Italian Venice by R. J. B. Bosworth

Author:R. J. B. Bosworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300193879
Publisher: Yale University Press

CHAPTER EIGHT

The many deaths of post-war Venice, 1948–1978

Thrice in the twentieth century patriarchs of Venice left for Rome to become popes: Giuseppe Sarto (patriarch 1894–1903, Pius X 1903–14, canonised 29 May 1954), Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (patriarch 1953–8, John XXIII 1958–63, beatified 3 September 2000, to be canonised April 2014) and Albino Luciani (patriarch 1969–78, John Paul I 26 August to 28 September 1978). One memory site of the two post–1945 prelates is the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, on the northern side of San Marco, across from the sarcophagus of Manin (see map 3). Directly opposite the Risorgimento hero's tomb is a weathered medallion of Roncalli, an accompanying inscription noting that the Piazzetta (its little lions here upgraded to ‘Leoni') was ‘dedicated to Pope John XXIII by the unanimous vote of the communal council, 16 May 1966’. Away to the north-east stands the grand, nineteenth-century Palazzo Patriarcale, converted into the administrative centre of Venetian Catholicism after the transfer of cathedral status from San Pietro in Castello to San Marco in 1807. The left side of its façade bears another memorial inscription to Roncalli, here lauded for having engaged in the same urban ‘mission’ as Saints Pius X and Lorenzo Giustiniani (1381–1456, the city's first patriarch), while preparing for ‘the ecumenical breadth and innovative ferment of his pontificate'; it concludes with a note of his beatification during the ‘Holy Year of the Millennium’ in 2000. On the other side of the portal, an observer can pay more modest homage to John Paul I, praise of his short pontificate recording that he ‘opened the path to new hope’ (by implication, paving the way to the populism of his successor John Paul II, the death of communism and ‘the end of history').

If the Piazzetta dei Leoncini echoes with the somewhat discordant sounds of Catholic and patriotic memory in Venice, the Molino Stucky on the Giudecca offers pasts, and presents, both capitalist and worker, as was appropriate for an Italy and a Venice contested by the Christian Democrat Party (DC) and its Marxist rivals, notably the PCI, for two generations after 1945 (see map 1). Following the murder of Giovanni Stucky, founder of the mill, in 1910, the business was directed by his son Giancarlo, a bachelor with a taste for languages and a passion for motor boat racing and the arts. For a time he was a generous patron of Mariano Fortuny. Giancarlo Stucky cherished close ties with Volpi, Cini and the Venetian financial and business establishment, joining them in initiating the urban branch of Rotary. Completing what must have seemed his gratifying insertion into the interwar city elite, his sister married the brother of podestà Mario Alverà.1

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