Church of Saint Cajetan, Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, Europe
The church of San Gaetano Thiene, also known as the Teatini church, is a religious building, located in Vicenza along Corso Palladio, built in the neoclassical style during the 18th century with an adjoining convent of the Theatine fathers, the latter demanialized in 1810 and used for uses. civilians. At the end of the sixteenth century (10 October 1595) the bishop Michele Priuli had called to Vicenza the regular Teatine clerics - to be helped to implement the Tridentine reform and had entrusted them with the ancient parish of Santo Stefano for the pastoral care of the community. The Theatines, after having bought some houses and land near the church to be able to manufacture, immediately began to build their convent, helped by alms collected in Vicenza and other cities. A century later, the pastoral needs of the parish of Santo Stefano, the most central and important of the city, were too distant from those of the religious community. In addition to this, the Theatines were not willing to shoulder the burden of rebuilding the old church without replacing the name of the owner with that of their founder, San Gaetano Thiene. Thus they manifested the precise intention of building a new one to be dedicated to St. Gaetano. To achieve this goal they gathered the consent of noble families: in 1692 the count Ascanio Thiene - showing the desire to be buried in the church of the Theatine fathers, in the chapel of St. Gaetano, wrapped in his white cloak of a member of the Confraternity of the Gonfalone left 1000 ducats to be used for the construction of a new church or, at least, for the expansion of the existing one; the testament of Claudio Thiene is even more explicit in this sense. The reconstruction of the church of Santo Stefano, despite the constraints posed by the Municipality and the very high costs, went ahead anyway and the blessing of the first stone took place in 1695 with the specific purpose of honoring the saint from Vicenza from 1672 proclaimed by the very serious Council of 150 new co-patron of Vicenza together with St. Vincent and to remember his canonization, so much so that the church was named after these two saints. In 1720 the Theatines, now uninterested in the running of the parish, were deprived with public decree of the church of Santo Stefano; at first they retreated to one of their buildings, placing it as a church with the door that led to the Corso and immediately began the construction of the present church of San Gaetano. The foundation stone was laid in 1721, designed by Girolamo Frigimelica and with the supervision of Gaetano Farina, lasted only nine years, although it could count - unlike the church of Santo Stefano which was built simultaneously with the financial support of the Municipality - only on alms and private donations. Already in July 1725, only four years after the laying of the first stone, as soon as the northern half of the nave was completed, with the presbytery, the choir and the main altar, the first two side altars and the sacristy, the church was opened and they began celebrations, even solemn. The challenge to the disapproval of the municipal council was obvious because of the duplication that was created, given that Santo Stefano, then undergoing renovation, should have been the church of the patron saints, Gaetano and Vincenzo, according to the initial terms. Perhaps this controversy or perhaps the lack of space for civilian homes was at the origin, in 1736, of the ducal prohibition that prohibited the construction of new churches without authorization. There were other disagreements with the canons of the cathedral, which boasted the ancient rights, and for the subdivision of the sacred furnishings. In particular, the Theatines were forced to leave Santo Stefano also the silver statue of their founder, executed in 1671 in Milan by Luigi Fiammingo and which had cost the Commune 1400 ducats. After the dissolution of the religious orders arranged with the Napoleonic decrees of 1806, on July 28 of the same year the six Theatine fathers were removed from Vicenza and the buildings were de-stateized. The church risked being demolished, but due to the interest of the then bishop Pietro Marco Zaguri and of the same municipality, it was saved and reopened for worship as a branch of the nearby church of Santo Stefano. In 1820 the high altar of the oratory of the Rosary was brought there, at the time built by the homonymous brotherhood in the garden of the church of Santa Corona, also closed, stripped of all his works and demolished in 1812.
Arlecchino
Bar Lioy
