medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, March 11, 2005, at 7:43 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (12. March) is the feast day of:
> Seraphina (d. 1253) Seraphina was born to poor parents in San
> Geminiano (Tuscany). She became paralyzed while still a girl,
> winning a great reputation for patience in pain until her death.
At the age of fifteen. In the absence of better evidence, modern
scholarship customarily adopts the name Fina given for this saint in
her early fourteenth-century Vita (BHL 2978) by the Dominican preacher
and spiritual encyclopedist Giovanni da San Gimignano (d. after 6. May
1333; also known as Giovanni di Coppo [vel sim.]). Recent writers who
have actually dealt with the onomastic issue explain the name as being
either probably or certainly a hypocorism for Iosefina. If memory
serves, Serafina/Seraphina is an early modern guess; Phyllis' source
(what was it, by the way?) is no more reliable here than it is when it
refers to the rather well known Tuscan town of San Gimignano (SI) by
its older designation San Geminiano.
Many medievalists are probably familiar with San Gimignano thanks to
its use by Franco Zeffirelli in his stupendously awful _Fratello Sole,
Sorella Luna_ (_Bother Sun, Sister Moon_). For those who aren't, here
are two distance views of the city and its famous towers, one a
carefull cropped touristic production:
http://www.san-gimignano.com/homepage/panorama.jpg
and the other a more revealing wider view from a different vantage
point:
http://www.tratrigolettosangimignano.com/PICT0063.JPG
And here are the towers again, held by none other than Fina herself as
the city's patron (in an altarpiece from 1402 ascribed to Lorenzo di
Niccolo'):
http://vitruvio.imss.fi.it/foto/luoghi/Siena/OspSFi01rs.jpg
That image illustrates an English-language account of San Gimignano's
Hospital of Santa Fina, founded a few year's after the saint's death:
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/genscheda.asp?
appl=LST&xsl=luogo&lingua=ENG&chiave=700457
TinyURL for that: http://tinyurl.com/3kwu6
Fina's relics are in her chapel in San Gimignano's collegiate church,
shown here:
facade:
http://www.sangimignano.com/sgduo1.jpg
interior:
http://www.sangimignano.com/sgduo2.jpg
A brief, English-language account of the frescoes in this church is
here:
http://www.educationalprograms.com/epn_travel/Itineraries/Italy/SanGimig
nano_Side.htm
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/4t94t
One of Domenico Ghirlandaio's frescoes (1475) for the Cappella di Santa
Fina illustrates Gregory the Great's miraculous appearance to F. in
which he foretold the day and hour of her death:
http://www.sangimignano.com/sfina.jpg
So even if we no longer celebrate Greg today, we can still work him in
through Fina's having been born into eternal life on what used to be
his day.
Best,
John Dillon
PS: Giovanni da San Gimignano's Vita of F. (sometimes called _Legenda
sanctae Finae_) received a late medieval translation into Tuscan that
has been published as the _Leggenda di santa Fina_. An English-
language translation of the latter as edited by Francesco Zambrini in
1879 was made by Mildred Mansfield under the title _The Legend of the
Holy Fina, Virgin of Santo Gimignano_ (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908;
reprint, New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966).
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