Mariegola, cover verso. Detail of San Rocco revered by the Frati Minori who gave hospitality to the Scuola.

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco was founded as a confraternity, following the example of the Battuti (Disciplinanti) in Venice on the 27th of May, 1478 and was promptly recognised on the 10th of June by the Council of Ten, who then legally declared it a Scuola Grande on the 31st of August, 1480. The Statute (Mariegola): was approved on the 16th of May 1481, following which, like the other Venetian Schools, it was made subject to the laws of the Republic.
The Scuola had its seat first in the Church of San Giuliano (where the first group of devotees to Saint Roch met until 1415) and then at the Church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (see fig.). The mortal remains of the Patron Saint, were acquired in 1485, and were deposited temporarily in the Church of San Geminiano in Piazza San Marco. And so the Confraternity, awaiting the construction at the Frari of a more appropriate church to substitute the Chapel begun in 1478 and demolished in 1485, transferred their seat first to S. Angelo near the ancient Oratorio di Santa Susanna and then to the old palazzo of the Patriarchi di Grado close by the Church of San Silvestro and there moved the relics of the Patron Saint.

Some years later the Scuola di San Rocco – by now looking to become the richest and most renowned of the Scuole Grandi, so much so that in times of war it could provide the Republic with oarsmen, soldiers and money – planned the construction, on the side of the apses of the Basilica dei Frari of the first seat (the actual Scoletta) and of the Church to where, on the 3rd of March, 1490, the body of Saint Roch was removed. Following this, the Confraternity acquired some settlements near the Church from the San Pantalon Chapter and between 1517 and 1549 built the admirable building, a true artistic treasure, that still today constitutes one of the most splendid monuments of the city. In 1564 there began the fruitful collaboration of Tintoretto, who later became a Confratello. From 1622, the control of the administrative and financial running of the Scuola was delegated to the Magistratura of the “Inquisitori e revisori sopra le Scuole Grandi”.
All the property of the Scuola, which also included a good number of houses dedicated “for the love of God” to the needs of the poor, in accordance with the aims of the Brotherhood, was confiscated by the state during the second French occupation of Venice (December 1805, April 1814) , with the exception of the Scuola Grande, the Scoletta and the Church, as well as the living quarters of the chaplain and the custodians of the Church. The Arrogation of the patrimony did not deprive the Scuola Grande di San Rocco of its character and its legal personality; in fact with the Decree of the 18th of July 1806 by the Italian Viceroy, obtained thanks to the then Chaplain Don Sante Della Valentina and the temporary Guardian Grando Francesco Occioni, the Scuola and the Church were conserved and provided with a substantial allowance.
The Decree that followed on the 26th of May 1807 abolishing the Confraternities did not strike the Scuola di San Rocco, which had previously been approved by the Italian Government with the Civil Magistrate’s Decree of the 27th of March 1806, n. 25701. Remaining always true to the fundamental basis of the Mariegola, the settlement of the Scuola Grande was approved on the 26th of October 1841 and definitively sanctioned on the 5th of January, 1842. The Scuola’s statute was approved by Royal Decree on the 5th of June, 1913. Subsequently, on the date of the 25th of December 1959 a new Statute was founded, without, however, legal validity. Regarding this, a Seminary conference was held in June 2003 on the theme: “The Legal Status of a Confraternity (the Scuola Grande di San Rocco Between State and Church)” in which numerous experts in the field participated.

On the 13th of January 1789, the Scuola, in recognition of its care for the divine cult and its distinction in the area of charity work, was honoured by Pope Pius VI (whose visit in 1782 to the Scuola is commemorated in a tablet situated in the Sala Terrena) with the title “Archconfraternity”, with the appropriate privileges.
All the Venetian Patriarchs have been in recent times Honorary Confratelli of the Scuola. Pope Pius X, who already as Bishop of Mantua and then as Patriarch of Venice belonged to the Scuola, wished to be confirmed as a Confratello as the Pope in 1903. The chancellery made a bust of him while he was alive which is situated on the scalone of the Scuola Grande and an altar was dedicated to him in 1951, which, after his canonization on the 25th of May 1954, was consecrated on the 24th of September of the same year by Card. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, then Patriarch of Venice. There are two stone tablets dedicated to Pope John XXIII and John Paul I on the Sala Terrena.