The last time we visited Mythic Venice we found a representative of the Infernal, so perhaps its fitting that this time we add a saint. He’s not one of the great saints, like Mark, or a locally potent but slightly pagan-seeming saint like Giustiana. He seems to be a folk saint, supported by a bishop. at the insistence of his living sister.
This is not how sainthood works: you really can’t just claim it for a person by force or finance. The current method of checking miracles is not in place in period, but still, you need a local cultus and a tradition of miracles to be recognised by the Church. That being said, the Church itself says there are a heap of saints it does not know about: they are the saints which are venerated on All Hallows. Possibly this young man’s suffering expiated his sins sufficiently for him to find exceptional grace.
Time to hand over to a younger version of me, reading from the Lives of the Dogaressas by Edgecume Staley. This is from a section late in the Sixteenth century, but I’d include it, because we need more interesting NPCs. The Doge at the time was Antonio Venier.
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“There was however a thorn, and a very sharp one too, in Antonio Venier’s career ; it was one which sprang out of his own branch of the family tree.
Alvise, or Luigi, his eldest son, was if not a ne’er-do-well, a very wild sort of lad. Probably the serenity of the life at the Ducal Palace palled upon the youth, who sought relief in romantic attachments. Among his escapades was one, in company with his friend, Marco Loredan, which compromised the fair fame of Madonna Felicita, the wife of Messir Giovanni dalle Boccole—a rosebud and a thorn!
Messir dalle Boccole discovered the intrigue and watched his opportunity for chastisement, but the gay Lotharios anticipated his purpose and in a moment of peculiar sportiveness,—it was at midnight, iith June 1388,—they stuck up, over Messir dalle Boccole’s front door a Phallic symbol, and scribbled upon the lintel some opprobrious words. Such an insult was intolerable, and, as the culprits did nothing to conceal their identity, nor make amends, dalle Boccole complained of their conduct to their respective fathers.
How Marco’s father acted we know not, but Doge Venier visited his son’s offence with the severity of a Brutus. The lad was put on his trial before the Signori delle Noitiy—the Police Court of Venice,—a fine was imposed of one hundred lire, and two months’ imprisonment in the Pozzi,—where only political prisoners were confined. ” Horrible, dark, damp cells, that would make the saddest life in the free light and air seem bright and desirable,” so wrote George Eliot in 1860.
In this terrible place of confinement, with a steady depth of two feet of stagnant putrid water,
the only dry rest his hard bench, which did duty for table and for bed, poor young Alvise lost heart and health. He pleaded desperately with his father to release him from his terrors and his infirmities, but the Doge gave no reply and made no sign. He was, he plumed himself the impersonation of all that was just, honourable, and unimpeachable in Venice, and, not for his own offspring, could he suffer any relaxation of the sentence. His son had transgressed the law, he must abide the consequences, so he ruled. And the consequences, in spite of his mother, the Dogaressa Agnese’s impassioned intercessions, were that the young man, left to his fate,
died miserably in the filthy Gehenna, in the springtide of 1388.
This was the parental justice of the urbane and gracious Antonio Venier, but the ” thorn ” pierced his own hand and heart, and after two years of useless remorse and self-accusation, the unnatural if judicial Doge passed away in mental anguish in the Palazzo Venier ai Gesiusti near the Ponte dell’Acqua-vita. There is quite a touching little story which concerns the burial of poor young Alvise Venier. The sister who loved him best, Antonia, was so greatly distressed by her father’s attitude that she professed herself a Canoness of San Zaccaria, and, when her brother’s dead body was refused decent burial by the Doge, she obtained possession of it
and carried it away from the foul Casa degli Spiriti, —where all the dead rest before their final course to San Michele,—the common cemetery,—and placed it reverently in an unoccupied piece of land of the fondamento of Cannaregio, the most distant sestiere from the Ducal Palace.
Directly the Doge was dead she put into effect a resolution she had made, — after earnest prayer to St Mary, St Giustina, and the good Bishop Lodovico, her patron,—to build a church and a Canonica, and dedicate them in the name of her brother as Sant’ Alvise. In the crypt she
buried him and, by her will, directed that her own dead body should be laid beside his. Alas
the Orto Botanico, where,—when not beset by picnic parties of bird – lovers at the neighbouring aviaries of St Giobbe, — devout Antonia Venier meditated and prayed, and whence she watched her church arise, has lost all traces of its original condition, it is now a torpedo factory!”
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I must say I disagree with Staley. I think that the sacred site of the Patron of the Shockingly Unexpected Phallic Object being turned into a torpedo factory is oddly fitting, but your saga may vary.
Games From Folktales 