medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (3. October) is also the feast day of:
Julian of Palermo (blessed; d. 1470). The Sicilian Benedictine Giuliano
Mayali (also spelled Majali), a member of a prominent Palermitan family,
was a champion of public health at home, an accomplished diplomat
overseas, and the founder of a hermitage ancestral to one of today's
many Marian sanctuaries. J. is credited with both the petition leading
to the establishment of Palermo's central hospital (1429) and the
latter's initial set of regulations (1442). He also served Alfonso V
(of Aragon) and I (of Sicily) as an ambassador to Tunis five times from
1438 to 1452. In his later years he retired to his home monastery of
Santa Maria delle Ciambre at Borgetto [now Borgetto (PA), a hilltown
west southwest of Monreale overlooking the the Gulf of Castellammare],
in whose immediate vicinity he built himself a hermitage with a private
chapel.
After Julian's death, the monastery (of which the poet Teofilo Folengo
was a sixteenth-century prior) maintained the hermitage as an oratory.
Santa Maria delle Ciambre was closed in 1639; both it and the oratory
are now in ruins. The latter's successor, the nearby Santuario della
Madonna del Romitello ["Romitello" = "piccolo romitorio", i.e. "little
hermitage"], possesses a painting of the BVM that, according to
tradition, appeared to J. while he was praying in the woods that
formerly covered this site. More recent events caused the archdiocese
of Monreale to declare the painting miraculous (in 1896).
Julian was beatified in 1970. He lacks an entry in the _New Catholic
Encyclopedia_, 2d ed. (Detroit: Thomson Gale, copyright 2002). Strange
to say, I could not find him in the online _Catholic Encyclopedia_.
Photographs of the remains of the fifteenth-century oratory and of the
monastery of Santa Maria delle Ciambre are here (top row right; bottom
row left):
http://www.ritrart.it/PAGINE%20WEB/Borgetto%20in%20my%20mind%201.html
Other photographs of Borgetto (including the Sanctuary [bottom right]
and several scenes of snow in January) are here:
http://www.ritrart.it/PAGINE%20WEB/Borgetto%20in%20my%20mind.htm
Various devotional cards depicting the Madonna Addolorata (Our Lady of
Sorrows) of the Romitello are shown here (at bottom):
http://www.castellammareonline.com/santini_ed_immaginette_sacre/madonna_di_sanpaolo.html
These have obviously been touched up (and/or represent a painting that
has been touched up); note the differing coronal splendors. A couple of
not very revealing but presumably recent photographs of the painting
itself are here:
http://www.parrocchie.it/monreale/sanvitomartire/Romitello.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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