"Ecclesia nostra": la cattedrale di Padova, il suo capitolo e i suoi canonici nel primo secolo veneziano (1406-1509)

Padua’s cathedral chapter, the most important and wealthiest chapter in the Venetian Dominions, has not been studied despite the abundance of documentary sources available. An examination of the chapter’s archive and of other Paduan and Venetian archives suggested that attention be focused on the cathedral as a place, a space of events, a network of men and power. The research is situated between two wars: the Venetian conquest of Padua (1405) and the War of the League of Cambrai (1509, when Venice lost Padua). The cathedral, the chapter and the canons, throughout the century, are closely tied with Italian and European history and three perspectives have been used to sound out the chapter and the cathedral. The first means to illustrate the construction of a subject cathedral, “venezianizzata”, and follows the chapter from 1406 to 1470, that is, from the involution into which it fell after the change of lordship from the Carrara to the Venetians, until a new equilibrium was reached between the Venetian state and papal Rome. The second perspective faces specific problems: the relationship between Paduan canons and their bishop, the maintenance of discipline among some 90 priests, chaplains and clerics subject to the chapter, discussions about residence and absenteeism among the ecclesiastics, and the continuous altercations and collisions among the chapter’s “brothers”. The third and final perspective looks at the 194 canons identified in the documents (1406-1509). They have proven to be recalcitrant to syntheses as much as to individual and analytical description. Fertile, on the other hand, is the description obtained by interweaving geographies with single cases and by subdividing canons according to geopolitical areas of origin: Paduans, Venetians, subjects of the colonial empire and foreigners. The research concludes, finally, with a storm, with Padua’s cathedral thrown into confusion during the siege and the war of the League of Cambrai; rather than the fulfillment of a past history, the storm marks the beginning of a new one, the Modern Era.