The only confraternity church in Venice conceived as a shrine to its own saint: a first church of San Rocco had already arisen on this site in 1478, then demolished: when in 1489 the Scuola Grande obtained from the Council of Ten permission to return here beside the Frari Minori, it rebuilt it and wanted it as the shrine of the pilgrim saint, protector against the plague, who had arrived in Venice in 1485 and was transferred here in March 1490.