STEPS OF THE REDENTORE
enemy, Venice naturally backed the former. Venice furnished him abundantly with money and soldiers, and between the month of November 1629 and the month of March following, spent six hundred and thirty-eight thousand ducats to support the party which was defending the cause of Italian independence against the Empire. Austria nevertheless succeeded, and got the better of the formidable coalition; but though the Imperials took possession of Mantua at the time, they were obliged to give it up to Carlo Gonzaga soon afterwards, in April 1631, by the treaty of Cherasco.
About the same time Venice suffered another terrible visitation of the plague, and more than thirty-six thousand persons perished in the city
Rom. vii. 302.
alone. On a similar occasion in 1575 the Venetians had vowed a church to the Redeemer if the plague was stayed, and the church they built is that of the Redentore; in 1630 a church was vowed to the Blessed Virgin, under the name of the Madonna della Salute. This was at first only a wooden
Rom. vii. 306.
building, in which a great thanksgiving took place on the first of November. The present church was not finished until 1687.
Amongst the many circumstances which hastened the decadence of the Republic during the seventeenth century was the terrible war in Crete. In
Quadri, 275.