page_title: Pietro I Orseolo
section_title: Reign
hierarchical_section_title: Pietro I Orseolo / Reign
context_page_description: Pietro I Orseolo, O.S.B. Cam. was the Doge of Venice from 976 until 978. He abdicated his office and left in the middle of the night to become a monk. He later entered the Camaldolese Order. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church following his canonization in 1731. In 1733 the Venetian librarian Giuseppe Bettinelli published an edition of a biography written by the infamous heretical Friar Fulgenzio Manfredi in 1606.
context_section_description: In 976, the sitting doge, Pietro IV Candiano, was killed in a revolution that protested his attempts to create a monarchy. According to a statement by the Camaldolese monk and cardinal, Peter Damian, Orseolo himself had led a conspiracy against Candiano. This statement, however, cannot be verified. Nonetheless, Orseolo was elected as his successor. His wife and consort was Felicia Malipiero.
  As doge, Orseolo demonstrated a good deal of talent in restoring order to an unsettled Venice and showed remarkable generosity in the treatment of his predecessor's widow.  He built hospitals and cared for widows, orphans and pilgrims. Out of his own resources he began the reconstruction of the ducal chapel, now St. Mark's Basilica, and the doge's palace, which had been destroyed during the revolution, along with a great part of the city. Two years later, on 1 September 978, seemingly without notifying anyone, not even his wife and children, he left Venice with Abbot Guarin and three other Venetians (one of whom was St. Romuald) to join the Benedictine (now Cistercian) abbey at Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa (Catalan: Sant Miquel de Cuixà) in Prades (Catalan: Prada), southern France.
  Here Orseolo led a life of great asceticism, performing the most menial tasks. There is some evidence that he had been considering such an action for some time.  His only contact with Venice was to instruct his son Otto (who had become doge in 1008) in the life of Christian virtue. After some years as a monk at the abbey, probably with the encouragement of Saint Romuald (who later went on to found the Camaldolese branch of the Benedictines), Orseolo left the monastery to become a hermit in the surrounding forest, a calling he followed for seven years until he died. His body is buried in the village church in Prades (Catalan: Prada), France.
caption: Coat of arms.
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