From the bell tower on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore—just a third of a mile, but centuries away from the selfie sticks of Piazza San Marco—you can see nearly all of Venice. And all of Venice can see you. So activists discovered when, on June 12th, they ascended the structure and unfurled a huge banner bearing the word “BEZOS,” which had been crossed out with a big red “X.” The image went straight from the campanile to CNN.

Jeff Bezos was set to celebrate his lavish wedding to Lauren Sánchez at the Fondazione Cini, a cultural institution on the island which occupies a large part of a Benedictine monastery established there in 982 A.D. The bell tower still belongs to the monks, who have lived on the island for more than a thousand years. They’ve hosted Cosimo de Medici in exile and a papal conclave. They’ve endured wars and plagues, the Fascists and the cruise ships. But the impending visit by the world’s third-richest man had infuriated some of the locals, who regard the blowout as another indication that the city prioritizes rich V.I.P.s over real Venetians. “Couldn’t he have chosen an isolated villa in Beverly Hills?” the monastery’s abbot, Stefano Visintin, asked an Italian reporter.

The three monks who currently reside on San Giorgio didn’t seem too concerned. On the Sunday before the wedding, two of them—the abbot emeritus Padre Norberto Villa and his colleague Padre Paolo Maria Censori—filed into the Chapel of the Dead to celebrate Mass. Robed in white, they walked over marble tombs containing the bones of their predecessors and got to work beneath Tintoretto’s “Entombment of Christ” (1594). Was it coincidence that, after Mass, Dom Norberto, still riffing on his homily about God’s power to satisfy spiritual hunger, invoked the digital networks that built Bezos’s fortune and those of so many of his wedding guests?

“It’s not 5G that connects us,” Dom Norberto said, walking up the stairs to the refectory. “It’s the network of the Holy Spirit.” There, he and Dom Paolo—who have lived on San Giorgio since 2018 and 2013, respectively—were joined for lunch by Carmelo Grasso, a personable Sicilian who heads the monastery’s nonprofit arm and also curates “Art Saves Art,” which places contemporary works in the basilica. On a table sat a basket of walnuts and, for nutcrackers, two pairs of pliers.

“Our life is very well organized,” Dom Norberto, who is seventy-six, said. The order’s rule book, written by St. Benedict in the sixth century, governs everything from guests (“Welcome them as if they were Christ”)to jokes (“We ban such things from all places”). Food is to be simple and indulgence shunned. “Frugality should be the rule in all circumstances,” St. Benedict writes. (The Bezos wedding invitation did stipulate: “No gifts.”)

The fathers would brush aside questions about Bezos renting their island, which the founder of the Cini envisioned as “one of the principal centers of Venetian spiritual life.” Instead, Dom Norberto talked about his faith. “Benedictine spirituality isn’t divided into parts,” he said, drawing a circle in the air. “It’s—”

“It’s circular, fluid,” Grasso offered.

“Yes, it’s totalizing,” Dom Norberto said. “The monastery is stable.” He punctuated the word with a slap on the table. “It’s a reality that’s stable. You know that you can find a life there, a word, a revelation, an inspiration, a dialogue.”

Lunch was served—tomato risotto followed by boiled beef with tomatoes and basil, with a side of roasted peppers, and a chocolate and Amaretto pudding for dessert. Fiorello Pellizzari, the monks’ chef since 1994, ate in his white tunic and blue apron.“They should thank their lucky stars as long as I’m here,” he said, when asked about his handiwork. Dom Norberto drank Rubidus, a red wine his brothers produce in Praglia, near Padua; the others drank a fizzy, pink Praelatus.“This wine doesn’t pair with the dishes you made,” Grasso told the chef, with a twinkle.

Coffee and a bag of chocolates were brought out, and Dom Norberto unwrapped one from its foil. “We’ve melted here,” he announced. It was decided that the chocolates would be put in the freezer. “I’m a man of emergencies,” he said, with a sigh. “I don’t solve any problems, but I’m always surrounded by emergencies.”

Like the anti-Bezos protests?

Grasso said, of the activists, “We tried to make them understand that this is a public space that can’t be privatized or occupied.” He went on, “We called the police, and they intervened. They reëstablished order.”

“We don’t have anything to do with this whole thing,” Dom Norberto said.

“He’ll decide where to celebrate and what he’ll do,” Grasso said. “He” was, of course, Bezos, though it might well have been God. (Later, Visintin, the abbot, said, “The personality of the man is attracting contestation. You cannot call him a private person.”)

After a pomegranate amaro, Dom Norberto pulled out a copy of “Like a Drop of Dew,” a collection of devotional poems and paintings that he published in 2009. Example: “Unlivable, for me, is the house / globalized by the inhumane economy . . . Unthinkable is the culture / debased by dominant opinion / Look to Heaven and count the stars.”

“On eBay, you’ll find it for ten euros,” Grasso said. For a new copy, try Amazon. ♦