medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Herewith a belated notice of a saint whom I keep forgetting to include on his day.
7. September is also the feast day of:
John of Lodi (d. 1105 or 1106). Best known for his Vita of St. Peter Damian, J. (in Italian: Giovanni da Lodi) was born at Lodi in about the year 1040. According to his twelfth-century Vita by a monk of Fonte Avellama (BHL 4409), he had been trained in the liberal arts and had shortly after completion of his studies abandoned the world for the eremitic life at Peter's foundation of Fonte Avellana. This likely will have occurred in the year 1059/60, when Peter, returning from an important papal mission in Milan, preached at Lodi. J. was ordained priest soon after his arrival at Fonte Avellana, undertook various administrative roles, and became Peter's close collaborator and personal friend.
Peter died in 1072. J.'s Vita of him, undertaken at the request of his predecessor as prior (an office J. assumed in 1082), was written between 1076 and 1084. Its autograph survives as Vatican City, BAV, ms. Vat. lat. 4930. Other than that, we have from J.'s pen only one letter, preserved in the aforementioned manuscript.
Fonte Avellana lies in the diocese of Gubbio and in perhaps 1104 J. was elected the latter's bishop at the urging of a papal legate. During his brief episcopate he attempted to reform the cathedral clergy. J.'s _dies natalis_ is 7. September; his cult seems to have been immediate or nearly so. He has a second Vita (BHL 4410) by a fourteenth-century Franciscan.
Here's a view of J.'s effigy reliquary in Gubbio's mostly thirteenth-century cathedral of Marian and James:
http://tinyurl.com/y93gjlr
One of J.'s duties at Fonte Avellana was supervision of the scriptorium. This room at the monastery is now named for him:
http://tinyurl.com/y8p5op8
Seemingly built to serve as a chapel, it is said never to have so functioned and, before its incorporation into the abbatial residence, to have been used for the preparation of parchment and the binding of codices. The former scriptorium, a much larger room with higher windows, is named for St. Peter Damian:
http://scuole.provincia.ps.it/ic.pergola/Avellana/SCRIPTO.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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