Venice
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
9 Dec 2007
Venice was the Disneyland of the Middle Ages, but it was powerful and for real. A network of tiny islands, still with no cars, the Grand Canal was once the equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue.
These glory days have passed. The islands have been sinking slowly and St. Mark’s Square is flooded ninety times a year by high tide. You wear gum boots or walk on the raised pathways. The population is dropping as property values rise because the locals survive well on 20 million tourists a year.
Venice was founded in the eighth century when the locals took refuge there to defend themselves from the invading German tribes. With no natural resources, only brains, hard work and a good position geographically brought them to power. Centuries of prosperity and trade might explain why so many of the most successful Italo-Australians are from this region.
For more than 500 years they were the vital link between Western Europe and the East; like Singapore or Hong Kong today, plus a powerful fleet and an overseas empire.
Never part of the Papal States, Venice was ruled by a Doge. Elected for life with no executive or legislative power, he had to rule by persuasion.
Although traditionally anti-Roman and a bit anti-clerical, Venice produced three popes in the last century – and many saints over the years. Pope John XXIII is the best known, but I am writing this in the study of Patriarch Joseph Sarto, later Pope Pius X and now canonized. Ruling about 100 years ago he was a vigorous defender of orthodoxy. In fact Venice has been a Catholic diocese since 774.
Even Charles Dickens was bewildered by the strangeness of St. Mark’s Basilica, now 900 years old, with its mixture of Eastern and Western styles and ornaments and 8000 sq. metres of golden mosaics, mostly Byzantine but with some designed by Titian. Copies of the four bronze horses looted from the race course in Constantinople dominate the Square. Another oddity is that the ancient tiled floor of the basilica rises and falls by almost a foot.
The most pleasant surprise for me in this famous cultural centre was to discover the two halls of the Guild of St. Roch, a medieval foundation to care for the poor and sick. I think the upper hall, where Stravinsky staged the premiere of his symphony on the psalms, is probably the most beautiful room I have seen.
Surrounded by intricate woodwork, the walls and ceiling are covered with large paintings from the Old and New Testament, all of them exquisite by the 16th century local Tintoretto.
Intensely religious, dramatic and often packed with different centres of action, they are also masterpieces of light and shade. The great English painter William Turner came a number of times for inspiration and study.
Venice is still full of beautiful surprises.
