San Salvador's prior Antonio Contarini becomes Patriarch, 1508

nedits: Another important thing during doge Loredan's tenure was the advancement of the new Patriarch: one of credibility and stature, from a famous house and plenty of work experience. For five years,  from 1503 to 1508, Antonio Contarini had been prior of the regular canons of a very big and very important church and parish at San Salvador in Venice. This church and its very location, between the Rialto bridge and the markets, alongside the busy market street, Merceria San Salvador, while containing the many cloistered there and their industries, and still just a few blocks from San Marco, all ensured this church at the time as a central fixture of Venetian life. Doge Loredan himself in 1515 called its reconstruction, 'cuius umbilico situm est' - 'where the Church's navel is set.' p. 392 ; in Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008

Just doing a google search on San Salvador, Venice gave me lots of good stuff. It was modeled on three greek crosses - like plus signs with equal length legs - with each nave - the center of each cross - having a dome to let sunlight into this fully Renaissance church. John Ruskin called it Base Renaissance (he didn't like it) in his 1850 book The Stones of Venice vol 3, Venetian Index, but this present shape (interior map, Chiesa San Salvador ) most say was probably started in 1508: the year Antonio Contarini, a prior having served there, then became the patriarch of the see of the entire district that included Venice. (The link will bring up works in this church when you roll over the red parts.)

Editor's footnote: "It should be noted that like all patriarchs and other senior ecclesiastics in the Venetian dominion, Contarini was elected by the Senate, then his election was approved by the pope. In a parallel example of independence from Rome, parish priets in Venice were chosen by their property-owning parishioners." p. 383. 

nedits: It had been 126 years since a member of the Contarini family had held the reigns as doge and it would be 115 years more before another would. But this Contarini as patriarch would long be remembered in Venice and not just for forcing reform on convents and razing the old and rebuilding this new San Salvador, that still stands today. It still is an active parish, along with its storied scuola, but today without the many monks cloistered and their industries. The church as a fixture, today is mostly for tourists and ... when the money comes, tech presentations: "Telecom Italia Future Center".

Here's a blog about the cloisters of San Salvador, with pictures. Including the old news about the present-day tower still waiting to get refurbished. At the google earth view you can get a sense of how dominating that church and that tower must seem when viewed from the 'cloistered walks', the yards that were kept as courtyards there to the south of the church etc. They've been there for centuries, at least since 1187. By Contarini's time it had changed little in over 300 years and as their Church of the Savior - that's what Salvator means - it was especially important it stayed the way it was, But the tower could look to the markets past the Rialto bridge, to the cloistered walks below as well simultaneously to the lookouts near the Ducal Palace. It's a fact that prison yards across the world would use the model that San Salvador's architectural organization provides. Of course this is a Roman model, too. Medieval Italy was known for its urban towers built by families, typically for expansion but also for security. In a city so close-packed you could tell a lot of what was happening by taking in the air from above. A tower for a cloister and a church like this would have bells of different sizes, too. Always, to always tell the time of day and night.

Editor's note: "According to Sanudo's De Origine, San Salvador was founded in the seventh century by San Magno, bishop of Oderzo. Christ had appeared to San Magno, ordering him to establish a church in the middle of the city .... It was at this holy center of the city, halfway between the oldest church, the church of San Giacomo di Rialto, and what later, in the ninth century, came to be the Basilica of San Marco, that San Salvador was established and endowed with precious relics.... The reconstruction of the church, which took more than two decades, was a project dear not only to the patriarch but to the government as well, and funds were drawn from both governmental and ecclesiastical sources.... Not only was the building to be reconstructed but Saint Theodore, who gave the church its most precious relic, was to be restored to his rightful role as copatron of Venice." pp. 394-5

nedits: On August 6, 1520, for the feast day of the Savior, the church held its first Mass to an open crowd and by 1530 was consecrated as part of an emblem of the city's greater civitas sancta. But in the time that Antonio Contarini acted as patriarch of the greater see of Venice 1508-1524, his church became the sanctuary and grounds on the eastern tip of the city proper atSan Pietro di Castello. Almost as if it would rather not be in the city. For centuries it had not been and was often at odds with the ambitions and positions of the city though they had long ago abandoned any notion of rebellion. Also, like San Salvator, this one was attributed to San Magno, and was to be the city's home church from 1451 until 1807 when Napoleon took the city.  By the later 1500's it would get a thoroughly modern front modified from a design by Andrea Palladio. Contarini himself would be accredited with rehabbing much of the interior of the grand sanctuary. Not actually, physically. But he made it a priority during his tenure to see that it got done as it was the central church that the populace went to on Sundays. The view from the famous tilting Campanile of white Istrian marble was new in Contarini's time.


All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008