Note 246 — The Doctors of the Church.

As I have frequent occasion to refer to pictures painted for the Scuole of Venice, it may be as well to observe that the word scuola, which we translate school, is not a place of education, but a confraternity for charitable purposes,—visiting the sick, providing hospitals, adopting orphans, redeeming prisoners and captives, &c. In the days of the republic these schools were richly supported and endowed, and the halls, churches, and chapels attached to them were often galleries of art: such were the schools of St. Mark, St. Ursula, St. Roch, the Carità and others. Unhappily, they exist no longer; the French seized on their funds, and Austria does not like confraternities of any kind. The Scuola della Carità is now the Academy of Arts.