Venice - Italy
June 99
Commemorative Set of Stamps
"500 Years of the Greek Orthod
ox Community in Venice, Italy."
Interwoven with the cultural course traveled by Hellenism after the overthrow of the Byzantine state in 1453, the Greek Orthodox Guild of Venice was founded in the heart of La Serenissima in 1498. There had been Greeks in the city of St Mark since Byzantine times, but with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, Venice became a haven for vast numbers of refugees who abandoned their homelands in search of better fortune elsewhere. As an ethnic minority, the Greeks of Venice petitioned the Council of Ten for permission to organize themselves into a guild (confraternita or scuola), in accordance with the guild law which was in force at that time. With their decision of 28 November 1498, the Venetian authorities granted the request of the Greeks, who now legally had the right to form themselves into a community, with St Nikolaos as their patron saint. Later, in 151 1, the guild-members appealed once more to Venice, this time seeking to buy land for the building of a church. The request was granted, and on a plot of land close to St Mark's Cathedral, between 1539 and 1573, was erected the famous church of St George, patron saint of warriors. The icons amassed in Venice through the religious faith and artistic appreciation of the Greeks include works by some of the finest painters of the post-Byzantine period, such as Kiontzas, Damaskinos, Lambardos and Tzanes. Together with them are preserved a few exceptionally beautiful Byzantine icons brought from Constantinople to the city of the doges by the Byzantine noblewoman, Anna Paleologina Notara.
The members of the Guild, including mariners, merchants, scholars and soldiers (called stradioti, from the Greek), most of whom originated from Venetian-ruled regions of Greece, acquired, over the course of time, financial and social strength. As a result, the community met with great prosperity. In Venice, which over the centuries following the fall of Constantinople had become the spiritual capital of the enslaved Greeks, lived and worked prominent scholars, famous painters, skilled printers, proofreaders, manuscript copyists, as well as leading clergymen. At the Greek School of Venice (1593), and later at the Flanginio School, donated by the Corfiot lawyer, Thomas Flanginis (1665), important personalities of modern Greece studied and taught.
With the overthrow of the Venetian State by the French in 1797, the property of the Guild was seized and inevitably the once glorious community fell into decline. By the middle of this century the community numbered very few members, but remained in possession of part of its property, as well as its archival, printed and artistic treasures. After the Second World War, prompted by a great feeling of responsibility towards the cultural tradition established by the long centuries of Hellenism in Venice, the Guild-members decided to give their property and treasures to the Greek research center then being established. Thus, since 1955, the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies has stood on the Campo dei Greci, its aim being to carry out research into the history of Byzantine and modern Hellenism. Recently, in 1991, following a decision by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the Holy Cathedral of Italy was established, with Venice as its see, on the historic Campo dei Greci.
CHRYSA A. MALTEZOU
Director of the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies
Professor of the University of Athens
