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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (3. October) is the feast day of: Julian of Palermo (Bl.; 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 modern Italy'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 what is now Borgetto (PA), a town west southwest of Monreale whose upper portion (which is where the monastery was) overlooks the the Gulf of Castellammare. From here he retired further to a nearby hermitage that he built and outfitted with a private chapel. After J.'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). An aerial view showing some of the characteristics of the local terrain is here: http://tinyurl.com/2bged9 J. was beatified in 1970. He lacks an entry in the _New Catholic Encyclopedia_, 2d ed. (Detroit: Thomson Gale, copyright 2002). Here's a portrait of him antedating his formal beatification but showing the small, radiate nimbus of a _beato_: http://www.ospedalecivicopa.org/civico/images/fond.jpg The first home of the hospital with which J.'s name is linked was Palermo's fourteenth-century Palazzo Sclafani (1330), granted in run-down condition by the city in 1435. That building's original south side still survives. Here's a view showing its monumental portal with the arms of the Sclafani counts of Aderṇ surmounted by an eagle sculpted by Bonaiuto of Pisa: http://tinyurl.com/2r2e7d And here's a view of an upper portion of that facade: http://tinyurl.com/3yfqb9 Until 1944 a fifteenth-century depiction of the Triumph of Death graced one of the courtyard walls of the Palazzo Sclafani. Here's a view of this at least regionally famous fresco now preserved in Palermo's Galleria Regionale della Sicilia di Palazzo Abatellis: http://tinyurl.com/2d4f7o Best, John Dillon (last year's post revised) ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html