medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (22. October) is also the feast day of:

Donatus of Fiesole (d. ca. 875/76).  The Irishman Donatus was bishop of
Fiesole (an ex-Roman hilltown just outside of Florence) by the year 844.
 By the time of the synod of Ravenna in 877 he had been replaced by a
bishop Zenobius.  His Vita (BHL 2305) appears to have been written by
someone who had not known him and is transmitted in eleventh- and
twelfth-century legendaries compiled in the diocese of Fiesole.  But it
is based in part on diocesan records and, though the indiction given is
problematic, there is little reason to question its statement that at
Piacenza D. obtained confirmation of his diocese's immunities from
Charles the Bald (in Italy in 875 after the death of Louis II and again
in 877).  Preserved in this Vita is a brief epitaph for D. written in
the first person in which he says (or is made to say), _Regibus italicis
servivi pluribus annis, / Lothario magno, Ludovicoque bono_ ("I served
the kings of Italy for many years, Lothar the great and Louis the good."
This claim of service to Carolingian kings together with his having
been said in the Vita to have received at Capua an important grant for
his diocese from an Augustus who must be Louis II has led some to assert
that D. accompanied Louis II in his southern descent of 866 (when L.
took Capua by force from rulers who had ceased to recognize their
Salernitan overlord).

According to the Vita, the well educated D. had left Ireland as a young
man for a life of religion on the Continent and was travelling northward
after a pilgrimage to Rome when he was elected bishop of Fiesole by
popular acclaim.  He was remembered both for his holiness (the Vita
adduces several miracles) and for his learning.  The epitaph has him
teaching grammar, versification, and saints' lives to his students; the
Vita includes several brief poems said to be his.  One of those saints
whose lives he taught was Brigid of Kildare, to whom he is said in the
Vita to have had a special devotion and whose _Vita metrica_ (BHL 1459)
has an introduction by him (opinions are divided on D.'s authorship of
the metrical Life itself).

D. was buried in Fiesole's old cathedral near the foot of the hill. 
After the dedication of the present cathedral of St. Romulus (begun in
the 1020s), this became the church of a Benedictine abbey now generally
known as the Badia di Fiesole.  A brief history of the Badia and of its
church (rebuilt in the fifteenth century) is here:
http://www.firenzealbergo.it/info/churches/badia_fiesolana.aspx
Facade:
http://tinyurl.com/yarcgu
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/ylt3gq
A distance view of the Badia and of Florence below it:
http://tinyurl.com/y2wlfp
A thirteenth-/fourteenth-century crucifix formerly belonging to the
Badia, now in Fiesole's Chiesa di San Domenico:
http://sandomenicodifiesole.op.org/graphics/crocDon.jpg

In 1817 D.'s remains were translated up the hill to a chapel in the
cathedral of San Romolo.  An Italian-language history of this "new"
cathedral is here:
http://www.cattedralefiesole.it/cattedrale.php
And four pages of views of it (keep clicking on "Avanti"; the views
themselves are expandable by left-clicking) are here:
http://www.cattedralefiesole.it/galleria_foto.php
More exterior views:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Duomofiesole.jpg
http://www.comune.fiesole.fi.it/contenuti/foto/neve/04.jpg
More interior views:
http://flickr.com/photos/idlelight/12631940/
http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/3556.html?popped=1

D.'s cult has left its mark in the names of several nearby locales that
were formerly possessions either of the abbey or of the diocese.  At one
of these, San Donato di Poggio, a _frazione_ of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa
(FI), the seemingly eleventh-century church of San Donato, incorporating
traces of a predecessor, was restored in the nineteenth century. 
Exterior views:
http://www.comune.tavarnelle-val-di-pesa.fi.it/PICTURE/32A9FB98.JPG
http://www.emmeti.it/Welcome/Toscana/Chianti/DonatoPoggio/img/foto2.jpg
Baptismal font (sixteenth-century) by Giovanni della Robbia:
http://www.fotosearch.com/bigcomp.asp?path=AGE/AGE014/C04-272897.jpg

Also seemingly originally of the eleventh century, though rebuilt in the
early modern period, is D.'s church at San Donato in Fronzano, a
_frazione_ of Reggello (FI).
Exterior:
http://www.storiaecultura.it/cornucopia/aaimmago/chiese/donato1.jpg
Interior:
http://www.storiaecultura.it/cornucopia/aaimmago/chiese/donato5.jpg
Surviving fifteenth- and sixteenth-century frescoes:
http://www.storiaecultura.it/cornucopia/aaimmago/chiese/donato6.jpg
http://www.storiaecultura.it/cornucopia/aaimmago/chiese/donato4.jpg

Elsewhere in Tuscany, the diocese of Fiesole extends up the Arno into
the Casentino.  Despite the latter's proximity to Arezzo (the home of
another St. Donatus), the medieval churches around which arose today's
San Donato a Brenda and San Donato a Coffia (both in today's
Pratovecchio [AR]) will surely have honored the Donatus of Fiesole.

Here's D. at right in a later fifteenth-century painting by Andrea del 
Verrocchio and Lorenzo Credi of the Madonna and Child with saints in 
the cathedral of Pistoia (PT) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/33g3ow  

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)

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