medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Petronius of Bologna (d. ca. 445) is that city's principal patron saint. He is thought to have been elected its bishop in about 432. The first two surviving writers to mention him are his contemporary St. Eucherius of Lyon and the late fifth-century Gennadius of Marseille. That both were associated with the monastery of Lérins gives rise to the supposition that Petronius may have studied there (a Petronius who certainly did was another of his contemporaries, St. Petronius, bp. of Die). Eucherius cites him as an example of someone who by entering the priesthood had given up high social standing. Gennadius makes him the son of a highly placed imperial administrator of the same name who had received a classical education but who gave his son a Christian one instead (a suitably high-ranking late fourth- and early fifth-century Petronius appears in the correspondence of Q. Aurelius Symmachus). After this nothing is heard of him until relics said to be his were the subject of an Inventio in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex in 1141; the latter was also where his quite legendary late twelfth-century prosimetric Vita (BHL 6641) was written. Petronius appears as one of Bologna's patron saints in city statutes from the mid-thirteenth century onward. Surviving from the later Middle Ages are an Office for him and several legendary late medieval Italian-language Vite. A fourteenth-century list of Bologna's bishops puts him in eighth position. His huge, originally late fourteenth- to seventeenth-century church in Bologna, the basilica di San Petronio, is not that city's cathedral (it began as a project of the newly autonomous city government in 1377). Herewith an illustrated, Italian-language page on this pile:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_di_San_Petronio
Further views here (Italia nell'Arte Medievale):
http://tinyurl.com/48ngmg
Petronius' fourteenth-century tomb and the adjacent thirteenth-century pulpit in the chiesa del Santo Sepolcro in Bologna's Santo Stefano complex:
http://tinyurl.com/ybmf7z6
http://tinyurl.com/yevwsy5
http://tinyurl.com/yae44uh
http://tinyurl.com/ycabzj9
http://tinyurl.com/yajhszj
http://tinyurl.com/ybjppr4
The head of the skeleton believed to be that of Petronius was translated to the basilica di San Petronio in 1390; the remainder stayed in Santo Sepolcro until 2000, when it too was translated to San Petronio.
Some period-pertinent images of Petronius of Bologna:
a) as portrayed (at right, receiving from a donor [Michele Marescotti] a chapel dedicated to him) in an earlier fourteenth-century relief in Bologna's Museo civico medievale:
http://tinyurl.com/39suf6m
b) as portrayed by Giovanni di Balduccio in an earlier fourteenth-century marble statue (ca. 1330-1335) in the Museo di Santo Stefano, Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/oejw5bx
A grayscale view for approximate size:
http://tinyurl.com/ocaxzva
c) as depicted (holding a model of Bologna) by Simone di Filippo / Simone dei Crocifissi in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (betw. ca. 1355 and 1399), from a dismembered altarpiece, in the Museo di San Petronio, Bologna:
http://images.delcampe.com/img_large/auction/000/199/396/886_001.jpg?v=1
d) as depicted (holding a model of Bologna) by Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna in the _Matricola_ of the Bolognese guild of cordwainers from 1378 (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 201.f.15, fol. xxr):
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/law/page19.htm
Detail view (Petronius):
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/law/page18a.htm
e) as depicted (at left, holding a model of Bologna) by Jacopo di Paolo in the _Statuti_ of the Bolognese guild of silk workers from ca. 1380 (Bologna, Archivio di Stato):
http://tinyurl.com/nul6owy
f) as portrayed (holding a model of Bologna) by Jacopo (del) Roseto [Alberto Azzi] in his statue atop the late fourteenth-century silver gilt reliquary for Petronius' cranium (1380) in Bologna's Museo di Santo Stefano:
http://www.scalarchives.com/scalapic/011206/c/0134679c.jpg
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/2ae3arf
Other views of this reliquary:
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/19_Bologna2009.jpg
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/20_Bologna2009.jpg
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/21_Bologna2009.jpg
http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/22_Bologna2009.jpg
g) as portrayed (holding a model of Bologna) by Pierpaolo dalle Masegne in a late fourteenth-century bust (ca. 1390) forming part of a group figuring Justice and Bologna's patron saints created for the niches of Bologna's Loggia della Mercanzia and now in that city's Museo civico medievale:
http://tinyurl.com/39bkjyz
h) as portrayed in high relief (holding a model of Bologna) by Giovanni di Riguzzo (attrib.) in a very late fourteenth- or very early fifteenth-century marble bust (ca. 1400) on the bottom register of the facade of the the basilica di San Petronio in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/nkjosrs
i) as depicted (at right, holding a model of Bologna) by Giovanni da Modena in the _Statuti_ of Bolognese guild of drapers from 1407 (Bologna, Museo civico medievale, ms. 639):
http://tinyurl.com/qzbwyzv
j) as depicted (bottom register at center; holding a model of Bologna) by a Bolognese follower of Giovanni da Modena in the _Matricola_ of the Bolognese guild of cordwainers from 1410-1420 (La Spezia, Museo civico Amedeo Lia, ms. 552):
http://tinyurl.com/ncd9lo3
k) as depicted (at left) by Giovanni da Modena in a detail from a panel of his early fifteenth-century frescoes of episodes in the Life of St. Petronius (betw. November 1412 and March 1415) in the Bolognini chapel in the basilica di San Petronio in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/nsblglh
l) as portrayed (at right, holding a model of Bologna) by Jacopo della Quercia in an earlier fifteenth-century statue (betw. 1425 and 1435) in the lunette of the Porta Magna of the basilica di San Petronio in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/9tj97k8
m) as depicted (holding a model of Bologna and surrounded by scenes from the Passio of St. Stephen) by Michele di Matteo in an earlier fifteenth-century fresco (betw. 1425 and 1435?) in the Martyrium in the Santo Stefano complex in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/yee4bs8
n) as depicted (at lower right, holding a model of Bologna) by Pietro di Giovanni Lianori in a mid-fifteenth-century panel painting (polyptych of the BVM and saints) in the Pinacoteca nazionale in Bologna:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50879678@N03/19388219361
Detail view (Petronius):
http://tinyurl.com/oyk4dcv
o) as depicted (holding a model of Bologna) by Ercole de' Roberti in later fifteenth-century panel painting, from his and Francesco del Cossa's dismembered Griffoni Altarpiece (ca. 1471-1473; painted for a chapel in the basilica di San Petronio in Bologna), in the Pinacoteca nazionale in Ferrara:
http://tinyurl.com/ndvxn2d
p) as depicted (at left, holding a model of Bologna) by Francesco del Cossa in his later fifteenth-century Mercanzia Altarpiece (1474) in the Pinacoteca nazionale in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/2urodsl
q) as portrayed (holding a model of Bologna) by Michelangelo in a late fifteenth-century statue (1494-95) on the tomb of St. Dominic in the basilica di San Domenico in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/39bzgdb
http://tinyurl.com/yekqzje
r) as depicted (at left, holding a model of Bologna) by Lorenzo Costa in his late fifteenth-century Pala di Santa Tecla (1496) in the Pinacoteca nazionale in Bologna:
http://tinyurl.com/p7a2vzc
s) as depicted (at center, holding a model of Bologna) by Lorenzo Costa in a very early sixteenth-century painting (1502) in the Pinacoteca nazonale in Bologna:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50879678@N03/20683941746
Detail view:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50879678@N03/20522198508
t) as portrayed (holding a model of Bologna) in an early sixteenth-century polychromed terracotta statue in the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha:
https://www.joslyn.org/post/sections/56/Files/saint_petronius%282%29.jpg
u) as depicted (at right, holding a model of Bologna) by Battista da Legnano in a detached and remounted earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1539) in the oratorio della Santa Croce in Villa di Cravegna, a _frazione_ of Cravegna (VB) in Piedmont:
http://prealp.msh-alpes.fr/fr/node/2391
Some, observing the usually quite limited geographic extent of this saint's veneration as reflected in commissioned works of art, may wonder how Petronius of Bologna (the presence of that city's famous _due torri_ in the model makes it certain that this is he) will have gotten all the way from the Romagna to subalpine Piedmont. The answer lies in the identity of the chapel's founder, Antonio Nocetti, an émigré from Bologna (and the father of Innocent IX).
Best,
John Dillon
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