medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (16. May) was, or was also**, the feast day of:
Ubald of Gubbio (d. 1160). Bereft of his parents while still a boy, the
wealthy U. was educated at a community of canons at Fano (in today's
Pesaro Province in the Marche), embraced an ascetic lifestyle, and
returned to his native town of Gubbio in Umbria, where he was made first
a canon of Gubbio's cathedral chapter and later its prior. After a
disastrous fire he also undertook the rebuilding of the cathedral
church. He was ordained priest and in 1129 became Gubbio's bishop.
Noted for his pastoral zeal and careful management of church property
and revenues, he refused to be dissuaded or even angered when physically
threatened during a period of factional strife in the city. Gubbio's
victory in 1151 over an attacking force from Perugia and other cities
was credited to the efficacy of U.'s prayers and in 1155, already
elderly and infirm, he succeeded in convincing Friedrich Barbarossa, who
had just burned Spoleto, to lift his siege of Gubbio and spare the city
similar destruction. He is Gubbio's patron saint.
U. is the subject of two very early lives, the first (BHL 8354)
emphasizing his leadership in the nascent Augustinian Canons and the
second (BHL 8355, 8357; two versions, of which the longer, dedicated to
Barbarossa, is the earlier) on his merits as a reforming bishop. He was
canonized by Celestine III in 1192. Two years later, his body, exhumed
for transportation to the predecessor of the early sixteenth-century
Basilica di Sant'Ubaldo atop Monte Ingino above the city, was found to
be incorrupt. As it still is, apparently. Here's a view:
http://digilander.libero.it/santubaldo/Ubaldo44.jpg
U.'s cult remained local until the latter half of the fourteenth century
and the early fifteenth, when it spread across northern Italy chiefly in
Augustinian contexts. Also in the fourteenth century it crossed the
Alps and found a home at Thann in Alsace, where a collegiate church was
dedicated to him under the name of Theobald (that being, probably not
coincidentally, the name of U.'s successor as bishop at Gubbio and
author of his _Vita secunda_). Thann's _Vita santi Theobaldi_ (BHL
8028) presents a form of U.'s _Vita secunda_ thought to be intermediate
between its two aforementioned versions from Gubbio and Thann's finger
relic of its Saint Theobald is said to have been shown to have come from
the body preserved on Monte Ingino. A view of that reliquary is here:
http://www.ilmiositoweb.it/santubaldo/Interno.jpg
In the fifteenth century U.'s prowess as a thaumaturge, barely
mentioned in the early lives, came to the fore and the church at Thann
(in French, the Collégiale Saint Thiébaut) prospered as a pilgrimage
site. Two distance views of this very striking building are here:
http://webwiller.com/alsapix/PAViewPhoto.asp?ID=302
http://digilander.libero.it/santubaldo/Thann.jpg
Rear view:
http://bluezoo.org/honeymoon/thann-kirche.jpg
west portal (notable reliefs):
http://tinyurl.com/hprgh
http://r.kirsch.free.fr/archives2001/LorraineEte2001/ThannTympan.jpg
http://webwiller.com/alsapix/PAViewPhoto.asp?ID=256
http://tinyurl.com/kphog
north portal:
http://tinyurl.com/fugva
http://webwiller.com/alsapix/PAViewPhoto.asp?ID=254
side views:
http://tinyurl.com/jtqtv
http://tinyurl.com/fj3r6
side and rear:
http://cfcai.marot.online.fr/images/Thann_68800_DCP_5832.JPG
belltower:
http://cfcai.marot.online.fr/images/Thann_68800_DCP_5834.JPG
Page of expandable detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/kag8g
There is a really first-rate collection of essays on different aspects
of U. (whose name, BTW, appears to be an Italian version of Hucbald) and
of his cult: Stefano Brufani and Enrico Menestò, eds., _Nel segno del
santo protettore: Ubaldo vescovo, taumaturgo, santo. Atti del Convegno
internazionale di studi, Gubbio, 15-19 dicembre 1986_ (Firenze: La Nuova
Italia, 1990; repr., Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto
Medioevo, 1992).
Best,
John Dillon
** The Sardinian saints of 14. and 15. May seemed, on the basis of past
"Saints of the Day", not to be likely material for Phyllis' column. But
in her daily "column", whose return one hopes is imminent, she has
several times included a paragraph on U.
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