Abstract
Mass mortality events may have been more common in the Renaissance world, but interestingly the impulse to commemorate the epidemic dead, often otherwise deprived of a formal burial rite or site, was seemingly not. Such votive and commemorative spirituality in early-modern Venice was thus innovative in its time, resulting from the Republic’s own formulation of its body politic and its relationship to the vulnerable bodies of its inhabitants. At least four churches in Venice have been traditionally considered votive plague churches: San Giobbe, San Rocco, SS. Redentore & Santa Maria della Salute. The latter two were famously constructed as the result of vows made formally by the Venetian Republic in exchange for the lifesaving interventions of Jesus Christ and the Madonna in ending the plagues of 1575-77 and 1630-31. The epidemics of 1575-77 and 1630-31 together killed nearly 100,000 Venetians, each time approximately 30% of the city’s pre-plague population. Not only did such extreme mortality render Venice’s body politic vulnerable, but the devastating manner of these individuals’ deaths was horrific, an experience that those closest to the victims clearly found traumatic. As a result, both the churches and the annual ceremonial observances for the Venetian feast days of the Redendore and Santa Maria della Salute provided crucial opportunities for the city’s plague survivors’ spiritual recovery and to process their collective and individual vulnerability.
Presenters
Michelle LaughranAssociate Professor, History & Political Science Department, Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Maine, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
Venice, Early Modern, Plague, Epidemics, Body Politic, Trauma, Recovery
