The Topography of the Sacred. Rovigo: Between Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

Abstract

Published in 1704, the suggestive view by Pierre Mortier of the small city of Rovigo on the border between the Papal States and the Republic of Venice shows the ordinary appearance of a centuries old rural-urban plain in the Po Basin as a crystallised forma urbis inside the circle of its own of city walls. In spite of its very small size, Rovigo expresses an extraordinary socio-cultural vitality characterised by the tensions, turmoil, and contradictions that disturbed the coexistence of the social groups from the second half of the sixteenth century to the late seventeenth century. There was a powerful monastery, a lively Jewish community, numerous associations of heretics living in close contact with each other, interweaving a multitude of relationships in the evolving Italian and continental panoramas. Sharing roots and loyal to the past government of the House of Este based in Ferrara, physical proximity to the restless Paduan milieu: this was the ground on which a particular urban synthesis developed, where religious mixing and coexistence were experienced as much by the noble and aristocratic cultural élites as by the city's embryonic business classes as well as its middle class involved in trades and crafts. This is the public-private context in which in addition to the power of the medieval pietas, brotherhoods of worship arose discussing Neoplatonism, cabala, and theology; and new centres of social and religious control also arose in opposition to the palaces of the private theatres and academies. A complex city – emerging from a great many alienated cries against the dominant Venetian culture – that inspired the anonymous quadruplet: “Between the Adige and the Po/a lying sad rogue/Rovigo, city of Jews/hated by Christ”.