medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to her contemporary Vita (BHL 9019), Z. (also Cita, Citha, Sita, Sitha, Xita, Zitha) was born at today's Monsagrati (LU) in Tuscany. At the age of twelve she moved to Lucca, where she became a household servant to a noble family who treated her very harshly. Enduring a condition of economic servitude as well as the contempt and verbal abuse of her employers, Zita nonetheless regularly gave alms to the poor. She also managed to make one pilgrimage to Pisa and frequent brief trips to a monastery outside of town.
Zita died in 1278 and was buried in Lucca's church of St. Frigidian / San Frediano (now a minor basilica). Credited with miracles in her lifetime as well as afterwards, she became the focus of a popular cult that spread rapidly in Tuscany and elsewhere in northern Italy. In Dante's _Divina Commedia_ she is already santa Zita. Italian merchant communities abroad brought her cult to other lands. Her veneration seems to have been particularly strong in late medieval England; she was known there as St Sitha. Zita's corpse was unearthed in 1580, was declared to be incorrupt, and was put on display in a glass reliquary in San Frediano, where it may be seen today. Here are a few views of her obviously mummified mortal remains:
http://tinyurl.com/2nemuh
http://tinyurl.com/29ed9t
https://www.flickr.com/photos/justercolor/2446847409/sizes/o/
Zita's cult was confirmed papally by Innocent XII in 1696. She is a patron saint of housewives, of domestics, and of people whose keys have gone missing.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Zita:
a) as depicted (grayscale view) in a late thirteenth-century fresco in Florence's basilica di San Miniato al Monte:
http://tinyurl.com/jyezke7
b) as depicted in a very late thirteenth-century fresco in Lucca's basilica di San Frediano:
http://tinyurl.com/j45k7nf
c) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Apollonia) on the fifteenth-century rood screen in the church of St Michael and All Angels, Barton Turf (Norfolk):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/norfolkodyssey/9019872124/
d) as portrayed in a later fifteenth-century alabaster statue in the Nottingham Castle Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/hlbbfwz
Static image:
http://tinyurl.com/hcfmgqh
e) as portrayed in a later fifteenth-century alabaster statue in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow (photograph courtesy of Chris Laning):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33802198@N00/69273254/
f) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century wall painting in the church of St Etheldreda, Horley (Oxon):
http://www.paintedchurch.org/horzita.htm
http://tinyurl.com/zffy4tb
g) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century wall painting in the church of All Saints, Shorthampton, Charlbury (Oxon):
http://www.paintedchurch.org/shtonzit.htm
http://tinyurl.com/hfb297x
h) as depicted in a panel of the early sixteenth-century rood screen from the church of St James the Less in Norwich, since 1946 in that city's church of St Mary Magdalen:
http://tinyurl.com/crz9er
Best,
John Dillon
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