The city of Vicenza is extremely rich in churches, monasteries, convents and other buildings intended for worship or religious activities, built during the seventeen centuries of Christian presence in the city.

Their history is not only about the vicissitudes of construction, renovations and additions, and then deconsecration and finally demolition; the history is about the people: the social, political and artistic context that characterized them; who commissioned these buildings and why; who financed their construction and implementation with works of art and piety; who earned income from them and appointed their rectors; and who was buried or remembered in them. It is only through the compilation of this variety of data that the history of a community can be understood through the study of religious buildings.

Late ancient period

The earliest churches in the city of Vicenzaof which there is evidence left to us and whose foundation dates back to the late 4th centuryare the church of Santa Maria Annunciata and the Basilica of Saints Felix and Fortunatus, both of which have come down to us in their medieval, Renaissance and Baroque extensions and renovations. The former was the main church of the late Roman city and became its cathedral at the end of the 6th century, when the diocese of Vicenza was established; the latter was built in the existing cemetery area outside the city to house the remains of Vicenza's martyrs.

They were probably not the only places of worship in the city,According to , “urban chapels” also date back to late antiquity, but there is no evidence for this, either documentary or archaeological but they are the only ones in which artifacts referring to the period can still be observed.

Early Middle Ages During the Early Middle Ages, and particularly after the construction of the , there was a clear separationalso in the aspect of ecclesiastical organizationbetween the city, in which the bishop resided and officiated in the cathedral and on which the urban chapels depended, and the suburb outside the walls, practically all of which was entrusted to the Benedictine monks. Within the city there was only one baptismal fontin the cathedralwhile in the suburb there were perhaps two other fonts, one in the basilica of San Felice and the other in the church of San Vito.

Structural and artistic features

With the exception of the churches of the two main monasteriesSt. Felix and St. Peter'swhich were greatly altered in their structure over time, almost nothing remains of the small abbeys. Instead, there are still a few small churchesparticularly well-preserved is that of St. George in Gognabuilt in the pre-Romanesque or Romanesque style.

Cathedral and urban chapels The cathedral represented the heart of not only religious but also civil life in the city: until the end of the 11th century, assemblies and solemn ceremonies were held there. The seat of power, as well as the basilica of St. Felix, was involved and severely damaged in factional clashes around the year 1000; after further damage from the 1117 earthquake, it was again repaired and renovated. To make it safer, the interior was divided into five naves, doubling the rows of pillars that had been erected in the 8th century..

There is a lack of documents from the first millennium attesting to the number, denomination and time when the oldest minor churches in the city were built; the earliest that records them is a bull of Pope Urban III from 1186, in which all the donations made to them the previous year by Bishop Pistore were confirmed to the canons of the cathedral. Their list is repeated in the Register of Rationes Decimarum in the Vatican Archives referring to the years 1297-1303. These are the seven urban chapels: St. Paul's, Saints Philip and James, St. Marcellus, St. Eleutherius,Since the 16th century called St. Barbara St. Stephen, St. Mark,According to Mantese, San Marcowhich was located outside the city walls in Borgo Pusterla, began to be listed among the seven chapels around 1280, when the old little church of San Lorenzo in Portanova was exchanged with the Franciscans who intended to build their Order's new large church. () and Saints Faustinus and Jovita.

These are secondary churches dependent on the cathedral, and their designation as chapels, typical of the Carolingian era, suggests that they existed as early as the 8th-9th centuries or were even earlier, as might be suggested by their dedications, all to martyred saints from the first three centuries. After the reform of Bishop Pistore in 1185, the owners of the chapels were the canons of the cathedral chapter, who benefited from the income produced by the crops outside the city walls.

In early medieval times the number of minor churches existing in the city was almost certainly greater than seven, but these were probably the most important churches; the number was also symbolic, as it corresponded to that of the ancient stationary churches of the Easter cycle..

After 1200 they became parish seatsthough without the baptismal font, which remained the only one in the cathedraland remained so until the Napoleonic suppression, from which only St. Stephen's, which had been completely rebuilt a century earlier, was spared. Transferred to the municipal property, they were later demolishedwith the exception of the church of San Faustino, now destined for Cinema Odeonand there is no further trace of them.

Benedictine monasteries Of considerable importance from the Lombard period and throughout the early Middle Ages were the churches attached to Benedictine monasteriesplaces of worship frequented by people, often even more so than diocesan churchesbuilt outside the city walls.

Male monasteries

The most prominent Benedictine center was the Abbey of Saints Felix and Fortunatus (also named, according to Benedictine custom, after Saints Vitus and Modestus), which possessed vast churches and buildings, estates and curtes throughout the Vicenza area, recognized to it by the Privilegium of Bishop Rudolf in 983 and confirmed by Bishop Jerome in 1001. The monks, who probably settled in Vicenza around 750, quickly spread throughout the territory, taking on the task of reclaiming marshy land.

Two very ancient chapels dependent on the Benedictines of San Felice were that of Monte Berico, whose name is unknownThe tradition says that it was founded by St. Prosdocimus on the ruins of a pagan temple dedicated to Apollo, on the site where the shrine exists today. () and that of San Pietro in Vivarolo, part of the monastery inhabited by Benedictine nuns until 1400.It stood in front of the unbuilt Santa Croce Gate, where the Capuchin monastery and church were later built. From a diploma of Conrad II the Salic from 1026 it is known that around 926 King Hugh of Provence and his son Lothair also donated to the bishop of Vicenza the two abbeys of San SalvatoreLocated where Palazzo Porto now stands in Castle Square. and San Vito.The latter, which once existed in the place now occupied by the non-Catholic cemetery of Astichello, passed to the Camaldolese in 1209 and was finally demolished in the 16th century. ()

The monastery of San Silvestro in Borgo Berga, which depended on the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola and had other dependencies in the Vicenza area, was also Benedictine.

Women's monasteries Particularly important for the religious life that took place there, for the privileges granted by the bishops and for the possessions was the women's monastery of San Pietro, built in the first half of the 9th century on the site of a very old chapel, (and where the parish church of the same name exists today). Very close to the city, which it accessed via the bridge over the Bacchiglione River (now Ponte degli Angeli, at that time San Pietro bridge), it was the hub of the first suburb (or perhaps the second after Borgo Berga) that had begun to develop outside the walls.

Dependent on the monastery of St. Peter were the two ancient churches of Sant'Andrea and San Vitale and yet another, also dedicated to St. Peter, which stood at the top of the Scalette..

Late Middle Ages The second half of the 12th century saw a general decadence of religious lifeboth in the parishes and in the Benedictine monasterieswith the consequence, from the point of view of religious architecture, of a general decay of even diocesan churches and monasteries. This decadence continued throughout the mid-13th century; no attempt at church reform had any effect, at a time when the city's bishops were engaged more in defending the ecclesiastical patrimony than anything else and Vicenza was subjugated by the signoria of Ezzelino III da Romano, who manifested Cathar sympathies. A decadence barely mitigated by the rise, here and there, of modest religious communities of lay people.

Renewal came after the fall of the tyrant, under the episcopate of Bartholomew of Breganze, who wanted to erect a new symbolic center of the city's faith, the church of Santa Corona. But Bishop Bartholomew's innovative thrust was short-livednot least because the city soon fell under external lordshipsand an ever-increasing gap was created between the local hierarchy, expressed by these lordships and effectively absent from the city, and the people.

The commune and the city aristocracy then took on the task of interpreting and sustaining the piety and religious devotion of the population, including by fostering and financing the construction of the three large churches and related convents of the mendicant orders that had settled in the city during the thirteenth century. This interest was not without symbolic significance: at the end of the fourteenth century the municipality had the church of St. Vincent built in the main square, declared patron saint of the city, dependent on its authority and not on the diocese.

Structural and artistic features

The churches of the thirteenth century were built in the Lombard Gothic stylea compromise between Romanesque and Gothic, without excessive leaps in height, with the preservation of the gabled façade and wall massesaccording to the Cistercian layout: Latin cross plan, with three naves ending in rectangular apses.

Only later, beginning in the 14th century, was the strict style softened and the naves began to be enriched with chapels and side altars; at the end of the 15th century the apses became semicircular, according to the Renaissance trend. But by then churches had become the place where the prestige and aesthetics of the ruling families were celebrated..

Communities and churches of secular groups Towards the end of the 12th century, fraternities of laymen sprang up in the territory of Vicenza who practiced communal life, supported themselves with their work and often ran xenodochia or small hospices. To accomplish this, they obtained in concessionfrom the monastery of San Felice or the canons of the cathedralchapels and buildings that they restored..

From ancient documents it is known of settlements at the hospice of Lisiera. and at the church of San Nicolò di Nunto (today Olmo di Creazzo); others settled at the church of San Desiderio (today Sant'Agostino). and still others at the formerly Benedictine church of San Biagio Vecchio.Currently on Cappuccini Street, outside Porta Santa Croce.

In Vicenza, a community of Humiliati settled in Borgo Berga just outside the early medieval walls at the end of the 12th century, founding the convent of Ognissanti in 1215 and the church of Santa Caterina in 1292..

Within a few years of their establishment, however, all of these lay communities, either because they were considered dangerous to orthodoxy or criticized for their lifestyle, were dissolved or regularized, and the buildings were taken back by the Church, which granted them to religious orders of more certain orthodoxy, such as the Canons Regular or the Observant Franciscans.