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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