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MEDIEVAL-RELIGION  May 2006

MEDIEVAL-RELIGION May 2006

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Subject:

saints of the day 22. May

From:

John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 22 May 2006 17:46:20 -0500

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text/plain

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (22. May) is the feast day of:

Julia of Corsica (5th cent., supposedly); Atto of Pistoia (d. 1153); 
Humility of Faenza (d. 1310); and Catherine of Genoa (Caterina Fieschi 
Adorno; d. 1510).  Brief notices of all four may be found in the 
Archives of this list; for lengthier treatments of Julia and of 
Humility, see below.

1) Julia is listed for today by the (pseudo- )Hieronymian Martyrology 
as a martyr on Corsica.  She has a legendary Passio (two closely 
related versions, BHL 4516 and 4517) that make her one of the many 
saints from Italian coastal areas to have fled persecution in distant 
Africa.  In her case, the legend appears to originate not in Corsica 
but at Gorgona, an island in the Tuscan Archipelago approximately 37 
km. distant from Livorno: monks of Gorgona, apprised by mournful angels 
of the crucifixion that had just taken place, sailed to the Corsican 
shore, took J.'s corpse down from her crucifix, brought her to Gorgona 
with miraculous speed in the face of a strong contrary wind, and there 
embalmed her and placed her in a tomb.  In one version, the legend 
itself is ascribed to angelic authorship.

According to medieval tradition, in the early 760s Ansa, wife of the 
Lombard king Desiderius (who had previously been duke of Tuscany and 
may thus have become aware of local veneration of this saint), had 
Julia's relics translated to Brescia, where they were interred in the 
abbey church of San Salvatore at the time of the latter's consecration 
by pope Paul I.  This translation in turn has recently been pronounced 
fictional, with the start of J.'s major cult at Brescia being 
effectively re-dated to the ninth or tenth century (in the Renaissance 
the abbey was greatly expanded and became known as Santa Giulia).  The 
hymns from her office here are monuments of medieval liturgical poetry 
from Italy.  J. is the principal patron of Corsica and is also patron 
of Livorno.  Like the Corsican martyrs Paragorius, Parthaeus, and 
Parthenopaeus (7. September; discussed briefly yesterday in connection 
with Restituta of Corsica), J. seems also to have been venerated 
medievally at Noli in western Liguria.

For J.'s cult see Giancarlo Andenna, ed., _Culto e storia in Santa 
Giulia_ (Brescia: Grafo, 2001), esp. the articles by Gabriel Silagi on 
the Passio and hymns and by Gian Pietro Brogiolo on the history of J.'s 
cult at Brescia).

Views of San Salvatore at Brescia:
http://www.bresciaholiday.com/santagiulia/6.htm
http://www.brescia.lombardiainrete.it/brescia/santagiulia.asp  

And now for something completely different: a ruined church (or perhaps 
two churches) on Cape Noli, a structure that _may_ once have been the 
church dedicated to J. mentioned in 1191 as having been in that 
vicinity:
http://www.archaeoastronomy.it/santa%20giulia3.JPG


2) Humility, a mystic, thaumaturge, and Vallombrosan abbess, is perhaps 
unique in medieval Italy as a known woman author of a substantial body 
of Latin texts unlikely to have been ghostwritten or significantly 
redacted by a male secretary or confessor.  These are her fifteen so-
called _Sermons_, of which some are sermons in the general medieval and 
modern sense and the remainder, for which H. accurately uses the term 
_oratio_ (‘prayer’), are formally addresses of devotion to Christ, the 
Virgin Mary, and others.  The writing is forceful, expressive, prone to 
grammatical errors of case and gender, and replete with resonances of 
biblical and other widely known Latin Christian texts.  Rhetorical 
artifice is present but not overwhelming.  A linear syntax reminiscent 
of ordinary speech patterns and the occasional inappropriate 
substitution of one similarly sounding word for another suggest the 
oral environment in which these pieces were delivered and taken down by 
dictation.  The present _Sermon 9_ (the division and arrangement of 
H.'s work has varied according to the judgment of her editors) consists 
largely of rhythmical poems of the sort called _laude_ (‘songs of 
praise’); passages elsewhere in the _Sermons_ can be analyzed similarly.

Apart from the testimony of the _Sermons_ themselves, almost all that 
we know of H. comes from two early fourteenth-century lives, one in 
Latin and one in Italian.  A talented and determined individual with 
little if any formal education, she was born into a noble family at 
Faenza.  There Humility (her name in religion; previously it had been 
Rosanese) moved from married life to that of a conventual, then became 
an ascetic solitary, and subsequently founded a community of 
Vallombrosan nuns.  In 1282 together with a few companions she traveled 
to Florence and established in that city the Vallombrosan convent of 
St. John the Evangelist, where she spent the remaining years of her 
life.  Recognized as a living saint both in Faenza and in Florence, 
H. was shortly after her death the subject of a statue by Andrea 
Orcagna and of a polyptych altarpiece whose paintings have often been 
attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti.  Her cult was papally authorized in 
1720 for the Vallombrosans and in 1721 for the dioceses of Florence and 
Faenza.  She was canonized in 1948.

Julia Bolton Holloway has an excellent website on H., complete with
color images from the (now disassembled) polyptych illustrating H.'s
life and miracles often ascribed to Pietro Lorenzetti:
http://www.umilta.net/umilta.html

Best,
John Dillon

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