medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Rinaldo of Nocera Umbra (d. 1222). What is transmitted about the life of this patron saint of the Umbrian hilltown of Nocera Umbra (PG) comes from a brief sketch in the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century _Chronicon Gualdense_, from a later fourteenth-century longer Vita used for readings in the cathedral of Nocera (BHL 7079p), from a shorter version of the same (BHL 7079r) preserved in the legendary of the convent of St. Francis at Gualdo Tadino (PG), and from entries in the _Annales Camldulenses_ transcribed from now lost documents at Fonte Avellana. The son of a count of nearby Postignano, Rinaldo (in Latin, Rainaldus) is said to have lived when he was a young man as an hermit on the Serrasanta near Gualdo Tadino. Later he became a monk at the Camaldolese house of Fonte Avellana where in 1217 or 1218, when he was already in his sixties, he was elected prior.
Late in 1218 Rinaldo was elected bishop of Nocera Umbra. During the three years of his episcopate he is said to have continued to live ascetically, to have brought into his household an orphan boy whose presence he used to remind those dining with him of the need to succor the poor, to have enforced church order through visitations in his diocese, and to have excommunicated the profaners of a church in the territory of Gualdo Tadino. Rinaldo died on this day; after enbalming his body was laid to rest in his cathedral. His cult was probably immediate. Rebuildings of the cathedral led to translations in 1257 and 1487.
The castle at Postignano has seen better days:
http://tinyurl.com/kzrf23y
("Yonda is da castle of my faddah." -- Tony Curtis, supposedly, in _The Black Shield of Falworth_)
Rinaldo as depicted in a panel of a later fifteenth-century altarpiece (1483) executed by Niccolò di Liberatore (called l’Alunno; also Niccolò of Foligno) and workshop (until the disastrous earthquakes of 1997 it was in Nocera Umbra's cathedral of the BVM and San Rinaldo; now it is housed in that city's Pinacoteca comunale):
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/80000/48800/48678.jpg
The altarpiece as a whole:
http://tinyurl.com/oyl4nev
One can get some idea of its size from the first photo here:
http://tinyurl.com/o9h9fnl
Best,
John Dillon
(matter from an older post lightly revised)
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