medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Walter (in Italian, Gualtero, Gualtiero; d. 1223/1224) is one of several late twelfth- and thirteenth-century lay saints of northern Italy venerated as founders of hospitals or other charitable enterprises. According to his Vita (BHL 8795m) by his cousin BonGiovanni, he was born in Lodi to childless parents who had vowed that if they were blessed with a son they would dedicate him to the service of God. After Walter's birth the parents fulfilled this vow by raising him in a way suitable for a future religious life and by seeing to it that he became a Hospitaller at the age of fifteen. Not long after that his father died; Walter sold off all of the family's possessions, gave the proceeds to charity, and placed his mother entered a convent. He then moved to Piacenza, where he lived as a quasi-anchorite at the hospital of San Bartolomeo, tended the sick, and occasionally went on pilgrimage.
In 1206 the city fathers of Lodi granted Walter land for the construction of what would become its Ospitale della Misericordia and its church of Sts. James and Philip. During the remainder of his not overly long life (he is thought to have died at about the age of forty), Walter oversaw the growth of this institution and founded other hospitals in Lombardy which he administered as dependencies. He was noted for miracles in his lifetime; after his death his burial place in the adjacent church (destroyed in 1856) became the locus of a cult. In the fifteenth century Walter's relics were translated to the principal altar in the crypt of Lodi's cathedral. After these had been relocated several times within that building what remained of them were laid to rest in 1960 in the nineteenth-century church of San Gualtero (officially: chiesa dei Santi Filippo, Giacomo e Gualtero) near the site of the former Misericordia. Today (22. July) is Walter's _dies natalis_ and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. His feast day in Lodi is 24. July.
Walter of Lodi (perhaps) as portrayed in relief (at right; at left, St. Peter; at center, Lodi's principal patron, St. Bassianus) on a seemingly mid-thirteenth-century sarcophagus of Veronese marble once in the crypt of Lodi's basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and now used as an altar centered at the east end of that church's nave:
http://www.medioevo.org/artemedievale/Images/Lombardia/DuomodiLodi/DSCN1404.JPG
Best,
John Dillon
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