Marburg in Venice (06-11.10.2008) - ISTITUTO DI STUDI ECUMENICI SAN BERNARDINO

Marburg in Venice

(6-11.11.08)

A group of students from the University of Marburg came to visit the St. Bernadine Institute for Ecumenical Studies from 6th to the 11th of October 2008. The students were hosted by the Franciscan community of San Francesco della Vigna. They were guided by Prof. Dietrich Korsch, lecturer of Dogmatic Theology, who has been committed to promoting Ecumenical dialogue for many years.

During their stay, the students had the opportunity to discover Venice from an interconfessional and interreligious point of view, to this end, one afternoon was devoted to the «ghetto» of Venice, the first established in the Western world. The excursion included a visit to three of the five Venetian synagogues which even today witness the complexity of the Jewish community established in Venice. The Jewish community in this city is one of the most important in modern times with a consistent population size since the Middle Ages.

During the visits to the Ducal Palace and the Basilica of St. Mark the students had the opportunity to revise the history of the Republic of Venice, which had engaged in war against the Turks, and which had a long commercial relationship with the East, demonstrating deep ties with Byzantine art and spiritual Orthodoxy. A highlight of the trip was during the visit to St. Francis of the Desert island, when the students heard the tale of St. Francis, who after returning from meeting Saladin's nephew in Damietta, disembarked in this small island of the Venetian lagoon. Later, some years after the visit of the saint, a Venetian merchant donated the island to the Franciscan Order with the request to build a hermitage where one could spend a few days a year in silence and prayer.

This visit was not considered simply an exchange for the one taken by a group of students and teachers from our Institute of Ecumenical Studies to Marburg in July 2007, but it also signifies the collaboration, non only scientific, between our Institute of Ecumenical Studies and the Marburg Faculty of Theology. It is important to also realize that the Ecumenical dialogue must be built on a reciprocal knowledge of theological, cultural and social universes in which Christian communities have lived for centuries, bearing traditions and practices at times very different from each other.