The Scuola di Rialto was a public school in

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

founded between 1397 and 1408, through a bequest of Tommaso Talenti.James Bruce Ross (1976), "Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio", ''Renaissance Quarterly'' 29 (4): 521–566, esp. 528–532. It did not confer degrees, so as not to compete with the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

, the only degree-granting institution in the

Republic of Venice The Republic of Venice, officially the Most Serene Republic of Venice and traditionally known as La Serenissima, was a sovereign state and Maritime republics, maritime republic with its capital in Venice. Founded, according to tradition, in 697 ...

. It had a single professor, almost always a patrician, who lectured on terminist logic and Aristotelian

natural philosophy Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the develop ...

.Paul F. Grendler, ''The Universities of the Italian Renaissance'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 138–139. The salary was 200

ducat The ducat ( ) coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages to the 19th century. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wide inter ...

s and the professor was usually chosen by the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

through open competition. Although

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

was not taught, its knowledge by the professor was valued. The fourth professor was, unusually, a clergyman, Paolo della Pergola, who held the chair from 1421 until 1455. The republic quashed his attempt to convert the school into a university in 1445. He was succeeded by Domenico Bragadin (1455–1482), the first chosen by competition. The longest serving professor was Sebastian Foscarin, who held the chair from 1505 to 1552. Foscarin had several substitutes over his long career, since he often held public office. One of these substitutes was the future Doge Nicolò da Ponte.

References

{{reflist Education in Venice Culture of the Republic of Venice