexible and capable of mediation than his uncle, continued in his efforts to implement the reform, celebrating as many as five synods and issuing numerous decrees; he knew how to surround himself with valuable collaborators – such as Antonio Pagani and the Compagnie di San Girolamo, Fratelli della Santa Croce and delle Dimesse – especially to promote the teaching of catechism and religious instruction to the people.

Entrusted to the pastoral care of a poor and ignorant lowly clergy, the population lived a superficial faith, infused with superstition, fed by the outward practices of devotion to patron saints, only occasionally invigorated by some good preacher from outside.

[82] Matteo's successor, Michele Priuli, among many problems gave priority to the seminary erected by his uncle, trying both to conveniently increase the income of the school and to transform it from open to closed: due to the lack of funding, however, this could only be done for 16 of the seminarian clerics.

[83] The two Priuli, reformers of the second half of the 16th century, were succeeded by a series of bishops – almost all belonging to Venetian patrician families and well provided with protection in Rome – much more interested in diplomatic and government careers within the Papal States than in the pastoral care of the diocese entrusted to them.

Many clergymen – deprived of their sources of income because Napoleonic legislation had forfeited to the state property the legacies of worship, i.e., bequests for the celebration of religious services – also went to swell the ranks of the parish clergy: at that time the city had an average of one priest for every 150 inhabitants.

[109] Endowed with considerable humanistic and theological culture, he was open to the principles that were emerging in the contemporary age and to Rosminian spirituality, which had also spread in Vicenza especially among seminary teachers such as Giacomo Zanella and Giuseppe Fogazzaro, priests whom he protected during the Risorgimento uprisings of 1848.

[115] This assignment was given to him at a politically difficult time; in the ten years since the insurrectional uprisings of 1848, strong tensions had arisen in the city between pro-Austrian conservative Catholics and those who manifested liberal ideas favorable to the forthcoming Kingdom of Italy.

On the same day of his entrance into the diocese, the new bishop wrote his first pastoral letter to the clergy and people of Vicenza, in which he called for unity of spirit and sentiment with the Pope, a letter that was interpreted politically as loyalty to the Emperor of Austria (to whom Antonio Farina was actually bound by gratitude for his appointment) and he was accused of being “Austrianist.”[116] According to Franzina, the new bishop created a climate of austerity and obscurantism toward clergy and laity, many of whom – found guilty at times of immorality, at times of pro-Italian, liberal or Unitarian sympathies – were removed from their posts, such as seminary rector Antonio Graziani; indeed, Farina regularly solicited the intervention of Austrian police authorities to make this repression more effective.