medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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----- Original Message -----
From: "John Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2005 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [M-R] saints of the day 12. March
> 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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