medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 04/23/12, Chris Laning wrote:
> A bit late for this list, but among the other scenes on the carved ivory beads of the rosary of Bishop Jakob Fugger (Bishop of Konstanz 1604-1626) are at least two (and possibly more) that relate to the Creation story.
> http://paternosters.blogspot.com/2007/12/bishops-beads-terrestial-sphere.html
>
> Unfortunately the only photos I could find of these beads are old and not very good ones; you can barely make out bits and pieces here and there. (Genevra, if you're ever in Konstanz…. ;) But these beads, made by Antonio Spano, are an amazing piece of work.
>
Thanks, Chris. Very interesting.
One small point, though: I'm not familiar with a "Tropes (near Naples"), the place given as Spano's home town. In the absence of a known Tropes anywhere in Campania and since people with limited appreciation of the distances involved have often used "near Naples" (_vel sim._) to characterize places in all parts of the so-called Kingdom of Naples (never that polity's official name), I'm willing to bet a few coppers that the place in question, underlying Spano's _tropiensis_, is the small city of Tropea on Capo Vaticano in coastal Calabria.
TAN: Spano -- in some places, including parts of Calabria, more commonly Spanò -- is a common surname in many parts of formerly Greek-settled southern mainland Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. It's generally thought to be derived from a Greek adjective _spanós_, meaning "beardless" or "nearly beardless" (the derivation there is from Greek _spánios_, "rare" or "scanty") and, like the Sicilian surname of Greek origin Caruso, will originally have signified "young man" and, by extension, "soldier". How this bearer of it accented his surname is impossible to tell from the written form _Spano_.
Best,
John Dillon
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