Writers Testimonies of Venice Redentore Feast: William D. Howells, Frederic Eden, George Sand, Paul Musset

Frederic Eden: Joy and Drunkenness

“The Feast of the Redentore is held on the third Saturday and the following Sunday of July.

A couple of days before we have a visit from the monks of the Monastery of the Redentore, who seek our flowers and fruit.


Redentore votive bridge We give them branches of either, with which are made large garlands of Mantegna type for the decoration of the church and doorway.

On the Saturday, the eve of the Redentore festa, all Venice, poor and rich, gentle and simple, spend their night outdoors.

From dark to dawn the Giudecca quays, called Fondamente, are crowded with sightseers and pleasure wooers of every age and size and sex.

Among them the Furlani have a ready sale for their fruit. For there are few on bank or boat who do not eat that night of mulberries.

On the canal thousands of boats pass up and down the water, most, if not all, decked with awnings or shelters built of green boughs and flowers, hung with lanterns of every shape, device, and colour, laden with suppers of all degrees of merit, and crowded with families, or parties, of quality as varied.


Redentore votive bridge The girls and boys, the women and the men seem, and do, I believe, eat all night; the babies refuse their mothers' breasts for their fathers' glasses, and why every one, or at least very many, do not burst and die is a mystery.

Or is it a miracle to be ascribed to the Church of the Redentore?

Nothing noisy or unpleasant, however, happens to them as far as I have heard or seen ; and “faute de miracle” it may be the distraction of the bands of music in barges or on the Fondamenta, and the firework displays, that give them pause and us immunity.

An hour or two before dawn very many of the Redentore votaries leave the Giudecca for the Lido.

Dawn broke as we got abreast of the bathing-places, and we saw a dark line stretching along the sands, say perhaps a quarter of a mile in length.

We ran in to some sixty yards or so from this line, and saw it was composed of people motionless and silent, two or three in depth.


Redentore votive bridge The dawn got lighter, and I turned to see in the east behind me the first ray of the sun rising from the Adriatic.

Attracted by a noise, a rustle, and a hum, I looked back shorewards.

The dark line had become pink and white.

As the first ray of the sun struck the water, as much of every man's or woman's clothes as the law permitted was left at their feet, and with a rush the peace of the calm poetic sea was broken by the splash and frolic of a thousand bathers.”
Frederic Eden “A Garden in Venice” 1903

William D. Howells: Venetians Flirting the Night Away

Festa del Redentore

“A bridge of boats is annually thrown across the Canalazzo, and on the day of the Purification, the people throng to the Virgin's shrine to express their gratitude for her favour.

This gratitude was so strong immediately after the cessation of the pest in 1630 that the Senate (Howells makes a mistake, Senate decision was on September 4, 1576), while the architects were preparing their designs for the present church, caused a wooden one to be built on its site and consecrated with ceremonies of singular splendour.

On the Festa del Redentore (the third Sunday of July), a bridge of boats crosses the great canal of the Giudecca, and vast throngs constantly pass it, day and night.

However the small tradesmen who deal in fried cakes and apples, peaches, pears, and other fruits make intolerable uproar behind their booths on the long quay before the church.


Festa del Redentore Though the vendors of mulberries (for which the gardens of the Giudecca are famous) fill the air with their sweet jargoning (for their cries are like the shrill notes of so many singing birds). Thousands of people pace up and down and come and go upon the bridge.

Yet, the Festa del Redentore now has none of the old-time gaiety it wore when the Venetians thronged the gardens and feasted, sang, danced, and flirted the night away and at dawn went in their fleets of many-lanterned boats, covering the lagoon with fairy light, to behold the sunrise on the Adriatic Sea.”
William D. Howells “Venetian life” – 1867

La Notte Famosissima del Redentore seen by George Sand

“The Island of Giudecca, in which the Church of the Redentore is located, being one of the wealthiest parishes, offers one of the most beautiful feasts.

The portal is decorated with an immense garland of flowers and fruits; a boat bridge is built over the Giudecca canal, which is almost an inlet in this place.


Festa del Redentore The whole quay is covered with pastry shops, coffee tents, and those bivouac kitchens called frittole, where the marmitons move like grotesque demons in the midst of the flame and swirls of smoke of boiling fat, whose bitterness must kill those who pass into the sea three leagues from the coast.

The Austrian government defends open-air dancing, (Venice was occupied by the Austrians at that time) which would be very harmful to the joy of the festival among any other people; luckily, the Venetians have an immense amount of joy in their character.

Their capital sin is gluttony, but a babbling and lively gluttony that has nothing in common with the heavy digestion of English and Germans; Istrian muscat wines at six under the bottle provide expansive and facetious intoxication.


Festa del Redentore All these food shops are decorated with foliage, banners, and colored paper balloons that serve as lanterns; all the boats are decorated with them, and those of the rich are decorated with remarkable taste.

These paper lanterns take all shapes: here they are acorns that fall in luminous scallops around a baldachin of colourful fabrics; here they are antique-shaped alabaster vases arranged around a white muslin canopy whose transparent curtains envelop the guests; because you eat in these boats, and you see, through the gauze, the silverware and silverware shine candles mixed with flowers and crystals.

Some young men dressed as women half-open the curtains and speak impertinences to passers-by.


Festa del Redentore At the bow rises a large lantern in the shape of a tripod, a dragon or an Etruscan vase, into which a gondolier, strangely dressed, throws at every moment a powder that gushes out in red flames and blue sparks.

All these boats, all these lights that are reflected in the water, that rush, and that run in all directions along the illuminations on the shore, have a magical effect. [...]

The old nobleman's closed gondola, the resplendent boat of the banker or merchant, and the vegetable merchant's raw boat eat and sail together on the canal, collide, push each other, and the rich man's orchestra mingles with the raucous songs of the poor man.

Sometimes, the rich man silences his musicians to enjoy the boat's gritty choruses; sometimes, the boat is silent and follows the gondola to listen to the rich man's music.”
George Sand “Letters from a Traveler” — 1834

Paul de Musset at the Redeemer's Day

Festa del Redentore

“One morning, the exact date of which I forgot, I was warned by my padrona di casa that I had to secure a gondola for the evening if I wanted to see the Sagra of the Redeemer.

It was during the heat of the summer solstice.

From ten o'clock to midnight, all the boats and gondolas in Venice were covered with Chinese lanterns and went to the middle of the Giudecca Canal, on which a boat bridge had been improvised.

Seen from the shore of the Schiavoni, the illuminated fleet looked like a swarm of fireflies playing and intermingling on the lagoon's surface; soon, a particular order was established, and the lights seemed less agitated.


Festa del Redentore We were preparing for dinner in the boat. The gondolier I had hired first thing in the morning, hoping to get me a large sum of money, had wanted nothing in the world to fix the price of his services in advance.

I was not afraid he would accompany me because my foreign accent had enticed him.

The two guests I was waiting for arrived with the food ans wine basket.

I asked one of them, Lord Matteo, patrician of Venice, to finish my bargain. He immediately went up to the gondolier and asked what he wanted for the whole night.

- His Excellency the French lord, replied the funny man, knows well the agreed price. We did our contralto this morning.

- We did so little, I say, that you never wanted to set a price, but you will be punished for your bad faith because you will not get what I would have given you from Lord Matteo.


Festa del Redentore - Let's finish, resumed the patrician. How much are you asking for?

- Two Napoleons by Arzento answered the gondolier.

- Ten francs! You will never have them, said Lord Matteo. Don't imagine that.

- So how much will you give me, Excellency?

With a gesture as quick as lightning, Matteo raised three fingers in the air and closed his hand.

- That's not much, Excellency; promise me at least the Buonamano.

- Not a cent more.

- Let's go! Avanti! The gondolier cried cheerfully. Your lords will give me a glass of wine for their health.

Matteo tells me in French:

- The market is not bad. You will sail all night for three francs.


Festa del Redentore A sizeable wooden merchant's boat, decorated like the Bucentaurus, contained an excellent orchestra in the middle of the Giudecca Canal.

Venetians ate in the open gondolas; they laughed and chatted without losing a tooth, and the silvery voices of the women, to whom the Venetian accent lends a particular sweetness, sounded like the chirping of a bird aviary; at one o'clock, the orchestra fell silent and in turn ate supper.

Our basket of groceries was so well stocked that my two guests were greyed out. Count Matteo had tender wine and wanted to storm a gondola full of young girls.

The other, a captain in the Hungarian regiment, had a terrible quarrel with his major, which ended in embraces.


Festa del Redentore Dawn illuminated these more or less comic episodes, and as we always follow a program at Italian festivals, the gondolas arrived at dawn at the shore of the Redentore.

A public vow raised this church in a few years, after the plague of 1575.

From the memory of a gloomy time, this happy and frivolous population draws the pretext for a night of excess and madness. — Venetians are skilled at taking things on the bright side.”
Paul de Musset “A picturesque journey in Italy” - 1855