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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According both to his recorded subscription of the acta of a council in Rome in 861 and to his tenth-century Vita (BHL 555) by the monk Eginus or Iginus, this ninth-century bishop of Camerino in the Marche bore the name Ansuinus. His now customary name form is a back-formation in Latin from Italian _Ansovino_. In Eginus' telling, he came from a prominent family in Camerino and was educated for the church; it was his reputation for holiness that caused the emperor Louis II (who was also king of Italy) to make him his confessor. Elected bishop of Camerino, he at first refused the honor. When finally he did accept, he did so only after reaching an understanding with Louis that he would be exempt from the latter's military service as he had now to serve the church alone.
Ansovinus was consecrated bishop by Leo IV (847-855). His Vita notes both his generosity to the poor and his peacemaking among factions. Most of his lifetime miracles are cures (in Rome as well as in his diocese) and measures to relieve famine. Another has to do with his final illness: falling seriously ill at a church elsewhere in his diocese, Ansovinus was eager to return to Camerino but lacked the strength to do this by horseback. Refusing to be a burden to others, he had his horse brought before him, whereupon the animal knelt before him with a reverence and gentleness indicating that it would bear the bishop's holy body back to Camerino in like manner. Ansovinus died on this day in 868, the eighteenth year of his episcopacy. Eginus ascribes to him a variety of post-mortem miracles, all of the healing sort. His remains now lie entombed in the crypt of Camerino's early nineteenth-century basilica cattedrale della Santissima Annunziata. Ansovinus' cult spread from the diocese of Camerino into other parts of the Marche and into Umbria and the Romagna as well. Presumably, he and not the Burgundian saint Ansuinus celebrated on 21. May was the name saint of the fifteenth-century painter Ansuinus of Forlė.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Ansovinus (Ansuinus) of Camerino:
a) as portrayed (six miracle scenes) on his late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century tomb (ca. 1390-1410) in the crypt of Camerino's basilica cattedrale della Santissima Annunziata:
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207r.jpg
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207e.jpg
The monument as a whole:
http://www.beniculturali.marche.it/Ricerca.aspx?ids=23136
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207p.jpg
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207b.jpg
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207d.jpg
http://sirpac.cultura.marche.it/sirpacintraweb/storage/label/0484/384/S%20%20207w.jpg
b) as portrayed (at left; at right, St. Jerome) in a panel painting by Carlo Crivelli, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice, from his dismembered late fifteenth-century altarpiece for the cathedral of Camerino:
http://tinyurl.com/j8dx8tw
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/jkblp85
Best,
John Dillon
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