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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture This replaces an earlier posting that seems to vanished into the ether (and that's the only way in which it could be described as aetherial!). The siting of mendicant houses may, in many places at least, have had at least as much to do with the availability of land than with a desire to be near gates _per se_. In Naples, for example, the first Franciscan church was a little paleochristian basilica donated to the order by the bishop of Aversa. This was near the city's then market place (the ancient forum) and doubtless served the programmatic needs of the friars very well. But it was not particularly close to any of the city gates as the city wall was then constituted and its successor on the site, the late thirteenth-century church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, is by no means close to the expanded mural circuit created by the Angevins in the early years of the fourteenth century. The first Dominican presence in Naples is dated to 1227; whatever they were using at first was quickly abandoned in 1231 in favor of the site of the present San Domenico Maggiore, donated to the order in 1231 by the archbishop of Sorrento on land with a church previously used by Benedictines (Sant'Angelo a Morfisa, rededicated to Dominic after his canonization in 1234). This was adjacent to the seat of one of the city's administrative districts and to its university founded here in 1234. It was not particularly close to the nearest gate, the Porta di Nido. Closer to the same gate was the later Franciscan house of Santa Chiara, founded on open land by Sancia of Majorca in 1310. The land across the street from it now occupied by the Gesu' Nuovo remained open until the latter half of the fifteenth century. Also in this part of the city is the late thirteenth-century Angevin foundation of San Pietro a Maiella. The medieval city's other major Dominican house, it was originally Celestinian, which explains its isolated position: though it is close to the originally seventeenth-century Port'Alba, it was not at the time of its foundation near any major gate. The city's first Augustinian house, the later thirteenth-century Sant'Agostino della Zecca, was close to a minor gate but was built on open land on a promontory above it and was more easily reached from the Piazza della Sellaria, another of the city's internal market places. The Carmelite monastery at Naples (date of foundation unknown; prob. mid-13th cent.) was extraurban until the early fourteenth-century eastern expansion of the city wall, after which it did adjoin a gate. That expansion enclosed several suburban houses, not all of which were mendicant (e.g., the Benedictine San Pietro ad Ara). It also enclosed open areas upon which convents were later founded: one of these, the fourteenth-century Santa Maria della Maddalena (Dominican), was near a major gate, the Porta Capuana, precisely because it ran a hospice. The fourteenth-century San Giovanni a Carbonara (Augustinian) was outside the Angevin wall and built on cheap land next to what had been the city's medieval refuse dump (the Carbonara of its name); before its enclosure within the mural circuit at the end of the fifteenth century, it was just off a major gate. Moving around to the north, the early fourteenth-century female convent of Santa Maria di Donnaregina (Franciscan) was inside the Angevin wall and again near a major a gate, but seemingly quite by accident: it was built on property that had been ecclesiastical since the eighth century and was now conveniently available after its predecessor church had been badly damaged by the earthquake of 1293. One could argue that, since these fourteenth-century mendicant foundations were close to gates, proximity to gates as well as the availability of land was a factor in their siting. But one could not make the same argument in the case in the case of the city's mendicant foundations of the thirteenth century: these were either a) fairly well extraurban (the Carmelites), though at the edge of a developing suburb, b) near inner-city centers of commerce (the early Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians) or else c) isolated convents in open space towards the city's western edge (Santa Chiara, San Pietro a Maiella) that may have been passed by local traffic but not by the crowds coming in from the north and the east or up from the port (though they're both at the western end of major east-west _decumani_, only Santa Chiara's had a gate at that end and that did not lead directly to any major avenue of commerce or pilgrimage). Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html