Promoting the Saints

12 CEU Medievalia ISSN 1587-6470 Series Technical Editor: Annabella Pál Volumes 1-3, 7, 8 are out of print Vol. 4. Ibn ...

Author: Ottó Gecser

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12 CEU Medievalia ISSN 1587-6470

Series Technical Editor: Annabella Pál Volumes 1-3, 7, 8 are out of print Vol. 4. Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation Al-Azmeh, A., 2003 978-963-9241-58-9 cloth, 978-963-9241-50-3 paperback Vol. 5. People and Nature in Historical Perspective Laszlovszky / Szabó, 2003 978-963-9241-86-2 paperback

The studies in this volume concentrate on a complex set of socio‐cultural phenomena, the cult of saints, in a variety of regions from Egypt to Poland, with a focus on Italy and Central Europe. The subjects of the contributions range in time from the fourth until the eighteenth century. The diversity of approaches adopted by the contributors—from literary analysis and historical anthropology to archaeology and art history—represents that open and multidisciplinary historical research that characterizes the work of Gábor Klaniczay to whom these essays are dedicated.

Promoting the Saints

Vol. 6. Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary: Eleventh century Nemerkényi, E., 2004 978-963-7326-04-2 paperback

Ottó Gecser (Budapest)

Edited by O. Gecser, J. Laszlovszky, B. Nagy, M. Sebők, K. Szende

Series Editor: József Laszlovszky

Editors

Vol. 9. Catalogue of the Slavonic Cyrillic Manuscripts of the National Széchényi Library Cleminson / Moussakova / Voutova, 2007 978-963-7326-97-4 cloth, 978-963-7326-82-0 paperback Vol. 10. The Apostolic Penitentiary in Local Contexts Jaritz / Jørgensen / Salonen, 2007 978-963-7326-83-7 paperback

Edited by

József Laszlovszky (Budapest)

Ottó Gecser, József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, Katalin Szende

Balázs Nagy (Budapest)

Katalin Szende (Budapest)

Contributors Stanko Andrić (Slavonski Brod)

Promoting the Saints Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period

FORTHCOMING: The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity Laszlovszky / Hunyadi

János M. Bak (Budapest) Péter Bokody (Budapest) Ildikó Csepregi (Budapest) Viktória Hedvig Deák OP (Budapest) Dávid Falvay (Budapest) György Galamb (Szeged) Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar (Budapest) Patrick Geary (Los Angeles) Ottó Gecser (Budapest) Gerhard Jaritz (Budapest and Krems) Stanislava Kuzmová (Budapest and Trenčín) Benedek Láng (Budapest) József Laszlovszky (Budapest)

Vol. 11. The Edges of the Medieval World Jaritz / Kreem, 2009 978-963-9776-45-6 paperback Vol. 13. The Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary c. 1150-1387 Hunyadi, 2010 978-963-9662-44-5 paperback

Marcell Sebők (Budapest)

Jacques Le Goﬀ (Paris) Ernő Marosi (Budapest) Central European University Department of Medieval Studies http://medievalstudies.ceu.hu

Marina Miladinov (Zagreb)

Central European University Press Budapest-New York http://www.ceupress.com

Emőke Nagy (Cluj-Napoca)

Petra Mutlová (Brno) Balázs Nagy (Budapest)

Marianne Sághy (Budapest) Béla Zsolt Szakács (Budapest)

ISBN 9789639776937

90000 >

André Vauchez (Paris)

M E DI E VA L I A 9 789639 776937

CEU_MED12_kemenyt.indd 1

2010.06.24. 14:07:03


CEU MEDIEVALIA 12 Series Editor: József Laszlovszky Series Technical Editor: Annabella Pál

Promoting the

Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for His 60th Birthday Edited by

Ottó GECSER, József LASZLOVSZKY, Balázs NAGY, Marcell SEBŐK, and Katalin SZENDE

Central European University Press Budapest—New York & Central European University Department of Medieval Studies

© 2011 by Ottó Gecser, József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, Katalin Szende Cover design for the series by Péter Tóth On the cover: Reliquary of a holy bishop from the second half of the fifteenth century. Museo Civico, Merano. * Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Krems/Donau. Published in 2011 by Central European University Press An imprint of the Central European University Share Company Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 Fax: +36-1-327-3183 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com 400 West 59th Street, New York NY 10019, USA Tel: +1-212-547-6932 Fax: +1-646-557-2416 E-mail: [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-9776-93-7 cloth ISSN 1587-6470 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Promoting the saints / edited by Ottó Gecser ... [et al.]. p. cm. -- (CEU medievalia ; 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-9639776944 (hardbound) 1. Christian hagiography. 2. Europe--Church history. 3. Hungary--Church history. 4. Church history--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 5. Church history--Modern period, 1500- I. Gecser, Ottó. II. Title. III. Series. BX4662.P76 2010 235'.209--dc22

2010020697 Printed in Hungary by Akaprint Kft., Budapest

Table of Contents

Preface by Jacques Le Goff

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Marianne SÁGHY: Pope Damasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography Ildikó CSEPREGI: Theological Self-Definition in Byzantine Miraculous Healing Cristian-Nicolae GAŞPAR: (Re)claiming Adalbert: Patristic Quotations and Their Function in Canaparius’ Vita S. Adalberti Patrick GEARY: “Pull you Sons of Whores!” Linguistic Register and Reform in the Legend of St. Clement János BAK: Hagiography and Chronicles André VAUCHEZ: Hagiography and Biography: The Case of St. Francis of Assisi Péter BOKODY: Idolatry or Power: St. Francis in Front of the Sultan Stanko ANDRIĆ: Blessed John the French, the First Franciscan Minister Provincial in Hungary, and his Miracles József LASZLOVSZKY: Fama sanctitatis and the Emergence of St. Margaret’s Cult in the Rural Countryside Viktória DEÁK: The Techniques of a Hagiographer: The Two Legendae of Saint Margaret of Hungary Dávid FALVAY: St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Italian Vernacular Literature. Vitae, Miracles, Revelations and the Meditations on the Life of Christ Stanislava KUZMOVÁ: Division and Reintegration of the body of St. Stanislaus: A Political Analogy in Sermons?

1 17 31 41 51 59 69 83 103 125 137 151

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Contents

Balázs NAGY: Saints, Names, and Identities: The Case of Charles IV of Luxemburg Ernő MAROSI: Saints at Home and Abroad: Some Observations on the Creation of Iconographic Types in Hungary of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Béla Zsolt SZAKÁCS: Palatine Lackfi and his Saints: Frescos in the Franciscan Church of Keszthely Gerhard JARITZ: Late Medieval Saints and the Visual Representation of Rural Space György GALAMB: Sainthood in the Propaganda of Mendicant Orders: The Case of the Dialogus contra fraticellos of James of the Marches Ottó GECSER: Sermons on St. Sebastian after the Black Death (1348–ca. 1500) Emőke NAGY: “Had She Born Ten Daughters, She would have Named them All Mary Because of the Kindness of the First Mary.” St. Anne in the Sermons of Two Late Medieval Hungarian Preachers Petra MUTLOVA: The Cult of the Saints in the Bohemian Reformation: The Question of Images Marina MILADINOV: Madonna of Loreto as a Target of Reformation Critique: Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger Benedek LÁNG: Saint Christopher, the Patron of TreasureHunters

305

List of Contributors

311

Index

317

165 175 207 227 245 261

273 283 291

Preface Jacques Le GOFF

I am deeply thankful to the editors of Gábor Klaniczay’s Festschrift for giving me the honor of writing the preface to this collection of tributes. I have great esteem and admiration for Gábor and, despite the difference in our ages, we have maintained a relation of affectionate friendship for many years. This Festschrift is about sanctity, one theme of Gábor’s historical interests. The variety of articles demonstrates well the multiplicity of aspects this condition had in Western medieval Christianity. Gábor has been able to explore the richness of this idea and the many faces of those who bear witness to it—the saints themselves. He has convincingly shown the uniqueness of these personages, which have no precise equivalents in any other religion. He has situated their socio-cultural type within a wide context that he can approach so well, from the power of great secular lords, beginning with kings, down to the humblest or even marginal members of society. As a historian of popular beliefs, of demonology, of witchcraft, of the heretical facet of the spirituality of saints, he has not failed to notice, either, that female holiness did play an important role, especially in the central Middle Ages of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and that the extraordinary success of the cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary from the thirteenth century onwards demonstrates how distinguished a position, in spite of other forms of inferiority, a woman could have in medieval society. The famous thirteenth-century Italian author of the Golden Legend, James of Varazze, who traveled to Pest in the second half of the thirteenth century, dedicated to her one of the few lives of contemporary saints in his hagiographical collection. Gábor Klaniczay has been—and, I hope, will continue to be for a long time—one of the great historians of the medieval imagination in its political, social, and cultural aspects. If Gábor Klaniczay has been a great historian due to his work, he also plays a leading role in the academic and

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scholarly world. He does so, primarily, through the frequency and warmth of his personal and professional contacts with the international universe of medieval historians. And if these ties are very strong, for example, with centers of American medieval studies, let me underline that his relations with French medievalists seem to me to have been the most profound since the beginning of his formation and his career. But Gábor has not forgotten what he owes to his Hungarian historian masters either, and he has exhibited a particular admiration for Jenő Szűcs, who, nevertheless, did not entirely convince him about the historical existence of three Europes with Central Europe among them. Let me also emphasize on a personal note that among the scholarly interests we share the concern for popular culture and its place in medieval civilization looms large. When I myself think about the characteristics of what I have called historical anthropology, the name of Gábor Klaniczay and his work are among the very first that come to mind. But besides this scholarly activity, Gábor has also been a great founder of institutions. The idea of creating the Department of Medieval Studies at the Central European University was his brainchild. He was also the principal creator of Collegium Budapest, of this Hungarian Princeton—also called Institute for Advanced Study, for that matter—which brings together not only international speakers, but students and researchers of the history of Central and Eastern Europe as well, who carry along their traditions and methods and come into close contact with those of Western historians there. Gábor Klaniczay is an academic in the full sense of the word, that is to say, an innovative scholar, a radiant master, and also a creator of institutional frameworks of fundamental value. Translated from the French by Ottó Gecser

Abbreviations

AASS

Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur. 68 vols. Antwerp and Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1643– 1940.

BHL

Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. 4 vols. Subsidia hagiographica 6, 12, and 70. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1898–1986.

CCCM

Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis. Turnhout: Brepols, 1966–.

CEMT

Central European Medieval Texts. Budapest: CEU Press, 1999–.

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Hoelder et al., 1866–.

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica

MGH Ep.

MGH Epistolae. 8 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1887–1939.

MGH Fontes iuris MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui in usum scholarum separatim editi. Hanover: Hahn, 1909–. MGH SS

MGH Scriptores in Folio. 30 vols. Hanover: Hahn, 1824–1934.

MGH SS rer. Germ., n.s.

MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series. Hanover: Hahn, 1922–.

x

Abbreviations

MPH

Monumenta Poloniae Historica. 6 vols. Lwów and Cracow: Akademia Umiejętności, 1864–1893.

MPH, n.s.

Monumenta Poloniae Historica, nova series. Cracow: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1946–.

PL

Jacques-Paul Migne, ed. Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–1864.

Pope Damasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography Marianne SÁGHY

“Aged Time could retain neither their names, nor their number,” stated Bishop Damasus of Rome (366–384) about the martyrs of Rome.1 Even if the Christian Churches of the post-Constantinian Empire were aware that they formed an ecclesia martyrum,2 concrete information concerning the martyrs quickly evaporated after their death. Modern scholarship subscribes to Damasus’ conclusion: “everything suggests that in the late fourth century almost nothing was known of the Roman martyrs.”3 The martyrs sank into oblivion when the persecutions ended,4 waiting for resurrection in the catacombs. The bishops of Rome played a dynamic role in the great martyrial revival.5 Damasus started an energetic underground campaign for the recovery and identification of Rome’s Christian heroes. Apart from locating long-forgotten tombs in the dark suburban labyrinths, the pontiff also gave a history to the martyrs by enhancing the holy graves with architectural, artistic and inscriptional decoration. “The first Chris1

Damasus, Epigram 42: “Sanctorum [...] nomina nec numerum potuit retinere uetustas.” Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen, “Ecclesia martyrum,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. Marthijs Lamberigts and Peter Van Deun. (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 333–349, on p. 333. 3 Alan Thacker, “Rome of the Martyrs: Saints, Cults and Relics, Fourth to Seventh Centuries.” Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. Éamonn Ó Carragain and Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 13–19, on p. 36. 4 The reason why the martyrs were forgotten can be explained by the fact that in the beginning little difference existed between the cura pro mortuis and the cultus martyrum: the martyrs’ earthly remains were treated like those of the ordinary dead, their burial was organized by their relatives in a plot owed by the family. The martyrs’ memory soon faded and their tomb-sites were forgotten: see Joseph Alchermes, “Cura pro mortuis and cultus martyrum: Commemoration in Rome from the Second through the Sixth Century” (PhD. diss., New York University, 1989). The Church of Rome did not catalogue the depositiones martyrum until as late as AD 336. 5 Lucy Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 2004). 2

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tian archaeologist,”6 Damasus was the founder of the cult of the saints at Rome.7 Was he also the founder of Roman hagiography? To what extent did his epic enterprise contributed to the development of the Roman legendary? The Memory of the Martyrs Dom Duchesne held a particularly negative opinion about the historical value of the Damasian carmina: “They are empty of history, they are obscure, and contain scarcely anything but commonplaces.”8 Scholars explained the lack of historical references in the epigrams either by a lack of a local tradition on the martyrs, or by the celebrity of the martyrs: they were so well known in Rome that it was enough to evoke their names and everybody at once recalled their stories.9 Remembering the martyrs was a moral and a political obligation for Damasus. Being an ecclesia martyrum meant to lay claim to a continuity between the ancient Church and post-Constantinian realities. This continuity had to be shown to exist. Immediately after 312, a heavy competition developed for the legacy of the martyrs between the various Churches—Nicene, Donatist, Novatianist, Melitian, etc.—who all claimed that they alone were the true heirs of the witnesses of the faith. Rivalry developed not only for the appropriation of the martyrs of old, but for the new martyrs as well. Persecution did not disappear overnight after the 6

Orazio Marucchi, Manuale di archeologia cristiana (Rome: Desclée & C. Editori Pontifici, 1933), 28; see also Dennis Trout, “Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 517–536, on p. 517. 7 The main source for Damasus’ martyrial revival remains his extant epigrams: Epigrammata Damasiana, ed. Antonio Ferrua (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Sacra, 1942). In Ferrua’s recension, 59 epigrams are authentic and 18 pseudodamasiana. For the archaeological and artistic aspect of Damasus’ work see Saecularia Damasiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1986). For a recent overview of the pontificate, see Ursula Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366–384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 8 Louis Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l’Église, 3 vols. (Paris: De Boccard, 1910), 2:482– 483; I quote the English translation of John Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 148. 9 Paul-Albert Février, “Quelques inscriptions damasiennes de la Via Salaria,” in Quaeritur inventus colitur: Miscellanea in onore di Padre Umberto Maria Fasola, Studi di antichità Cristiana 40 (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1989), 291–306, on p. 306.

Pope Demasus and the Beginnings of Roman Hagiography

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Constantinian turn: during the Arian and the Donatist crises, Christians persecuted Christians. In 355, when Emperor Constantius II fired half of the Western episcopate for their refusal to condemn Athanasius of Alexandria and accept the Arian creed, Liberius of Rome addressed his episcopal colleagues in a letter as “martyrs,” expressing his regret that he had not been the first to suffer so as to set an example for others and asking for their prayers so that he may be yet worthy to share their exile.10 Liberius was soon deposed and sent to Thrace. In 357, when, due to popular demand, he was restituted to Rome, he offered as an ex-voto two marble tablets to Saint Agnes.11 The Arian struggle thus put the figure of the martyr in the limelight both as a contemporary “witness to the truth” and as a powerful heavenly intercessor. The martyrs’ resistance to the emperor became an evergreen that found avid Christian readers. Hagiography was a by-product of the Arian conflict: Antony of Egypt was presented as a hero of Nicene resistance, and Liberius became a legendary figure whose fearless audacity in his entreaties with the emperor was retold with gusto in Roman legends and in Greek church histories alike.12 Many Romans, such as Celerina, a wealthy Roman matron, held Liberius in high esteem. Celerina venerated Liberius so much that she had him represented in her burial chamber, standing next to an image depicting a lamb between two wolves.13 The inscription Susanna above the lamb alludes to a “false accusation.”14 Celerina might have commissioned this particular image to allude to the (false?) charges that 10

Quamuis sub imagine, in S. Hilarii episcopi Pictaviensis Opera, pars quarta, ed. Alfred L. Feder, CSEL 65 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1916), 164–166. See also Libellus precum, in PL, vol. 13, II, 3; XIX, 72; and Jerome, Ep., 57, 6. 11 Liber pontificalis, 37, 7. 12 Gesta Liberii, in Collectio Avellana, ed. Otto Günther, 2 vols., CSEL 35 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895), vol. 1; Theodoret, Church History, II, 16. For the fifth-century creation and development of the Gesta Liberii, see Steffen Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume: Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitäten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 447–480. 13 Claude Dagens, “Autour du pape Libère: L’iconographie de Suzanne et des martyrs romains sur l’arcosolium de Celerina,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 78 (1966), 327–381. 14 Charles Pietri, Roma Christiana: Recherches sur l’Église de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311–440), 2 vols., Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 224 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1976), 1:237–268; Yves-Marie Duval, L’extirpation de l’Arianisme en Italie du Nord et en Occident: Rimini (359/60) et Aquilée (381), Hilaire de Poitiers (367/8) et Ambroise de Milan (397) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).

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Liberius had lapsed and signed an Arian creed. For, although Liberius was exiled for his strong pro-Nicene commitments, he was also later bitterly maligned as a compromiser and traitor to the Nicene cause. Half of the Roman clergy reclaimed Liberius’ legacy and after his death, they chose Ursinus in opposition to Damasus as bishop of Rome.15 It was the double election of 366 that triggered the Damasian establishment of the cult of the martyrs at Rome. In order to avert the Ursinian schism, Damasus turned to the martyrs of Rome as intercessors. Their mediation was successful. Damasus’ first epigram—the same in which he complains about the lack of information about the martyrs—is an ex-voto addressed to an unknown group of saints for the return of the schismatic Ursinians in his flock: Whoever you are that read this, pay homage to the Saints’ tomb. Aged Time could not retain their names or their number. Know that Damasus the Pope adorned their grave, In glorious commemoration of the return of his clergy thanks be to Christ. To the holy Martyrs this priest returns his vows.16

The first Damasian epigram is not a hagiographical composition. It fails to tell anything about the patronage and the person of a particular saint. Rather, Damasus wished to celebrate the joint heavenly support that he received from the communio sanctorum. Damasus’ martyrial campaign has been explained as a response to the challenge of imperial,17 private18 and schismatic19 martyr cults that swarmed the cemeteries. The bishop knew all too well that the cult of the saints served not only to unite, but also to divide Roman Christians. When he placed the catacombs under the patronage of the martyrs, and the martyrs under his own, he sought to obliterate, or to officialize, private 15

Eckehard Wirbelauer, “Die Nachfolgerbestimmung im römischen Bistum (3.–6. Jh.): Doppelwahlen und Absetzungen in ihrer herrschaftssoziologischen Bedeutung.” Klio 76 (1994): 388–437, on pp. 407–410. 16 Damasus, Epigram 52: “Sanctorum quicumque legis venerare sepulcrum / Nomina nec numerum potuit retinere vetustas / Ornavit Damasus tumulum, cognoscite, rector / pro reditu cleri Christo prestante triumphans / Martyribus sanctis reddit sua vota sacerdos.” 17 Pietri, Roma Christiana. 18 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 19 Marianne Sághy, “Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 273–287.


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cults.20 The papacy was certainly not the first and hardly the only patron of the saints at Rome: rather, Damasus “joined in” with the aristocratic circles when establishing the martyrs’ cult. Lay believers, such as Celerina, constructed private shrines all around and even inside Rome.21 Private ownership of the martyrs and private patronage of their cult became an issue for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but, even if he aimed at making the martyrs available to the community, the bishop did not necessarily seek to nip private individuals’ sponsorship of the martyr worship.22 After all, aristocratic euergetism remained the strongest support of the bishopric at Rome. The bishop worked in tandem with private patrons. Heretical and schismatic cults, however, had to go. In these cases, it was probably not “Aged Time,” but Pope Damasus himself who erased the memory of those martyrs who were worshipped by rival or downright heretical congregations. When Damasus highlighted his role at the tombs of the saints and footed his epigrams with his signature envoi, it could have read both as a sanctification and as an appropriation of (an already existing) cultic practice: “Damasus the bishop made this.”23 “Let Damasus report these facts.”24 “Damasus has described his merit.”25 “Have faith, through Damasus, in the power of Christ’s glory.”26 “These altars Damasus heaps high with gifts.”27 “Damasus relates these things on hearsay.”28 “I beg you to favour the prayers of Damasus.”29 Private shrines proliferated not only outside the walls, but exceptionally also intra muros. John and Paul suffered martyrdom under the apostate Emperor Julian in their own domus on Mons Caelius, where they were buried under a staircase. The legend of John and Paul may be a bri20

Damasus not only stamped out, but also sanctified private cults: see Diefenbach’s important discussion of Peter Brown’s “privatization of the holy:” Römische Erinnerungsräume, 377n182. 21 Philippe Pergola, “Le ‘saint’ prêtre Eulalios: Un cas singulier de vénération à la fin du IVème siècle,” in Quaeritur inventus colitur, 543–560); Ana Munk, “Domestic Piety in Fourth-century Rome: A Relic Shrine beneath the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo,” Hortus Artium Mediaevalium 15 (2009): 7–19. 22 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. 23 Epigram 18 (Eusebius): “Damasus episcopus fecit.” 24 Epigram 20 (Peter and Paul): “Haec Damasus uestras referat noua sidera laudes.” 25 Epigram 21 (Eutychius): “Expressit Damasus meritum.” 26 Epigram 8: “Credite per Damasum, possit quid gloria Christi.” 27 Epigram 33 (Laurentius): “Haec Damasus cumulat supplex altaria donis.” 28 Epigram 35 (Hippolytus): “Haec audita refert Damasus.” 29 Epigram 37 (Agnes): “ut Damasi precibus faueas, precor, inclyta martyr;” same in Epigram 48 (Hermes): “ut Damasi precibus faueas, precor, inclyte martyr.”

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colage of hagiographical topoi, “entirely borrowed from those of other martyrs,”30 but the fourth-century grave and relic shrine excavated under the fifth-century titulus Pammachii (now basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo) gives “a physical reality to the legend.”31A Damasian fragment was also found here, reinforcing the idea that the bishop did not fail to place his commemorative plaques in domestic shrines: John and Paul watch over this altar of the Lord Who both equally suffered martyrdom for the name of Christ Purchasing the rewards of [eternal] life by their crimson blood.32

If authentic, this epigram would attest the bishops’ sanctification of a private cultplace in a domus and thus enhancing the activity of other cultores martyrum, in this case Jerome’s friend and sponsor Pammachius, the owner of the palace. Be as it may, Damasus’ inscriptions assured episcopal control over the memory of the martyrs. What martyrial memories did Damasus preserve and promote? Let us turn to Rome’s “very own” martyrs to see what kind of stories Damasus propagated about them. Saint Agnes The Ursinian schismatics’ secret meetingplace was in the cemetery of Saint Agnes. This imperial property, housing a basilica and the family mausoleum of the Constantinian princesses, was sanctified by the memory of Liberius, who thanked Saint Agnes’ intercession by offering two marble platoma to the basilica. It is not known whether the two tables had inscriptions on them, but this possibility cannot be excluded. Damasus attacked the Ursinians both by physical raids and spiritual assaults: when he placed his epigram onto Agnes’ tomb, he emphatically asked the saint to listen to his prayers, so as to overshadow both imperial and Liberian 30

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, ed. David H. Farmer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 267. 31 John Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints in the Early Christian West, c. 300–1200. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 46; Beat Brenk, “Microstoria sotto la Chiesa dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo,” Rivista di Istituto nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell arte 18 (1995): 169–206. 32 Damasus, Epigram 61: “Hanc aram Domini servant Paulusque Ioannes / Martyrium Christi pariter pro nomine passi / Sanguine purpureo mercantes praemia vitae.” According to Ferrua, the inscription is spurious: it may be a later pseudodamasiana; but see Crook, The Architectural Setting, 267.


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memories. The poetic evocation of the young girl’s heroic self-sacrifice for Christ is not only the first poem dedicated to a teenage girl by a bishop, but also the first hagiographical recollection at Rome: The story is told that her holy parents once said that, When the trumpet sounded its mournful call, The girl Agnes quickly left her nurse’s lap and, On her own impulse trampled the grim tyrant’s threats and rage. When he attempted to burn her noble body with flames, She overcame her fear with her slight strength and arranged her hair Over her naked body, so that no mortal eyes should Behold the temple of the Lord. Oh gentle object of my veneration, holy heroine Of chastity, I beg you to favour the prayers of Damasus, Oh glorious martyr.33

Damasus refers to oral traditions about Agnes as told by her parents: the young girl left home to die for Christ. Among the flames, she covered her naked body with her hair not to expose “the temple of the Lord” to the impudent gaze. Dom Duchesne suggested that Damasus obliterated competing versions of martyrial traditions when he replaced them with his own. Alan Thacker, on the contrary, argued that we accept that Damasus in fact had very little to work with: his saints have no history and often no name. Far from blotting out or selecting from a countless multitude, he was adding and elaborating, seriously enriching Rome’s martyrial traditions by providing the city with saints and feast days that had never before existed or had been remembered so dimly that they had to be reinvented.

In Agnes’ case, it seems that various oral versions did circulate about her martyrdom. A hymn attributed to Damasus’ contemporary, the Rome-born aristocrat Ambrose of Milan, evokes flames extinguished by the faith of the young martyr, but has Agnes die by the sword.34 Prudentius embroiders the story building on both Damasus’ and Ambrose’s version, but 33

Damasus, Epigram 37: “Fama refert sanctos dudum retulisse parentes / Agnen cum lugubres cantus tuba concrepuisset / nutricis gremium subito liquisse puellam / sponte trucis calcasse minas rabiemque tyranni / Urere cum flammis voluisset nobile corpus / viribus inmensum parvis superasse timorem / nudaque profosum crinem per membra dedisse / ne Domini templum facies peritura videret. / O veneranda mihi, sanctum decus, alma, pudoris / ut Damasi precibus faveas, precor, inclycta martyr.” 34 Ambrose, Hymn 8 (Agnes beatae virginis): “hic ignis exstinguit fidem / haec flamma lumen eripit. / Hic, hic, ferite! ut profluo / cruore restinguam focos. / Percussa quam pompa tulit! Nam ueste se totam tegens / curam pudoris praestitit / ne quis rectam cerneret.” Ambroise de Milan, Hymnes, ed. Jacques Fontaine (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 379.

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adding many a graphic detail to Agnes’ torture and suffering.35 None of the poets allude to the date of Agnes’ martyrdom. Saint Lawrence Lawrence, the archdeacon of Bishop Sixtus II, suffered martyrdom in 258. The first church built in honor of the saint—on lands belonging to a certain Lucina, which may indicate an early aristocratic veneration for Lawrence—San Lorenzo in Lucina, predates Damasus’ pontificate.36 It is in this church that Damasus was elected bishop in 366.37 Lawrence’ tomb in the catacomb in agro Verano on the Via Tiburtina was enhanced by an imposing imperial basilica, commissioned perhaps by Constantine.38 Damasus decorated the tomb with two epigrams,39 and dedicated his own titulus, San Lorenzo in Damaso, to the saint, perhaps as an ex-voto for his election.40 Damasus’ epigram emphasized the deacon’s suffering, his orthodoxy, and his fidelity to his bishop: Scourging, torturers, flames, torments, and chains: The faith alone of Lawrence could overcome them. These altars Damasus heaps high with gifts, In humble prayer and in admiration of the worth of an exceptional martyr.41

Damasus is surprisingly vague about the precise instrument of torture which caused Lawrence’s death, does not mention Lawrence’s famous gathering of the poor and does not record any famous “last word.” Ambrose of Milan provides a testimony to Lawrence’s aristocratic veneration when he calls Lawrence “equal to the apostles,” and yet again preserves a different, enlarged version of Lawrence’ passion. He knows that 35

Prudentius, Peristephanon, XIV. The earliest parts of the present church date from the fifth-sixth centuries: Richard Krautheimer, Corpus basilicarum Christianarum Romae, 5 vols. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1937–1977), 2:159–184. 37 A Damasian fragment was found here: Damasus, Epigram 56. 38 Pietri, Roma Christiana, 1:37–40. 39 Damasus, Epigram 33 and 34 (fragmentary). 40 Damasus, Epigram 57, 58. 41 Damasus, Epigram 33: “Verbera carnificis, flammas, tormenta, catenas / uincere Laurenti sola fides potuit. / haec Damasus cumulat supplex altaria donis / martyris egregii suspiciens meritum.” 36


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Lawrence was roasted on a grill (this will become the iconographic attribute of the saint) and reports the martyr’s good sense of humor: Lawrence instructs the hangsman to turn him from one side to another, and start eating his rib, “when it is well done.”42 Lawrence was an important model as an archdeacon for Damasus and Ursinus, both former deacons of Liberius. The diaconate was appropriated by the aristocracy, and a heavy dose of aristocratic patronage dispensed around the establishment of Lawrence’s cult which, in its turn, increased Lawrence’s popularity among Rome’s senatorial élite.43 Through the figure of Lawrence, Christian aristocrats projected an unmistakably Roman hierarchy to the aula of celestial Rome and dispatched a fellow Roman, a glorified consul, to the heavenly Curia to take part at the sessions of “the everlasting Senate.”44 “Faith” is Lawrence’s chief virtue that is emphatically brought out by Damasus’ epigram. The two deacons, Damasus and Ursinus both swore fidelity to Bishop Liberius. “One faith, one emperor, one bishop”— shouted the Roman crowd, according to Theodoret, in the circus claiming the restitution of Liberius. Allusion to the “one faith” is a call for unity in the Damasian epigram, thus proposing Lawrence as a model of unity for the Roman Church.45 Saint Peter and Saint Paul Unity is the key to Damasus’ celebration of Rome’s apostolic founders as well. Significantly, Damasus placed a single commemorative tablet for the two apostles in the Basilica Apostolorum (now basilica di San Sebastiano) on the Via Appia to “praise the new stars” of Rome:

42

Ambrose, Hymn 13 (Apostolorum supparem): “Apostolorum supparem / Laurentium archidiaconum / pari corona martyrum / Romana sacrauit fides. / Fugit perustus carnifex / suisque cedit ignibus / ’Versate me, martyr uocat / uorate, si coctum est, iubet’.” 43 Gerontius, The Life of Melania the Younger, trans. Elizabeth A. Clark (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984). 44 Prudentius, Peristephanon, II, 551–564. 45 Kate Blair-Dixon, “Damasus and the Fiction of Unity: The Urban Shrines of Saint Lawrence,” Ecclesiae Urbis: Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi sulle chiese di Roma (IV–X secolo); Roma, 4-10 settembre 2000, ed. Federico Guidobaldi and Alessandra Guidobaldi, Studi di antichità cristiana 59 (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2002), 331–352.

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Here you should know that the saints dwelt at one time You who seek the names of both Peter and Paul. We freely acknowledge that the East sent them as disciples For Christ’s sake and the merit of his blood They followed Him across the stars And sought heavenly regions, kingdom of pious souls Rome has merited to claim them as citizens. Damasus wished to proclaim these things, O new stars, to your praise. 46

The twin Christian apostles replaced Rome’s pagan founders (Romulus and Remus) and divine protectors (Castor and Pollux) as patron saints of the Urbs. The apostles’ spiritual brotherhood became a popular emblem and a widely disseminated propagandistic model for the Roman Church.47 The concordia apostolorum publicized the unanimity of the apostles, thus the unity and concord of the Church.48 The cult of the saints functioned as a “pacifier,” creating the ideal of clean, efficient, well-functioning power.49 Highlighting the notion of concordia, Damasus also sought to dissipate the effects of a bad press. 50 The Romanitas of the apostles is another important concern in the epigram: they earned Roman citizenship by “bloodright.” The double apostolic foundation sanctified Rome and the legacy of the apostles became her greatest treasure. Damasus’ stress on the Romanness of the apostles was also an argument directed against Eastern claims in an effort to establish the Urbs’ claim to spiritual leadership among the Churches. Significantly, Damasus did not exploit the potential of Saint Peter’s being the 46

Damasus, Epigram 20: “Hic habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes / nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris / discipulos Oriens misit, quod sponte fatemur; / sanguinis ob meritum Christumque per astra secuti / aetherios petiere sinus regnaque piorum / Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives. / Haec Damasus vestras referat nova sidera laudes.” 47 Herbert L. Kessler, “The Meeting of Peter and Paul in Rome: An Emblematic Narrative of Spiritual Brotherhood,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 265–275; J. M. Huskinson, Concordia Apostolorum: Christian Propaganda at Rome in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries; A Study in Early Christian Iconography and Iconology (London: BAR, 1984). 48 Charles Pietri, “Concordia apostolorum et renovatio urbis: Culte des martyrs et propagande pontificale,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 73 (1961): 275–322. 49 Brown, The Cult of the Saints, esp. 93–97. 50 Paul-Albert Février, “Un plaidoyer pour Damase: Les inscriptions des nécropoles romaines,” in Institutions, société et vie politique dans l’Empire romain au IVe siècle ap. J. C., ed. Michel Christol et al., Collection de l’École française de Rome 159 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992), 497–506.


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first bishop of Rome, as propounded by the Liberian catalog of 354 which—defying Irenaeus’ statement that the Roman church was founded by the apostles Peter and Paul,51 and challenging Eusebius’ account in which Linus is the first bishop of Rome52—made the important claim that the first bishop of Rome was the Apostle Peter, who founded the church after the ascension of Christ in AD 30, in the time of Emperor Trajan, and ruled for 25 years, until AD 55. As Peter symbolized the Church, all references to him and all reinterpretations of his role were extremely meaningful.53 Damasus, however, did not tune up to the possibilities inherent in the Liberian list: no Damasian epigram was found in St. Peter’s basilica on the Vatican, with the exception of an inscription on the baptistery of St. Peter’s.54 The princeps apostolorum is no protagonist of the Damasian epigrams. None of the rich biblical or apocryphal stories about Peter that linked the apostle to Rome were taken up in Damasus’ epigrams. If the bishop of Rome is reticent to evoke the life, the mission and the miracle-working actions of the apostles Peter and Paul, he is equally silent about their martyrdom. As opposed to Ambrose and Prudentius, who both focus on the passio of Saint Peter and Saint Paul,55 Damasus leaves this theme unexploited. Like his ascetic-minded contemporaries, Damasus seems to have been riveted by Saint Paul. In a homily pronounced in 387, John Chrysostom declared, I have many reasons to praise the greatness and antiquity of the city of Rome: the beauty of its buildings and the number of its inhabitants, its power and its wealth, its military virtues and conquests. Yet, leaving all this aside, I think that the Romans are happy because Paul wrote a letter to them; because Paul liked them; because they heard Paul speaking and because they could hear his last sigh. This is what makes the glory of this city, much more than any other of its possessions.56

_______________ 51

Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.3.2. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.2; 3.4; 5.6. John Wenham, “The Date of Peter’s Going to Rome,” in Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 146–172. 53 Norbert Brox, “Probleme einer Frühdatierung des römischen Primats,” Kairos 18 (1976): 81–99; Robert B. Eno, “The Significance of the List of Roman Bishops in the Anti-Donastist Polemic,” Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993): 158–169. 54 Damasus, Epigram 3: Ad fontes S. Petri. 55 Ambrose, Hymn 12 (Apostolorum passio); Prudentius, Peristephanon XII (Passio apostolorum Petri et Pauli). 56 Hom. XXXII. 2-3, In Epist. ad Rom. 52

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Damasus’ longest and most elaborate verse using biblical material is dedicated to Saint Paul.57 This, however, was not written for a catacomb shrine, but to preface the Pauline letters in the New Testament. Damasus’ special interest in Paul is also shown by St. Paul’s basilica outside the walls that might have originally started as a papal project.58 From Topography to Hagiography Even from a rapid survey of Damasus’ epigrams on Rome’s greatest saints it is clear that their hagiographical potential is rather meager. Written in Classical, Virgilian verse, the Damasian inscriptions possess an exceptionally sober hagiographical outlook: no legends, no miracles—not even stories. Should we conclude with Dom Duchesne that the Damasian epigrams actually “do not contain anything” on which later hagiographers might have built? Damasus’ inscriptions were held in great esteem both by generations immediately following the pontificate and by early medieval pilgrims.59 The epigrams were imitated and copied: the pseudodamasiana manifest the interest in Damasus’ work and also report about renovations of Damasian inscriptions. The epigrams were popular, because they were useful: as many sacred “billboards,” they showed the way to the holy places. Once collected, these epigrams formed a sort of guidebook for the pious tourist.60 For, instead of creating a single “super-memorial” in a chosen funerary area, Damasus systematically mapped the holy tombs in the underground maze of the Roman suburbia and placed his poetry in almost every catacomb outside Rome: Via Portuensis - Epigram 6, Faustinus and Viatrix Via Ostiensis - Epigram 7, Felix and Adauctus 57

Damasus, Epigram 1: Versus in Beatum Paulum apostolum. Richard Krautheimer, “Intorno alla fondazione di San Paolo fuori le mura,” Rendiconti di Pontificia Accademia 53–54 (1981–1982): 207–220. 59 Gerold Walser, ed., Die Einsiedler Inschriftensammlung und der Pilgerführer durch Rom (Codex Einsiedlensis 326) (Stuttgart and Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1987). 60 Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe Zucchetti, eds., Codice topografico della Città di Roma (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1942). 58


Via Ardeatina Coemeterium Domitillae: - Epigram 8, Nereus and Achilleus Via Appia Coemeterium Callixti - Epigram 15, Tarsicius - Epigram 16, on the popes - Epigram 17, Pope Xystus II - Epigram 18, Pope Eusebius - Epigram 50, Pope Mark in San Sebastiano ad catacumbas - Epigram 20, Peter and Paul Coemeterium Praetextati - Epigram 25, Ianuarius - Epigram 25, Felicissimus and Agapetus Via Labicana Coemeterium ad duas lauros - Epigram 29, Marcellinus and Peter - Epigram 31, Tiburtius - Epigram 32, Gorgonius Via Tiburtina Coemeterium in Agro Verano - Epigram 33, Lawrence - Epigram 35, Hippolytus Via Nomentana Coemeterium S. Agnetis - Epigram 37, Agnes Via Salaria Coemeterium Priscillae - Epigram 39, Felix and Philip - Epigram 40, Pope Marcellus Coemeterium Iordanis - Epigram 41, Vitalis, Martialis and Alexander Coemeterium Thrasonis - Epigram 42 - Epigram 46, Saturninus

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Ecclesia SS Chrysanthi et Dariae - Epigram 44, Maurus - Epigram 45, Chrysanthius and Daria Via Salaria Vetus Coemeterium Bassillae - Epigram 47, Protus and Hyacinth - Epigram 48, Hermes As a result, the martyrs’ tombs came to form a belt of sacred shrines around Rome. Damasus rewrote the topography of the Urbs and created Christian Rome, the holy city of the apostles and the martyrs. As Sabine MacCormack put it: One of the first to describe this new understanding of the environment systematically was Pope Damasus. His epitaphs of the Roman martyrs not only designated specific places as holy, but also guided the devout visitor through Rome. And they informed the visitor of the city’s Christian topography that had been superimposed on the sacred topography of republic and empire.61

By celebrating the martyrs of Rome “on the spot,” Damasus set Roman hagiography on track for centuries to come.62 Up to the twelfth century, Roman hagiography remained rooted in this local, martyrial paradigm. The Damasian epigrams undoubtedly inspired imaginative thinking about the martyrs of Rome. Although direct connections are hard to make between the pontiff’s “elegant verse” and the early medieval martyrial romances, the fifth-sixth century gesta martyrum built upon this particular legacy. Attempting to identify the core of “authentic ancient tradition” from which the gesta derived, scholars advanced three hypotheses. Albert Dufourcq posited a virtual “passionary” as a source for the martyrial romances,63 Hippolyte Delehaye imagined a virtual “legendary,” an official 61

Sabine MacCormack, “Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert Ousterhout. (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 7–40, on p. 19. 62 Claudio Leonardi, “L’agiografia romana nel secolo IX,” in Hagiographie, culture et sociétés IVe-XIIe siècle (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981), 471–490; Pierre Jounel, Le culte des saints dans les basiliques du Latran et du Vatican au douzième siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1977); Carmela Vircillo Franklin, “Roman Hagiography and Roman Legendaries,” in Roma nell’Alto Medioevo, 2 vols. (Spoleto: Centro di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), 2:857–895. 63 Albert Dufourcq, Étude sur les Gesta martyrum romains, 4 vols. (Paris: Fontemoing, 1900–1907).


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recension about the martyrs of Rome already in the papal library by the time of Gregory the Great,64 while Gian Battista de Rossi proposed the idea that it were the catacombs, or the Christian holy tombs, that triggered the development of martyr stories.65 Damasus’ production of martyrial space and martyrial lore, his crowning of Rome with a ring of holy shrines and his emphasis on Rome’s “countless martyrs” buried in the catacombs were elements exploited by medieval hagiographers. The bishop of Rome revived and created a specific, historically informed and episcopally controlled martyr tradition whose lesson was not entirely lost on the compilers of the gesta martyrum.

64

Hippolyte Delehaye, Étude sur le légendier romain: Les saints de novembre et de décembre, Subsidia Hagiographica 23 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1936). 65 Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Roma sotterranea cristiana, descritta ed illustrata, 3 vols. (Rome: Cromo-litografia pontificia, 1864–1877), 3:xxii.

Theological Self-Definition in Byzantine Miraculous Healing* Ildikó CSEPREGI

Not only individuals (pilgrims, ecclesiastical officials or the hagiographers), but the saints themselves and their cults were in search of a theological identity. In my paper I shall first present how the dogmatic and Christological debates of the time manifested themselves during the events of ritual healing and how they were described in the miracle stories. The discussion involves the role of images and art objects, taking the Eucharist and confessing Orthodoxy or repudiating heretical teachings and practices as part of the miraculous cure. These acts could be performed by the pilgrims, often as a condition of the cure but could be done as an example by the saints themselves. Furthermore I will show how the definition of Orthodoxy and heresy changed in the miracle narratives and how the cults themselves could actually change their theological standing. Of all the things Christianity inherited from the ancient pagan religions, the cult sites, often preserved together with their cult functions, were of towering importance. This was true especially of places of healing, where the social demand was so strong and the connotations of the place so persistent that abolition of the old pagan cult practice proved impossible. In particular cases when the transition took place within a short period of time, the Christian saints inherited the pilgrims as well.1 It is no less interesting that around healing sanctuaries of great fame, the sick supplicants turned to the healers even if they were aware that their own religious belief differed from that of the cult place, not only from “pagans,” but from the more seriously treated heretics as well. I would like to illustrate * This article is based on a paper presented at the second Hagiotheca Conference in Split, 2008. Its completion was supported by the generous grant of the Eötvös József Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Hungarian State held at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. 1 An illuminating example is the case of the Athenian Asclepieion; see: Alison Frantz, “From Paganism to Christianity in the Temples of Athens,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 19 (1965): 187–207.

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this discrepancy of faith between patients and healers, or sometimes even within the cult of the saint. I have chosen my examples from the practice of Byzantine incubation, that is dream healing,2 from the miracles of Saint Thecla,3 Cosmas and Damian,4 Cyrus and John,5 Saint Artemius6 and Saint Dometius.7 My points of departure are the three following hypotheses: 1) that Orthodoxy was defined from various angles, often contradicting each other; 2) that hagiography of the popular miracle working saints was used as theological propaganda—both intentionally and unintentionally; and 3) that the context of illness and healing facilitated the manifestation of contrasting credos, since it is a situation when the sick heretic may turn to the “Orthodox” healer saint in spite of the acknowledged differences of belief. The essence of this ritual of temple sleep consisted in the pilgrim’s journey to the healing site with the explicit aim of sleeping inside the sanctuary and encountering the healer in a dream, who then either cured him with a sudden miracle, or prescribed a no less miraculous treatment. Of both pagan as well as Christian incubation it can be stated that the cult place was more important than the figure of the healer. The central character of this direct contact with the sacred place resulted on the one hand in the adoption of ancient sites by Christian healer-saints, and on the 2

On pagan and Christian incubation: Ludwig Deubner, De Incubatione Capita Quattor (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), and Mary Hamilton, Incubation: The Cure of Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches (London: Henderson, 1906). 3 For the texts of the miracle collections (fifth century), see Gilbert Dagron, Vie et Miracles de Sainte Thècle: Texte Grec, traduction et commentaire (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1978), henceforth: MT; and also André-Jean Festugière, ed., Sainte Thècle, Saints Côme et Damien, Saints Cyr et Jean (extraits), Saint Georges (Paris: Picard, 1971). 4 For Cosmas and Damian from the sixth to the twelfth century, see Ludwig Deubner, St. Kosmas und Damian: Texte und Einleitung (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), henceforth: KDM; and the earlier material surviving in the tenth-century Codex Londoniensis: Ernst Rupprecht, ed., Cosmae et Damiani sanctorum medicorum vita et miracula e codice Londoniensi, Neue Deutsche Forschungen 20 (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1935). 5 For Cyrus and John (seventh century): Natalio Fernandez Marcos, Los Thaumata de Sofronio: Contribucion al estudio de la incubatio cristiana (Madrid: Instituto Antonio de Nebrija, 1975), henceforth: MCJ; Sophrone de Jérusalem, Miracles des saints Cyr et Jean, trad. comm. Jean Gascou (Paris: De Boccard, 2006). 6 For Saint Artemius (seventh century), see Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt, eds., The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracle Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-century Byzantium (Leiden: Brill, 1997). 7 “Acta Graeca S. Dometii Martyris,” Analecta Bollandiana 19 (1900): 285–320, on pp. 310–313.

Theological Self-Definition in Byzantine Miraculous Healing

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other, in that patients continued to frequent the cult places even after its change of occupant.8 Such was the source of the error of the Greek who addressed saint Cosmas and Damian as Castor and Pollux,9 or the two pagan rhetors who attributed a cure by Saint Thecla to the hero Sarpedonius, her pagan predecessor on the same site.10 On such occasions, the Christian healers might content themselves with unveiling their identity. Conversion to Christianity was either made as a condition of the cure or was a result of the miracle. In this way, Cosmas and Damian could prescribe pork as a remedy for a Jewish woman—and her willingness to break with her ancestral faith brings immediate recovery, and hence the miracle leads to her becoming Christian.11 Her case, and those of pagan Greeks who were to be baptized before or after the cure, show that non-Christians also turned to the doctor-saints in order to get healed. These “non-Christians” were far from forming a homogeneous group. Among them we find pagan Greek men of letters, scholars and philosophers, who contrast the whole of their cultural knowledge with the power of the saints. They may as well be physicians, claiming superiority due to the methods of Hippocrates and Galen and thus challenging the healers in the medical field.12 The saints (or the hagiographers) treated in the same way those Christians who were defined rather elusively as the enemies of Orthodoxy and against whom the holy healers apply an even harsher attitude than to patients still to be converted. That the entire religious context moves within the realm of illness, allows the hagiographers to formulate their views on heresies in terms of spiritual and physical maladies and hence Orthodox, primarily non-thaumaturgic rituals also become endowed by powers that combat miraculously both bodily deformities and unorthodox beliefs. The reasons for which non-Christians and heretics turned to the saints moved within a wide range, as did the results of their consultations: one might find his way to the saint through Christian friends or family mem8

In the case of saint Cyrus and John we encounter the conscious replacement of the cult—first, probably that of the cult site and with time passing, the previous cult practice (temple sleep) was also taken over by the Christians. Cf. note 25. 9 KDM, 9 10 MT, 39 and 40. 11 KDM, 2; describing miraculous remedy, which contradicts to the patient’s belief was common. 12 Like Gesius in MCJ, 30; cf. Vivian Nutton, “From Galen to Alexander: Aspects of Medicine and Medical Practice in Late Antiquity,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 1–14, esp. 4n22 and 6n43.

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bers, sometimes out of an intellectual curiosity, or turn to the healers only in despair over their illness. As a consequence of the cure, the healed and converted supplicant may return to his co-religionists, and after he narrates his own experience, the story may end with the conversion of the entire group. In special circumstances, giving up their former pagan or sectarian beliefs, they might become members of a lay community centered on the cult; or, official church personnel, priests, wardens, deacons, and even the saint’s hagiographer. Cosmas and Damian had a hagiographer, who was a heretic—and remained so, as the wholly curious story attested to in KDM 26: A man, a member of an unspecified heretical sect, although he was not sick, went to the Saturday night vigil of the saints and falling there asleep, he underwent a strange test of faith. The nature of heretics is being incredulous— wrote the miracle writer and thus Cosmas and Damian appeared to the man not to convince him of becoming orthodox (there is no attempt at this in the whole miracle) but to dispel his incredulity (in the miracle working capacity of the saints). The healer indicated the remedy for a sick noblewoman lying nearby and our man was doubly tried: whether he believes the repeating dreams and whether he had the courage to approach the lady and tell her the saints’ recommendations. After all that had happened, the saints benefited the heretic with an oracle, saying that he would become the head of the sect. Meanwhile he started to frequent regularly the saints’ church and when the oracle came true in the time indicated, he had set himself the task of writing the saints’ miracles, a task that he considered as a way to the true faith: “Composing hagiography made one a hagiographer.”13 Thecla’s hagiographer was a newly converted Greek rhetor and, so far Christian Orthodoxy was concerned, a somewhat suspicious figure: he told in a miracle that he was excommunicated by the bishop of Seleucia but we never learn the reason for it. He was only modestly interested in heretics;14 he was more involved with Greek pagans and conversion to Christianity. Yet the stating of simple conversion was soon not enough: with the radicalization of Christological debates, the healer could require 13

Derek Krueger, Writing and Holyness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 2. See also Claudia Rapp’s ideas on the parallel status of the saint’s life and writing about it: “Byzantine Hagiographers as Antiquarians, Seventh to Tenth Centuries,” In Bosphorus: Essays in Honour of Cyril Mango, ed. Stephanos Efthymiadis, Claudia Rapp, and Dimitris Tsongarakis (Amsterdam: Hakkert: 1995), 31–44, on p. 41. 14 MT, 10 and 13.


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the confession of a particular credo as did Thecla, appearing in her real form in daylight, to a blaspheming Greek nobleman, with the following words: Hence, now that you have understood who I am, and have paid a convenient price for your incredulity, stand up, go, get baptized, approach the mysteries, prostrate yourself, confess the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the uncreated and consubstantial Trinity who is the creator of all things, intelligible and sensible, visible and invisible, who carries and directs all, governs and rules all; in addition to these, confess the real presence through the flesh, the advent and coming of the Only-Begotten (I mean the Incarnation and the birth from Mary the virgin, the Theotokos), confess His cross and His death, His Resurrection and Ascension; then both your body and your soul will become healthy, and happily you will inhabit this earth, happily you will live, and happily you will go to heaven, where you will live with great surety with Christ the Lord.15

This is a clear summary of everything that a person newly converted to Christianity, and what is more, Orthodox Cyrillian Christianity, had to believe and perform. The taking of the Eucharist is here an intermediate element of the act of confession, which follows baptism and takes place together with the statement of the credo. As we shall see, communion acquired a central role in numerous miracles of incubation healers but it figured exclusively in connection with pagans, Jews or heretics and became the most elaborate symbol of what the saint or his hagiographer defined as Orthodox.16 A more subtle definition of Orthodoxy is expressed in a miracle of saint Cosmas and Damian, the par excellence incubation healers, where a mute and deaf woman was healed while and by singing the Trishagion, the liturgical exponent of Trinitarian theology in line with the Nicean and Chalcedonian creed.17 But anti-heretical propaganda was usually sharper and the definition of Orthodoxy is more complex: Among the miracles of Cosmas and Damian we read a story about an Arian heretic.18 The narrative begins with a short prologue about how magnanimous the saints are that they heal not only the believers of the right faith, but also the enemies 15

MT, 14. I analysed this phenomenon in “Mysteries for the Uninitiated: The Role and Symbolism of the Eucharist in Miraculous Dream Healing.” in The Eucharist in Theology and Philosophy: Issues of Doctrinal History in East and West from the Patristic Age to the Reformation, ed. István Perczel, Réka Forrai, and György Geréby (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), 97–130. 17 KDM, 7. 18 KDM, 17. 16

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of Orthodoxy. The sick man, arriving at the church, did not dare to undergo incubation together with the rest of the patients, exactly because he was well aware of being considered a heretic. Thus he was waiting for the curative dream in an external hall. During the first visit of the saints he witnessed in his dream how they dissuaded each other from saving him, saying, let him wait, if he is delaying to convert: the orthodox patients have priority. In the second dream the dialogue is similar, but finally one of the saints urges the other to heal the heretic, as quickly as he can, so that he would not occupy the place of the orthodox, and after a miraculous intervention they order him to leave the sanctuary, “because we hate you for your heresy.” From the viewpoint of the saints, the hagiographer, and his readers, Orthodoxy in this miracle labeled the credo established by the Council of Nicea (325), and confirmed by the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), in the centre of which stood the definition of Christ’s double nature: at once divine and human. In Nicea they condemned Arius, who taught that Christ the Son was subject to the Father, and not of the same nature with him. In Ephesus they condemned Nestorius who emphasized Christ’s human nature: as Mary gave birth to the human Jesus, he denied the epithet Theotokos, the Bearer of God. The theological answer to the teachings of Nestorius was the monophysite movement, which proclaimed the one, exclusively divine nature of Christ, a teaching that from the fifth century onwards was supported by a decisive majority in Asia Minor, Syria, Persia and in Egypt (and with time became an independent church). In Chalcedon, with the support of the emperor Marcianos and Pope Leo, the diphysites triumphed, those who believed in the two natures and their consubstantiality. At the same time, by forging ecclesiastical authority from the political leadership of Constantinople, they made their credo the cornerstone of Orthodoxy. In the popularization (or reinforcement) of the dogmas, cult practices and miracle accounts played no small role; for in them often the very act of confession is the miracle or the saint’s personal siding. For example, in Saint Thecla’s martyrion in Seleucia there was an inscription in gilded mosaic on the wall, “proclaiming to all people the consubstantiality of the holy and sublime Trinity.”19 Symposius, the bishop of Seleucia and at that time an Arian, wanted to erase this inscription but the worker entrusted with the destruction fell from the ladder because of Thecla’s intervention. The hagiographer cautiously attributed Symposius’ later conversion to this event: his return to Orthodoxy was 19

MT, 10.


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expressed by his public confession of the dogma inscribed on this very mosaic. The previously quoted story of the Arian confronting the Chalcedonian saints, is from the well-known and wide-spread miracle collection of Cosmas and Damian. It figures, however, in another corpus of the saints’ miracles as well: in 1907 a hitherto unknown version of Cosmas and Damian miracles came to light in Egypt, a collection, written in a simple style that most probably represents an earlier phase of their incubation cult.20 The majority of the miracles—the so-called London Codex—are identical with the stories of the later and more elaborated corpus. But regardless of the analogous nature of the miracles, the reader is struck by the significantly different theological underpinning of these wondrous cures. In the version of the same miracle of the Arian heretic, the London Codex identifies the protagonist as one “who had two illnesses: one was the grave physical illness... the other, spiritual one: the heresy of the diphysites.” All the details of the story are identical: the patient did not dare to sleep inside the church, “knowing well, that he is of a creed contrary to that of the saints,” and the saints sent him away with the same words, signaling the priority the Orthodox patients should enjoy—only the orthodoxies are turned upside-down: here the diphysite Chalcedonian is the heretic, and monophysites are numbered as Orthodox. The same theological message is conveyed in the 19th miracle of the London Codex, the protagonist of which is “a Nestorian man, who also accepted the latter sect’s hateful teachings, separating Christ after the Incarnation into two natures and never admitting His Mother to be the Bearer of God. He fell ill with a horrendous disease.” Since his life was in peril because of an abscess on his chest, he wanted to see his daughter for the last time, who lived as a nun in the monastery next to the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian: While the heretic was lying there and invoking the saints, somebody appeared to him and very angrily demanded that he should bow and say: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,’ and everything that follows up to the verse “The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us.” When the _______________ 20

Rupprecht, ed., Cosmae et Damiani sanctorum medicorum vita; Robert de Rustafjaell, The Light of Egypt from Recently Discovered Predynastic and Early Christain Records (London: Kegan Paul, 1909); Michel Van Esbroeck, “La diffusion orientale de la légende des saints Cosme et Damien,” in Hagiographie, Cultures et Sociétés IV–XII. siècles: Actes du Colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979) (Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1985), 61–77.

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man immediately confessed this, the other added ‘Consequently, if the Word is God and the Word was made flesh and dwelled among men, then He is in no way divided, but is one and His nature is one; and the one who gave birth to Him, having given birth to God the Word in the flesh, is the Bearer of God.’ Having said this, he vanished.

The saints appeared again to the man and testified that it was they who wanted to make him say this confession, and also revealed that beans would be the remedy for his illness. “The man, having done as he was ordered, quickly found relief from his sickness. And until the end of his life he remained a right confessor of the one, undivided nature of God the Word and of that the Virgin Mary is the Bearer of God…” The text is clearly based on an anti-Chalcedonian creed. The error attributed to the “Nestorian” is that, according to him, Christ exists in two natures after the Incarnation. That is simply the dogma of Chalcedon, which the antiChalcedonian author of the miracle calls Nestorian. This miracle must have been dear to the scribe or to those who had commissioned the manuscript, since these two folia, where the record is, are outstandingly decorated in comparison with the simplicity of the rest of the codex.21 In the narratives of the London Codex there are several characteristics, which may point to that collection having been written in Egypt or, that a story-material known from elsewhere or the version of the text that served as the basis of the copy, gained a local coloring. In the background of these features lies the fact that the major part of Egypt, (together with Syria) did not accept the Chalcedonian credo. Seeing side by side the two versions of Cosmas and Damian’s miracles, the questions arise: whether the London Codex was a monophysite reworking of a diphysite text, written in Egypt for the anti-Chalcedonian adherents of the cult? Did a monophysite incubation cult exist at the place where the collection was read? Or quite the contrary: instead of representing a monophysite reworking, the Codex attests to a healing cult of originally monophysite character (it actually did originate from Syria): a cult that after it reached the capital and it became really popular there, underwent a theological and dogmatic transformation? Within the realm of Byzantine incubation we have evidence for both phenomena. Saint Artemios, who by the seventh century had become a prominent incubation healer in Constantinople, was himself an Arian and had been first venerated among Arians in Antioch. The expansion of his fame and the beginning of his veneration among the non-Arians can be 21

The manuscript is in the British Library: Cod. Lond. Add. 37534.


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attributed to his successful miraculous cures. “Hence, [...] it was Artemios’ reputation as a worker of cures that led first to his acceptance among non-Arians and eventually to the translation of his relics to Constantinople.”22 Here his Arian past had faded to such an extent that in the seventh-century compilation of his miracles the anti-heretical outbursts did not spare Arius either. More complex is the healing cult of Saint Dometius, a fourth-century minor incubation healer saint.23 According to his Syriac Vita the saint was once cured miraculously near a hill called Cyrrhus and from that time onwards he also practiced this thaumaturgic gift. Based on the testimony of the Greek Vita, Dometius once went to the martyrion of Saint Cosmas and Damian in the town of Cyrrhus (in northern Syria, near Aleppo), where he encountered a patient who had practiced incubation for a long time there to no avail. Dometius suggested to him that instead of incubation he should take the Eucharist and when he did, it finally achieved a cure for him. The dichotomy between the two places called Cyrrhus is explained by the hypothesis that Dometius may have had a Nestorian healing cult on Cyrrhus hill in juxtaposition to the monophysite healing cult of Cosmas and Damian in the city of Cyrrhus. We learn from Severus of Antioch (from a sermon around AD 514) that in his time there was a Monophysite church of Saint Dometios in Antioch where incubation was practiced. Severus wrote that Dometius was from Cyrrhus and contrasted him to the “Nestorian” Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus (423–457 AD). Out of this hagiographical chaos the most likely conclusion may well be that a Nestorian incubation cult was first formed around Dometius to counterbalance the nearby monophysite dream healing cult of Cosmas and Damian. With the passing of time, the figure of Dometius was “re-programmed” by the monophysites. Thus, he became a converted former Nestorian they could use in their fights with Theodoret. Incubation played an important role in both cases; either in the negative approach of the Greek Vita or the positive one of the Syriac Life. The London Codex of Cosmas and Damian contains a valuable miracle story illustrating that the rivalry between cult places could be expressed 22

Nesbitt, “Introduction,” in Crisafulli and Nesbitt, eds., The Miracles of St. Artemios, 4; for more on Artemios’s cult and on the miracle collection, see John F. Haldon, “Supplementary Essay: The Miracles of Artemios and Contemporary Attitudes; Context and Significance,” in Crisafulli and Nesbitt, eds., The Miracles of St. Artemios, 31–73. 23 Mark Parmentier, “Incubatie in de antike hagiografie,” in De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het cristendom, ed. Antonius Hilhorst (Nijmegen: Dekker and Van de Vegt, 1988), 27–40.

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not only in terms of different healers—for that latter hagiography offers countless examples. Often the saints themselves directed their worshippers to another saint’s sphere of competence. The fact that cultic healers were often specialized lay behind this re-distribution of clientele. Saint Artemius dealt only with male hernias, directing his female patients to Saint Febronia. In miracle 18 of the London Codex an eye-patient started to practice incubation in Cyrrhus in the Syrian church of Cosmas and Damian (without any evidence about the theological standing of this church, this place was probably the starting point of their cult). But the saints appeared in a dream to the patient and directed him to their other church in Constantinople. The shift in emphasis within the same cult of saints can be explained by a change in theological power-relations but it cannot be excluded that the change was related to the growing popularity of the thaumaturgic centre in the capital (and simply conforming to the customary way incubation was practiced there) and not the opposition of orthodoxies.24 An even more conscious theological tailoring brought to life the cult of saints Cyrus and John in Egyptian Menouthis (Aboukir).25 Even the establishment of the cult was a product of an arbitrary ecclesiastical plan of Cyril of Alexandria. Menouthis hosted one of the most important Isis sanctuaries in Egypt, where miraculous healing was obtained through 24

Paul Peeters, in his article “S. Dometios le martyr et S. Dometios le médecin,” Analecta Bollandiana 57 (1939): 72–104, distinguished two persons named Dometius: the healer of Mount Cyrrhus, i.e. Saint Dometius the Physician from the town of Cyrrhus, and Saint Dometius the Martyr or the Persian. Yet their two legends complement each other; in Peeters’ view, the hagiographer of the less well-known Dometius the Physician consciously referred to the town of Cyrrhus in order to recall in the reader the figures and the efficacy of the famous anargyroi, Cosmas and Damian. The hagiographer of Dometius the Persian, on the other hand, dated the activity of his Dometius earlier, urged on by the—by that time significant—popularity of Dometius the Physician, as well as by a sense of rivalry. 25 cf. Sarolta Takács, “The Magic of Isis Replaced or Cyril of Alexandria’s Attempt at Redirecting Religious Devotion,” ΠΟΙΚΙΛΑ ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΝΑ 13 (1994): 489–507; JeanMarie Sansterre, “Apparitions et miracles à Menouthis: De l’incubation païenne à l’incubation chretienne,” in Apparitions et miracles, ed. Alain Dierkens, (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1991), 69–83; Dominic Montserrat, “Pilgrimage to the shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 257– 279; Rudolf Herzog, “Der Kampf um den Kult von Menuthis,” in Pisciculi: Studien zur Religion und Kultur des Altertums; Franz Joseph Dölger zum sechzigsten Geburtstage dargeboten von Freunden, Verehrern und Schülern, ed. Theodor Klauser and Adolf Rücker (Münster: Aschendorff, 1939), 117–124.


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incubation. Cyril swore to exterminate the traces of the Isis cult, and aimed not only at destroying the pagan cult, but established a proper Christian healing cult instead. Referring to a dream, he “found” the bones of the previously unknown Cyrus and John in order to build around them the new, Christianized cult. Together with the pagan occupant of the site, Lady Isis (Cyra, hence the name of the Christian counterpart: Saint Cyrus) he wished to do away with incubation as well, but the cult practice was so strongly linked to the cult place that this proved to be impossible. After Cyril’s tendentious Christianized reworking of the cult, it was the seventhcentury hagiographer, Sophronius, the later patriarch of Jerusalem, who gave the cult a marked Orthodox standing through the miracles. In an Egypt that was monophysite, for Sophronius personally Orthodoxy meant the Chalcedonian creed, and he voiced his faith using the saints themselves as his mouthpiece. Hence Cyrus and John lecture in a dream to a heretic, a follower of Julian of Halicarnassus: “They talked to him in doctrinal terms, explaining the truth preached in the Church and in this way they ascertained the teaching about the saving union of Christ, our God.”26 Just as in this case, the healers make on other occasions as well the confession of Orthodoxy as the condition of the miraculous cure, and as an outward sign, they usually request the taking of the Eucharist in the Orthodox way. What was the unorthodox way of Communion is depicted in a miracle of a man, who was one “of those who cut themselves off from the Catholic Church [...] namely he was a heretic, a follower of Julian of Halicarnassus.”27 In a series of incubation dreams, instead of bringing a cure, the saints first inflict pain upon the man until he promises to take Orthodox Communion; and then to test his state of mind the saints visit him again in disguise and invite him to receive the Eucharist together with them. The man refuses, and according to the custom of heretics, he asked for oil from the lamp burning on the saints’ tomb instead of bread and wine. This miracle opens a separate unit within the miracle corpus of Saints Cyrus and John, in the centre of the collection. Their prominent placement within the corpus attests the importance that Sophronius the hagiographer attributed to them. These miracles (36, 37, 38 and 39) all describe the saints forcing heretics (monophysites) to take the Eucharist in the Orthodox way and confess the creed of Chalcedon. In the next episode28 Communion is regarded as a cure for spiritual blindness. This fun26

MCJ, 12. MCJ, 36. 28 MCJ, 37. 27

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damental conceptual unity of bodily and spiritual healing is expressed in the patient’s double infirmity: the blindness of his faith is his heresy (he is a follower of Theodosius and Severus, that is, a monophysite from the Chalcedonian point of view, and a sub-deacon of the community), of which the blindness of his eyes is rather an outward symbol. He waits in the church for a cure for more than a year but refuses to take Communion. Once in a dream he sees himself praying for health at the tomb of the saints, who appear and lead him to the altar, offering him bread. They all, that is to say the saints and the patient, receive it, and drink wine afterwards; finally the saints advise him to do the same when awake. In the morning, he quickly fulfils this order, and on the third day his eyesight returns, together with the illumination of his soul. But soon he relapses, because he must take the post of his dead father, who was the head of a Severian community. Saints Cyrus and John appear in front of him on his way home, give him a slap, and take away his regained sight. When he understands why, he repents and after a period of incubation lasting three days and nights, he is visited by a dream referring to the miracles of Jesus. He wakes up cured and becomes a monk, the servant of the martyrs. The protagonist of the next miracle29 suffers from the same diseases, blindness and heresy. After four months of fruitless waiting, the saints appear in a dream dressed as monks, and invite him to the sacristy, where they offer him bread with the image of the cross impressed in it. Three times Cyrus hands the man the bread; three times the man drops it involuntarily. Cyrus sighs and sadly regrets that the man never came to receive the Eucharist, and hence they cannot grant his wish. When awake, the patient hurries to Communion: “He hastened to the Communion of the Catholic Church and after partaking in her mysteries his eyesight was restored. Because of this, even his servant has become one of the faithful sheep of the Saviour, considering it clear madness, although a Barbarian, to fight against God, the saints, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox faith.” But when our man is asked by his servant whether at home they will also retain this new habit of taking the Orthodox Communion, he answers thus: “While we are here, we do what the saints order. When we leave, we keep our own doctrines as before and the faith transmitted by our fathers.” Small wonder, then, that divine punishment strikes him with pains and restores his former blindness. When the saints reveal to him the cause, a more elaborated initiation, a real mystagogia is necessary. The man re29

MCJ, 38.


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ceives the sacraments directly from the hands of a beautiful maiden in bright garments, Ecclesia herself, the Bride of Christ. The protagonist of another miracle from the set of forced Eucharist stories30 was a certain Peter, a prior of an Egyptian monophysite group, which, like many others, refused to accept the Council of Chalcedon. Seeking cure in the Church of Saints Cyrus and John, when he hears that the condition of cure would be the taking of the Orthodox Communion, he said it was a bad idea and he cursed the Chalcedonian synod, “because— says the hagiographer—out of irrationality and barbaric feeling the Egyptians show a great hatred against this sacred council, just like once against the people of Israel, who were their relatives and parents. Hence Peter said that neither he wanted to obtain health, nor consent what was brought together at the synod of Chalcedon.” But the saints repeatedly confess their Chalcedonian faith and urge Peter to take Communion. “While he was still hesitating whether to partake in the mysteries, they said: ‘Is it not sufficient for you, o Peter, to believe as we do and to join us in the matter of faith?’ But he dared to answer them again in the following way: ‘Is this true? You, the great servants of Christ, also believe like the council of Chalcedon?’ And the saints approved that they agree with the sacred multitude of the holy men and that they believe according to the faith of the council of Chalcedon. They also declared that the definition of the aforementioned council constitutes the correct faith and the God-inspired preaching.” The personal conviction of the hagiographer, the Chalcedonian Sophronius, contests what was considered Orthodox in the surroundings of the cult by most of the pilgrims. Through their hagiographer the saints are Orthodox in a way contrary both to their cult place and their suppliants. The majority of the miracle collections I was dealing with share the Chalcedonian propaganda of Sophronius, attacking the teachings of Arius, Nestorius, Theodosius, Severus, and Julian of Halicarnassus but the monophysite London Codex’s definition of Orthodoxy allows a glimpse into the variety of Orthodoxies and the changing definition of it, phenomena that point to shifts of emphasis that rivaling healing cults underwent, and to changes of theological climate within the same cult itself. The laudable skill of all these hagiographers of miraculous healing is that they exploited in their theological propaganda the very “genre” of incubation narratives, by picturing the healer’s recitation of a creed as a prescribed medicine, and presenting the Orthodox Eucharist and other gestures of confession as 30

MCJ, 39.

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thaumaturgic remedies, functioning in the same way as prescribed herbs or exercises. But far more than a source for the history of Christological debates, the miracles of Byzantine incubation reflect the parallel existence of principles of faith, challenging each other, and they show even more the anxieties, expectations and power struggles of given communities. The narratives reach their reader in a way that even if theological redaction permeates the sources to a great extent, the basic layer of the miracle stories is that of personal experience. Hence the reader-listener may witness real internal struggles, when a patient is to measure what compromise he is to make as a price of healing: whether he can implore the saints as a heretic, what is the risk of breaking away from his or her family and fellows, or on the contrary: what it means to stand out for them. The fact that these stories of miraculous healing are at the same time miroirs des corps and miroirs des âmes means that not only do they shed light upon man’s relationship to illness, the sacred, conviction or sin but they also highlight those human situations, where the personal voice overcomes the impersonal theological message, that at the end called them to life.

(Re)claiming Adalbert Patristic Quotations and Their Function in Canaparius’ Vita S. Adalberti* Cristian GAŞPAR

Stories about rowdy schoolboys and their horsing around are not exactly what one would expect to read in an edifying text such as a saint’s Life. Yet this is precisely what readers can find in one of the early chapters of the tenth-century Life of St. Adalbert,1 bishop of Prague.2 In a passage set during Adalbert’s schooldays, the author of this vita, generally *

I owe my initial meeting with St. Adalbert and his hagiographers to Gábor Klaniczay, who has supported my research ever since with wise and always useful advice, collegial trust, and remarkable patience. It is with deep gratitude that I present to him this first study on the Vita Adalberti, the primitiae of what is yet to come. 1 BHL 37, 37a, 37b, here referred to as VA. This text was composed most probably in 999 in Rome, at the request of Emperor Otto III, on the basis of information provided by Gaudentius-Radim (d. ca. 1006), Adalbert’s younger brother and longtime companion. The best critical edition remains Św. Wojciecha biskupa i męczennika żywot pierwszy = S. Adalberti Pragensis episcopi et martyris vita prior, ed. Jadwiga Karwasińska, MPH, n.s., 4, pt. 1 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1962). This has now been reprinted, without the critical apparatus, but with a facsimile edition of the oldest manuscript of the VA, a Polish translation by K. Abgarowicz, and useful annotations as Jan Kanapariusz, Świętego Wojciecha żywot pierwszy (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo/obraz terytoria, 2009). 2 The only recent overview of St. Adalbert’s life in English is Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050 (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 207–211. The most complete monograph is that of Gerard Labuda, Święty Wojciech: Biskup-męczennik, patron Polski, Czech i Węgier (Saint Adalbert: The martyr bishop, patron of the Poles, the Czechs, and the Hungarians), 2nd ed. (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2004), English summary at 354–357. For an exhaustive bibliography on the life and cult of St. Adalbert, see Aleksandra Witkowska and Joanna Nastalska, Święty Wojciech: Życie i kult; bibliografia do roku 1999 (Saint Adalbert: His life and cult; a bibliography up to 1999) (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2002).

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identified as Iohannes Canaparius,3 tells how Adalbert came very close— the closest he would ever get!—to having sex: One day, as Adalbert was coming back from school, one of those walking with him knocked to the ground a girl who was passing by and, just for fun, pushed him down on top of her. All the students came running up and stood by expecting, amidst uproars of laughter, to see what he would do next. Well, he was fully convinced—o, admirable ignorance! [o bona stultitia!]—that, as he had been on top of the fully-clothed virgin, he had in fact had intercourse with her. Therefore, getting off the odious virgin and up to his feet, that admirably naive boy [bene simplex puer] abandoned himself to most bitter lamentations and, his eyes drenched by endless streams of tears, he said: “Miserable me! I had sex!”;4 then, pointing his finger at the instigator of his crime: “He made me do it!”.5

There are many remarkable things about this charming vignette, one of several which enliven the hagiographic narrative that accompanies Adalbert from his birth ca. 956 in Libice (Central-Eastern Bohemia), through his schooldays at the cathedral school in Magdeburg, his twice failed career as a bishop of Prague (sed. 983–989 and 991–995), his brief spells of wandering and settled monastic life in between (990–991 and 995–996), and finally to his martyrdom among the pagan Prussians on 23 April 997. In my view, one of the most interesting features of the passage just quoted is the skillful way its author wove it into the texture of his narrative, putting, as he often does throughout his Vita Adalberti, a fictional episode, most probably invented ad hoc, to good use. In what follows I intend to take a 3

Variously called Giovanni di Cannapara and Giovanni Canapario, a Benedictine monk at the monastery of SS. Alexius and Boniface on the Aventine Hill in Rome, whose abbot he was between ca. 997 and his death in 1004. Canaparius’ authorship of the VA was first advocated by G. H. Pertz in his 1841 MGH edition and has been accepted since by a majority of scholars. For an overview of the debates, see Jadwiga Karwasińska and Helena Chłopocka, “Sprawa autorstwa,” in Kanapariusz, Świętego Wojciecha, 182–186. 4 Most modern translations render nupseram in this passage as “I got married,” thus missing the point of Canaparius’ forceful description of Adalbert’s horror of sex, an appropriate feature of the monastic profile the author constructed for his hero. Yet Lat. nubo is commonly used with the meaning “to have sex,” which I believe fits this context much better, given Canaparius’ pointed reference to the uestitam uirginem (“fully-clothed virgin”) on top of whom Adalbert found himself, in a position clearly reminiscent of sexual intercourse, not of marriage. 5 VA, 5 (ed. Karwasińska, 8). All English translations are mine unless noted otherwise. My translation is based on the text of the first surviving version of the VA, labeled A or “Imperial/Ottonian redaction” in Karwasińska’s edition. This represents a first revision of an earlier lost original (X) commissioned by Emperor Otto III and produced ca. 999 in Rome most probably by Canaparius himself.

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closer look at how Canaparius used his unquestionable literary skills in order to create a hero whose profile is strongly informed by ideological concerns. I believe this (to a great extent) imagined profile reflects, more than—and certainly in addition to—the events, actions, and motivations associated with the real Adalbert, Canaparius’ own ascetic makeup, his cultural background, and his specific concerns as a high-profile member of SS. Alexius and Boniface, one of the most important Roman monastic communities at the end of the tenth century.6 The interpretation presented here rests on the results of my in-depth research into the textual tradition and literary makeup of Canaparius’ Vita Adalberti. This has allowed me to uncover a wealth of classical and patristic quotations present in the Life, an aspect that until now has been treated inadequately or simply ignored by modern editors and scholars of the text alike.7 A complete and detailed inventory of these quotations (mostly undetected until now) will appear in the apparatus of the Latin text that accompanies my English translation of Canaparius’ Vita Adalberti.8 This is meant to offer an accurate view of the intellectual background of the author of the first Life of St. Adalbert. Numerous phrases and passages quoted verbatim or creatively adapted from the works of classical Latin authors, and especially the poetic tags which he favors,9 suggest that our author had received a thorough classical training (still available in tenth-century urban Italy) before taking on the monastic habit. At the same time, my research has also uncovered a number of patristic quotations (ranging from longer verbatim quotes to isolated expressions). In what follows, given the space available, I will address a limited 6

On this monastery, where Adalbert sojourned twice (990–991, 995–996), see Jean-Marie Sansterre, “Le Monastère des Saints Boniface et Alexis sur l’Aventin et l’expansion du christianisme dans le cadre de la ‘Renovatio imperii Romanorum’,” Revue Bénédictine 100 (1990): 493–506 with further references. 7 The rather limited indications of such quotations in Karwasińska’s edition are due to Kazimierz Abgarowicz (see her introduction, xlviii). These were simply taken over without any original contribution (or due acknowledgment) in two recent “critical” editions by Jürgen Hoffmann, ed., Vita Adalberti: Früheste Textüberlieferungen der Lebensgeschichte Adalberts von Prag (Essen: Klartext, 2005) and Lorenz Weinrich, ed., Heiligenleben zur deutsch-slawischen Geschichte: Adalbert von Prag und Otto von Bamberg (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 27–69. 8 Scheduled to appear in the bilingual series Central European Medieval Texts at the CEU Press in a volume edited together with Gábor Klaniczay and Marina Miladinov. 9 Among these, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, and Silius Italicus. I intend to study such borrowings in some detail elsewhere.

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selection of these. They document Canaparius’ familiarity with the works of John Cassian and, in one case, with the Letters of Ruricius of Limoges. In addition to his constant references to the Rule of St. Benedict, the extended quotes from various works of Gregory the Great, and occasional phrases lifted from Augustine and Cassiodorus,10 such borrowings point towards a man who was deeply conversant with staple authors of the monastic tradition. Taken together, these indications strongly support the traditional hypothesis—recently questioned on doubtful grounds11—that the first Vita Adalberti, as represented by its earliest surviving redaction, the so-called “Ottonian/Imperial version,” was the work of Iohannes Canaparius, abbot of SS. Alexius and Boniface.12 Returning to the apparently unedifying passage quoted earlier, it is important to note that its true meaning is given not by the story itself (amusing as that is), but by the auctorial inserts (o bona stultitia!, bene simplex puer), the introductory passage preceding it,13 and the lines that follow, which detail (and recommend) the only proper reaction to Adalbert’s sexual sancta simplicitas. It was by doing such and other similar things that the God-filled young boy even at that time attracted to himself the eyes of many, who admired his actions and said: 10

A complete inventory and an analysis will also appear in a separate study. By Johannes Fried, “Gnesen—Aachen—Rom: Otto III. und der Kult des hl. Adalbert; Beobachtungen zum älteren Adalbertsleben,” in Polen und Deutschland vor 1000 Jahren: Die Berliner Tagung über den “Akt von Gnesen,” ed. Michael Borgolte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), 235–272, esp. 245–254 and Hoffmann, Vita Adalberti. Based on the existence of a single twelfth-century manuscript associated with Aachen, both authors reject Canaparius as the probable author of the VA and its Roman origin and claim that the text was authored by Notger of Liège (or someone in his entourage). Such claims, based on a uniquely misinformed view of the complex manuscript tradition of the VA and a surprising ignorance of its literary and stylistic features, are untenable. 12 Canaparius described himself as a conuersus (VA, 29) and a contemporary text referred to him as “illustrious on account of his noble descent and of plentiful means,” (an essential prerequisite for a solid education) and a man who “renounced the things of this world and took up the monastic habit”; Miracula S. Alexii 1: “...nobilitate carnis praepollens et diuitiis affluens, qui monachicum habitum, abrenuntians quae saeculi sunt, susceperit.” MGH SS 4, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, 619. 13 VA, 5 (ed. Karwasińska, 8): “Videamus nunc inter alias uirtutes, quas habuit, quales sanctę simplicitatis effectus quantamque adhuc in puericia positus ostenderit castitatis suę prerogatiuam.” (“Let us see now, among the other virtues that he had, what visible proofs of his holy simplicity and what outstanding degree of spiritual affection he manifested even while still a child!”) My translation is based on the reading in mss. Ll and Rv. 11


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“With his blessing did God bless this child, who, even though he is not yet past the threshold of his childhood, nevertheless aspires so fervently to what is best! O three and four times fortunate, if he could only complete his studies here with unabated dedication and if he could only bring to a suitable end the course of action on which he has embarked!”14

Only read within this interpretative framework the meaning of Adalbert’s imagined intercourse becomes apparent: his involuntary mock sexual encounter and the regrets it triggered function as a suitable and vivid illustration of one of the defining features of his profile, namely his unflinching chastity. This befits a young man who had been dedicated to the Holy Virgin soon after his birth15 and a future ascetic bishop who would constantly chastise his flock for (among other things) their sexual transgressions.16 Just how much of an ascetic feature Adalbert’s horror sexus was meant to be in the context becomes apparent when we take a closer look at the words of praise Canaparius put in the mouth of unnamed observers and admirers of this Deo plenus infantulus “God-filled young boy.” These combine with gusto, as often in the Vita Adalberti, a classical poetic tag (o ter quaterque beatus!)17 with a language strongly reminiscent of the Bible (benedicens benedixit ... Deus) and a hitherto unnoticed quote from one of the founding authors of the Western monastic tradition, John Cassian. Canaparius’ phrase si hec humanitatis studia tota deuotione adimpleuerit et arrepti operis cursum congruo exitu terminauerit adapts Cassian’s humanitatis etiam studia tota deuotione conplentes ita uidimus repente deceptos, ut arreptum opus non potuerint congruo exitu terminare.18 In the original these words, intended as a warning against ascetic failure, were ascribed to St. Antony, the “Father of the Monks.” Applying them to 14

VA, 5 (ibid.) VA, 2 (ed. Karwasińska, 5). 16 VA, 12 (ed. Karwasińska, 18) details the reasons that led Adalbert to abandon his see and his flock: “The first and rather the most important reason was polygamy; second, the odious marriages of the clergy.” 17 Cf. Vergil, Aen. 1.94. 18 Conl. 2.2.3: “[those] who even fulfill the demands of hospitality with the outmost devotion, are so suddenly deceived that they are unable to bring to a satisfactory conclusion the work that they have begun.” Latin text from Cassianus, Opera, CSEL, vol. 13, Conlationes XXIIII, ed. Michael Petschenig, 2nd revised ed. by Gottfried Kreuz (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004), 41. English translation: John Cassian, The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York, N.Y.: Newman Press, 1997), 85. 15

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Adalbert, Canaparius transformed them into a pious wish expressed at the very beginnings of his hero’s career, thus placed, at least for those of his audience who would have been familiar with the original context, under the patronage of St. Antony, a paradigmatic ascetic figure. However, the creative adaptation of Cassian’s original does not end here. By a twist which considerably changes the meaning of the original, a phrase that referred strictly to the “demands of hospitality” (studia humanitatis) comes to describe, with Canaparius, Adalbert’s training in the studia liberalia, also referred to in the same context as the sęcularis philosophia and humana philosophia.19 Last, but not least, Canaparius also changed the form of the quote, not only its meaning, in accordance with his own rhetorical and stylistic practice. Inserted into a new context, Cassian’s phrase was reshaped into a balanced isokolon enhanced by a homoioteleuton: si hec humanitatis studia tota deuotione adimpleuerit / et arrepti operis cursum congruo exitu terminauerit. This, however, is not the only quote from Cassian’s works put to good use in the Vita Adalberti. Further confirmation that Canaparius was familiar with Cassian’s texts comes from another verbatim quotation from the Conlationes. This occurs at VA 4, where Canaparius described Adalbert’s schooldays in Magdeburg as follows: “For his part, through strenuous effort he applied himself incessantly to the practice of all and every virtue” (Ille uero indefesso cursu ad omne uirtutum exercitium semet ipsum semper extendens).20 Just as he did in VA 5, Canaparius applied a phrase originally meant as a description of a perfect ascetic lifestyle to his hero’s pursuit of learning, thus imparting to his scholarly formation the ascetic overtones of the original, which would have not been lost on an audience familiar with Cassian. Cassian’s words also came in handy for a characterization of Adalbert’s conduct as bishop of Prague at VA 9: “[a]nd all throughout the days of his pontificate he kept on serving the Lord with faith and devotion” (pię ac fideliter seruiens Domino), which adapts Cassian’s description of the perfect ascetics who “keep to [the uia regia of the Lord] devoutly and faithfully.”21 It is again Cassian who, at VA 19, provided the inspiration, 19

VA, 5 (ed. Karwasińska, 9). Ed. Karwasińska, 7. Cf. Cassian, Conl. 20.12.3: “nisi etiam in illis uirtutibus indefesso cursu semet ipsum semper extenderit.” (“if he does not also constantly and tirelessly reach out to those virtues”) (ed. Petschenig, 569; trans. Ramsey, 704). 21 Conl. 24.25.3: “pie ... ac fideliter seruientes” (ed. Petschenig, 703; trans., Ramsey, 846). 20


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imagery, and much of the vocabulary of Canaparius’ condemnation of Adalbert’s recalcitrant flock during our hero’s second stint as bishop of Prague: “overcome by the memory of their old vices, they lapsed back to carnal ways” ([u]eterum quippe uitiorum recordationibus preuenti in carnalem partem relabuntur).22 As already noted above, such textual borrowings from John Cassian strongly suggest that the author of the Vita Adalberti was familiar with the writings of this popular monastic author and probably assumed that at least some of his audience would be as well. At the same time, the way they were extracted from their original context (without entirely losing their ascetic overtones) and seamlessly adapted (both formally and content wise) to the concrete needs of Canaparius’ narrative suggests that we are dealing with an author whose solid educational background is matched by adequate rhetorical skills. This is even more so if we consider one last example, somewhat surprising given the relatively “obscure” nature of the author quoted. In VA 8, Adalbert is shown returning to Prague on horseback after his consecration as bishop by Willigis, archbishop of Mainz in 983: And neither was the horse he mounted fretting impatiently (as others do) or gallop, nor was its harness shining with gold or silver, but it went on steadily pacing as guided by its moderate rider [Equus autem, cuius tergo insederat, non more frementium equorum nec properis cursibus gradiebatur ... sed ... incessit ad arbitrium sedentis], with just a piece of hempen rope for bridle,23 of the same kind that the peasants use.24

This description of Adalbert’s horse, an allegorical device for praising the hero for his mastery over his passions and his modesty, is reminiscent of a similar, albeit less allegorical description of a horse in two of the letters penned by the fifth-century bishop Ruricius of Limoges,25 with which our text shares an essential image: caballum ... nec uelocitate praeproperum,

22

Conl. 1.17.2: “rursum neglegentia irrepente ... necesse est ut mens uitiorum squalorem concreta in carnalem partem mox inclinetur et conruat.” (“when ... negligence has crept in again, then, it is inevitable that the mind, by the accumulated filth of the vices, will soon turn in a carnal direction and fall”) (ed. Petschenig, 568–569; trans. Ramsey, 57). 23 Probably echoing Persius, Sat. 5.146. 24 Ed. Karwasińska, 13. 25 Ep. 1.14 and 2.35; on Ruricius and his Letters, see now Marino Neri’s introduction to his edition, Ruricio di Limoges, Lettere (Pisa: ETS, 2009), 7–16 and Ruricius of Limoges and Friends: A Collection of Letters from Visigothic Gaul, trans. Ralph W. Mathisen (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 19–51.

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cui frenus ac stimulus sit sedentis arbitrium.26 As far as I could ascertain, this description is not a rhetorical topos; the nature and the extent of the quotation make it plausible that the author of the Vita Adalberti was familiar with Ruricius’ Letters, a fact all the more remarkable since these have survived in a single manuscript.27 The quotations from patristic authorities or late antique authors such as John Cassian and Ruricius of Limoges presented above play an important part in Canaparius’ Vita Adalberti. Their provenance and careful insertion into the context of a new narrative, where they were given new shape and meaning, and made to serve a markedly monastic agenda, all testify to the skill of the author of the first hagiographic account dedicated to St. Adalbert. This was a writer who could draw both upon resources provided by a varied classical education (as his numerous quotes from classical and late antique poets indicate) and on his thorough patristic readings. Canaparius’ Vita Adalberti is characterized by a combination of secular education and commitment to monastic values. This accounts for the outstanding linguistic and literary quality of the first Life of St. Adalbert and for its ideological parti pris, i.e., the strong monastic bias of the text.28 It is also by means of such patristic quotations as those discussed here that the main hero of the Vita Adalberti is consistently construed as a thoroughly accomplished monk, whose problematic (not to say failed) episcopal career seems nothing but a major inconvenience to his earnest and lifelong attempts to lead an authentic contemplative life.29 Such a perspective, with its persistent emphasis on the hero’s horror episcopatus, also explains why bishops are very often cast as the main villains in Canaparius’ narrative of Adalbert’s life and times. This is obvious in the case of characters such as Dětmar, Adalbert’s predecessor on the episcopal see of Prague, or Willigis, the archbishop of Mainz, Adalbert’s 26

Ep. 2.35.2 (ed. Neri, 126). For details, see ibid., 11 and Mathisen, Ruricius, 63ff. 28 The persistent ascetic overtones of the VA (“ascetic moralizing tendencies”) were briefly noted by Jadwiga Karwasińska, “Studia krytyczne nad żywotami św. Wojciecha, biskupa praskiego III: Redakcje Vita I,” (Critical studies on the Lives of St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague III: The versions of the Vita I) in Święty Wojciech: Wybór pism (St. Adalbert: Selected studies) (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie, 1996), 139. Karwasińska noted that such tendencies are better represented in A (i.e., in the version closest to the lost original) than in the other two surviving redactions of the VA. 29 For a valuable study of the ideological tendencies that inform Canaparius’ Life, see Friedrich Lotter, “Das Bild des hl. Adalbert in der römischen und der sächsischen Vita,” in Adalbert von Prag: Brückenbauer zwischen dem Osten und Westen Europas, ed. Hans Hermann Henrix (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1997), 77–107, esp. 87ff. 27


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nemesis, whose dogged efforts to bring the reluctant bishop back to his flock (with papal support) are decried at length by the author of the Life with the same combination of classical, biblical, and patristic quotations30 he used when depicting Adalbert as an accomplished monk forced by human meanness to abandon his true calling.31 In the real world of the tenth century, using his political and canonical leverage, Archbishop Willigis of Mainz was able to drag an unwilling Adalbert from the monastic safe haven of SS. Boniface and Alexius and send him back twice to his flock in Prague. In the narrative world he created in his Life of Adalbert, Iohannes Canaparius, abbot of SS. Boniface and Alexius, was able to reclaim his hero by building him an irreproachable monastic pedigree. Spolia from the works of a prestigious monastic authority such as John Cassian proved instrumental in the process.

30

A mixture aptly described as ottonische Schmuckstil in Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, vol. 4.1: Ottonische Biographie: Das hohe Mittelalter, 920–1220 n. Chr. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1999), 157 and Zitat-Spolien (ibid., 127). 31 See, for instance, the exceptionally elaborate (and hostile) passage detailing the death of Dětmar of Prague in VA, 6, which combines biblical quotes with classical (Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan) and patristic (Ambrose, Augustine) textual spolia.

“Pull you Sons of Whores!” Linguistic Register and Reform in the Legend of St. Clement Patrick GEARY

The emergence of vernacular languages in written texts is a process that is far from linear and far from uniform across either the Romance or Germanic speaking regions of Western Europe.1 The almost imperceptible development of written Romance in rhythm with developments of spoken Romance from Late Antiquity to the late eighth century was abruptly broken by the language reforms of the Carolingian renaissance which, it has been argued, not only “reformed” Latin but made the written forms of Romance increasingly incomprehensible to large portions of the population.2 The reemergence of texts written in an idiom that could be understood by those not educated in Latin grammar and syntax was thereafter only gradual and sporadic, first in place names or single words that reproduced vernacular forms, then in accounts of brief phrases, often oaths, that for complex reasons were needed to make available the precise sounds of those speaking them. North of the Alps, the earliest extended Romance texts were not surprisingly hagiographical texts, given the importance of the cult of saints as a focus of popular rather than clerical devotion. From the late ninth-century Séquence de sainte Eulalie3 to the tenth-century La Vie de 1

For a brief overview of the development of vernaculars see Patrick Geary, “What Happened to Latin?” Speculum 84 (2009): 859–873. 2 See in particular Roger Wright, ed., Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1991); idem, “La période de transition du latin, de la lingua romana et du français,” Médiévales 45 (2003): 11–23; Michel Banniard, “Théorie et pratique de la langue et du style chez Alcuin: Rusticité feinte et rusticité masquée,” Francia 13 (1986): 579–601; and idem, Viva Voce: Communication écrite et communication orale du IVe au IXe siècle en Occident latin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1992). 3 Bibliothèque municipale de Valenciennes, Ms. 150, fol. 141v. The text is published in Albert Henry, ed., Chrestomathie de la littérature en ancien français, 2 vols., 5th ed., Bibliotheca romanica, ser. 2a, 3 (Berne: Francke, 1970), 1:2–3. In general see Marie-

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saint Léger,4 to the eleventh-century La Vie de saint Alexis5 and the Chanson de Sainte Foy,6 vernacular texts, either translations or close adaptations of Latin originals, form the earliest corpus of vernacular texts. In Italy, too, the earliest Italian texts, apart from the vernacular “oaths of Capua” from the mid-tenth century,7 also occur in the context of hagiography, but in a very different medium and with a quite different ideological significance. They appear in the late-eleventh-century Clement fresco in the Roman Basilica of San Clemente and do so within the highly charged ideological context of the Gregorian reform.8 As in other areas of the reform, language and liturgy are closely connected, and language here is used not simply as a neutral medium of communication with an illiterate laity but as an ideologically charged tool. The text of the Clement fresco has long been recognized as a major monument in the development of the Italian language. However, to understand its historical significance, one must place it in its physical and ideological context within the Basilica of San Clemente. The basilica itself is one of the most ancient and enigmatic of Rome.9 The site is exceptionally complex: the lowest level consists of buildings from the first century, including what may have been a public building, possibly a mint, and portions of a private dwelling. This has traditionally been identified as the residence of Flavius Clemens, a Roman consul and cousin of the Emperor Domitian (51–96) who, according to Dio Cassius, was convicted of “atheism (athotês), a charge on which many others who drifted into Jewish ways (ta tôn Ioudaiôn) were condemned” (67.14.1–2). Some have Pierre Dion, ed., La Cantilène de sainte Eulalie: Actes du colloque de Valenciennes, 21 mars 1989, Bibliothèque municipale de Valenciennes (Lille: Accès, 1990). 4 Bibliothèque de Clermond-Ferrand, Ms. 189. Ed. Henry, Chrestomathie, 9–13. 5 The Vie exists in differing versions in nine manuscripts, the earliest being the Hildesheim Manuscript L in association with the St. Albans Psalter, fol. 31v and 32v. Ed. Henry, Chrestomathie, 13–14. 6 Leyden, Voss Lat. O 60, fol. 114–123r. Ed. Robert Lafont, La chanson de Sainte Foi: Texte occitan du XIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1998). 7 Placitum of Capua, March, 960. Mauro Inguanez, ed., I placiti cassinesi del secolo X con periodi in volgare, Miscellanea Cassinense 5 (Badia di Monte Cassino, 1929), 18. 8 Michael Richter has examined early Italian vernacular texts, but in the context of the development of a medium of oral communication. See his, “Latina Lingua—Sacra seu Vulgaris?” in The Bible and Medieval Culture, ed. Willem Lourdaux and Daniel Verhelst, Mediaevalia Lovanensia, 1st ser., 7 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 16– 33, esp. 30–32. 9 See the fundamental work by Federico Guidobaldi, San Clemente: Gli edifici romani, la basilica paleocristiana e le fasi altomedievali (Rome: Collegio San Clemente, 1992).

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seen this as evidence that Clemens was an early convert to Christianity, seen as a sect within Judaism, and assume a connection between Flavius Clemens and Pope Clement I (ca. 96), regarded as either first, second, or third successor of Peter, traditionally said to have died in exile in Greece in the third year of the reign of Trajan (101). However, no concrete evidence connects Flavius Clemens with the location or Pope Clement with the Roman consul. Nevertheless, by the late fourth century Jerome mentions a basilica dedicated to St. Clement in Rome,10 and this basilica played an important role in Roman ecclesiastical life. In the eleventh century it was a center of the reform movement, especially under the leadership of the future Paschal II, Rainerius, cardinal priest of San Clemente whose 1099 election to the papacy took place in the church. Sometime around 1100 the Paleochristian basilica was filled in and the present basilica San Clemente erected above it. Traditionally it was assumed that the earlier structure had been destroyed by the Normans during the pillage of Rome under Robert Guiscard in 1084, but there is no evidence for such a destruction. Rather since the church had been experiencing stability problems for several centuries, as is evident from attempts to reinforce it initiated in the ninth and again in the eleventh centuries, it is much more likely that the structure was simply considered too instable to be continued. The careful reuse of material from the earlier basilica in the new, such as columns and the choir screen, indicate that the lower basilica was in fairly good condition when the new, upper church was added. The earlier basilica had been richly decorated and its decorations included a number of important frescos from the ninth and eleventh centuries. The latter included a fresco of the life of Saint Alexis and a fresco of the life of Clement, both dating from the late eleventh century.11 By that time, the laconic information about Pope Clement had been expanded and transformed into a legendary account that recounted stories of the life of the saint, now firmly identified as the direct successor of Peter and the author of the Clementine liturgy: his supposed exile to the Crimea, his martyrdom by being cast into the sea with an anchor tied to 10 11

Jerome, De viris illustribus, 15. On the frescos see John Osborne, Early Medieval Wall-Paintings in the Lower Church of San Clemente, Rome (New York: Garland, 1984) and, on the dating of other frescos in the church, William Tronzo, “Setting and Structure in two Roman Wall Decorations of the early Middle Ages,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 477–492.

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his neck, and finally the return of his relics to Rome by Saint Cyril, the apostle to the Slavs, when the latter came to Rome in 869 to request papal approval for his missionary activity and for permission to use the Slavic liturgy. The definitive version of this legend was constructed by a monk of Monte Cassino, Leo of Ostia, in his Legenda Italica—Vita cum translatione S. Clementis which he dedicated to Paschal II.12 The fresco draws on this text for its depictions. This fresco that has long fascinated scholars depicts Pope Clement himself in three registers.13 In the first, which is largely cut off by the construction of the new, upper church in the early twelfth century, one sees Clement, understood in the eleventh century to have been the immediate successor to St. Peter, enthroned by Peter himself and accompanied by Clement’s successors Linus and Cletus. The second shows a moment from the Passio Clementis: Clement is celebrating the Eucharist in the presence of his recent convert Theodora, the wife of the pagan senator Sisinius. The latter, suspecting that his wife is having an affair with the bishop, has followed her to the church and is seen on the right. For daring to look upon the liturgy, Sisinius is struck deaf and blind at the moment of the conclusion of the collect. In his Libellus de Sacramentis completed ca. 1089, Bonizo of Sutri attributed the elaboration of the canon of the Mass to Clement.14 Thus the second pope was intimately connected with the Roman rite liturgy, and the themes of Papal authority, Roman liturgical practice, and the protection of the liturgy and the clergy from the unworthy are neatly combined in the fresco. It is the third register of the fresco that most interests us, however. According to the Passio, Clement, taking pity on the blind and deaf Sisinius, went to his home and cured him. But when Sisinius opened his eyes and saw Clement and his wife in his own home, he suspected that Clement had entrapped him by magic in order to gain access to his wife 12

On the legend of St. Clement in the eleventh century see Paul Meyvaert and Paul Devos, “Trois énigmes cyrillo-méthodiennes de la ‘Légende Italique’ résolues grâce à un document inédit,” Analecta Bollandiana 73 (1955): 376–461. 13 The fresco today is in very poor condition. The watercolors made shortly after its discovery and published in Joseph Mullooly, Saint Clement, Pope and Martyr, and his Basilica in Rome (Rome: Guerra, 1869; 2nd ed. Rome: Barbèra, 1873) present the best estimation of its original appearance. 14 Bonizo de Sutri, Liber de vita Christiana, ed. Ernst Perels (Berlin: Weidmann, 1930; repr. Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1998); Walter Berschin, Bonizo von Sutri: Leben und Werk, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 79.


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and ordered his servants to bind Clement and take him away. Instead, they miraculously mistook a stone column for the saint and attempted to drag it outside. The inscriptions present the enraged Sisinius’s orders, “Falite dereto colo palo, Carvoncelle. Gosmari. Albertel, traite. Fili dele pute, traite.” (“Push behind with the pole, Carvoncello. Gosmari, Albertel, push. Pull you sons of whores.”) At the same time, we see the saint’s admonition: “Duritiam cordis vestris saxa traere meruistis.” (“Because of the hardness of your hearts you have deserved to drag stones.”) Philologists have long focused on the grammar, syntax, and morphology of these twelve vernacular words, but much less attention has been directed at just why such vulgar words would appear in such a sacred setting and at such a time. Hélène Toubert, in her classic article on the frescoes, while not focusing on the language of the bottom register, has shown how intimately the frescoes and indeed the church of San Clemente were connected with the reform movement.15 She argues that Ranierius, Cardinal Priest of St. Clemente and abbot of Saint Laurence Fuori le Mura where very similar eleventh-century frescos were found, before becoming Paschal II in 1099, was the instigator of the frescos at San Clemente. As a close associate of Gregory VII he had probably followed the pope to Monte Cassino and then to Salerno. As we have seen, Leo of Ostia, author of the Translatio Sancti Clementis, dedicated the text to him. She sees the connection to the reform movement from various directions: Both groups sought to transform their political-religious ideals into artistic forms. At San Clemente the iconography of the scenes responds to the will of Gregory VII to exalt the early popes. On the other hand, the antiquizing form of the frescos shows their desire to return to the reformed church the decorations of the early church that had been their model, and Byzantine art that they employed offered a model of “art aulique” that Germanic art could not provide. Since Monte Cassino and Rome shared these values, it is not surprising that the same men animated by the same ideals and taste would work on the mosaic of the upper church a few years later. It may (or may not) be mere coincidence that San Clemente was also the resting place of Methodius’s brother Cyril who had died in Rome where the two brothers had been summoned to defend their missionary activity. It was they who, according to legend, had brought the body of Clement, exiled according to legend to Asia Minor, when they answered the papal summons. 15

Hélène Toubert, “Rome et le Mont-Cassin: Nouvelles remarques sur les fresques de l’église inférieure de Saint-Clément,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 30 (1976): 1–33.

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This extraordinary gift had probably influenced John VIII to allow the use of the Methodian liturgy which Gregory VII so strongly opposed.16 The choice of this particular moment in the Passio for illustration may be due to the particularly dramatic form in which this portion of the legend was presented. The dramatic effect of the scene is not, however, evident in the only published version of the Life, that of Bonino Mombrizio which first appeared ca. 1480 and was reprinted in 1910.17 Here the speech of the pagan senator is presented in the third person and only the Saint replies in direct discourse: Et videns Claementem stantem iuxta coniugem suam; amens effectus coepit cogitare; quidnam esset. Et extimans sibi magicis illusum artibus, coepit dicere servis suis, ut tenerent Claementem episcopum. Dicebat autem ut ingrederetur ad uxorem suam, magicis sibi artibus caecitatem induxisse. Hi autem quibus iussum fuerat ut Claementem ligarent.18

However, there is no contemporary Roman evidence for this version of the text. While no eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscripts survive from San Clemente itself, one can assess the version of the text from two eleventh-century Vatican manuscripts which provide a slight but significant difference in the text. Compare the three versions: Et extimans sibi magicis illusum artibus, coepit Estimans19 se magicis delusus artibus et coepit Et estimans sibi magicis illusu20 artibus cepit dicere servis suis, ut tenerent Claementem dicere servis suis, ut tenerent Clementem dicere servis suis, ut tenerent Clementem episcopum. Dicebat autem ut ingrederetur ad uxorem episcopus, dicens21 ut ingrederetur ad uxorem episcopum. Dicebat autem ut ingrederetur ad uxorem 16

MGH Ep., vol. 8 (Ep. Carl., vol. 5), 223–224. On the wider context of liturgy and language in the eleventh century see my “What Happened to Latin?” 17 Boninus Mombritius, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, novum hanc editionem curaverunt duo monachi Solesmenses, 2 vols. (Paris: Fontemoing, 1910), 1:341–346. 18 “And seeing Clement standing next to his wife he became excited and began to wonder what it meant. And thinking that he had been deceived by magic arts he began to tell his servants that they should hold bishop Clement. He said that in order that he might go to his wife he had caused his blindness through magic arts. He began to say to his servants that they should hold Bishop Clement.” 19 Aestimans corrected to estimans se. 20 Illusum corrected to illusu. 21 Text corrected from indirect to direct discourse: Dicens quod ingrederetur ad uxorem suam(?)


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suam, magicis sibi artibus caecitatem induxisse.22 meam artibus mihi magicis caecitatem induxit.23 meam artibus michi magicis cecitatem induxit.24

In the two eleventh-century Vatican manuscripts, Sisinius’s speech is changed from indirect to direct discourse, suggesting a heightened dramatization of the scene. Instead of indirect discourse: “He said that in order that he might go to his wife he had caused his blindness through magic arts,” in these manuscript the text changes at this crucial moment to Sisinius’s own words: “Saying that so he might go in to my wife he caused my blindness through magic arts.” The dramatization in the Roman manuscripts, evidence of mouvance,25 of flexibility within this specific portion of the text, suggests already the dramatic possibilities of the scene, possibilities exploited by the artist. In a sense, the fresco takes the dramatization of the scene one step further. The actual commands of Sisinius as reported in the fresco do not appear in any of the versions of the vita. The crude and vulgar (in every sense of the term) commands are an elaboration of the fresco. Only the Saint’s response appears: “Because of the hardness of your heart it has been turned to stone. And because you believe stones to be gods, you deserve to drag stones.26 The exchange, dramatized in the Vatican manuscripts and still more in the San Clemente fresco, can be seen within the context of the Gregorian reform. The pope believed to be the creator of the Roman rite, the liturgical tradition that popes from Alexander II to Paschal II had defended against Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Beneventan, and Slavic rites, protects his liturgy from the eyes of a non-believer.27 He does so in the very church in which Cyril, Apostle to the Slavs, was venerated. Nevertheless he shows compassion and seeks to heal the man who is both blind and whose heart is hardened like stone against him. Sisinius, although a senator, is a crude and violent man. His language, whether one 22

Mombritius, Sanctuarium, 1:341–346. Archivio di S. Pietro Codex A. 5, fol. 137r col. A. 24 Vat. Lat. fol. 85v col. B. 25 On Mouvance, see especially Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972). See also his La lettre et la voix: De la “littérature” médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1987). 26 “Duritia cordis tui in saxis conversa est. Et cum saxa deos estimas, saxa trahere meruisti.” Vat. Lat. fol. 85v col. B. 27 On Gregory and the liturgy see H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) and the Liturgy,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 55 (2004): 55–83. 23

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can call it Italian, proto-Italian, or simply street Latin, demonstrates the great gulf that separates him from the Pope: his language “Pull, you sons of whores” is as crude as the idiom in which it is reported. The pope, representative of the correct liturgy and the true faith, responds at the other end of the linguistic register in what might be called “high Latin.” But if one considers carefully, the Latin of the fresco, unlike that of the Passio, is hyper-corrected such that it is actually incorrect: In the fresco, Clement says: “Duritiam cordis vestris saxa trahere meruisti.” Of course, the Latin should read “Duritia cordis vestri saxa trahere meruisti.” Indeed, this is how the eleventh-century manuscripts present the text, although the singular tui replaces the plural vestri. It may be that the fresco painter was simply not as good a Latinist as the scribe of the Vatican manuscript. However, it may also be that the (incorrect) inflections in the fresco serve to emphasize graphically the high register in which the Pope speaks, thus drawing an even greater distinction between the vulgar and the elite. What, if anything, can we conclude from this analysis of the early vernacular text in the San Clemente fresco concerning how vernacular and Latin were treated within the reform movement directed first by Gregory VII and by his successor Paschal II? First, unlike the early hagiographical texts in the vernacular produced north of the Alps, the use of the vernacular in the legend of Saint Clement are in no way an attempt to make the text comprehensible to the unlettered laity. Even though the fresco was commissioned by an (otherwise unknown) layman and his wife, this is hardly a vernacular text intended to communicate the cult of the saint to a wider public. Instead, one should see the fresco as a reflection of an attitude that tied language register to the papal reform movement, as a marker of authority that separated the educated and superior from the illiterate and inferior. The emphasis on the priority of Roman traditions at every level was central to the papal reform, and as such Clement, the successor of Peter and the originator of the authentic Roman rite, the Clementine, was an integral part of it. Moreover, reform required direction by a clergy that was itself reformed and properly educated, and thus control of traditional language, that is Latin, essential to its identity. True understanding is limited to this circle, limited by its linguistic competence and separated from an ignorant and potentially dangerous unreformed clergy and laity alike by their use of a vulgar language, be it in speech or in liturgy. Latin is power, both tool and marker for the reform. The vernacular is not yet unambiguously identified with heterodox thought as it will be in the next century. And yet the use of


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the crude vernacular marks the ignorance, the blindness, of those laymen who would fail to recognize the authority of the successor of Peter. By placing the speech of the Roman senator in the vulgar register and by placing Clement’s words in the hyper-corrected register, the Clement fresco presents, verbally as well as graphically, the ideological content of the reform movement’s implicit linguistic program. Far from being a concession to the unlettered, it is a warning that there is a clear hierarchical relationship that places the learned, Latinate Pope unambiguously above the powerful but illiterate, be he Roman senator or contemporary sovereign.

Hagiography and Chronicles János M. BAK

Despite the ambitious title, I am not competent to address this interesting problem in general, I merely wish to contribute something to Gábor’s birthday volume. Having recently spent some time with the anonymous Deeds of the Princes of the Poles and the Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas, I risk drawing attention to a few features in these two texts, vaguely connected to the subject of this collection. Admittedly, I am merely a reader—above all, of Gábor’s books—not a worker in the field of saint’s lives; however my layman’s impressions may not be uninteresting to experts in the field. Connections between secular narratives and hagiographical texts have been investigated extensively, including the region I know best, that is, Central Europe. The manifold borrowings and transfers between the Hungarian chronicles and the Lives of St. Stephen and—even more—of St. Ladislas were discussed by Gábor, among others. That this was done less in regard to the Polish and the Czech examples may be merely an optical (or rather linguistic!) fallacy of mine. That’s why I risk pointing to a few, some better known than others. Both of the authors I am going to refer to more or less expressly stated that they do not wish to include hagiographical texts in their narrative. In the Gesta principum Polonorum, the author sent his readers to the hagiography of St. Adalbert, when mentioning his relics at the occasion of the famous Gniezno meeting in AD 1000.1 Cosmas was even more explicit. He underlined that he did not intend to include stories that were written by others, “For truly the food that is eaten too often becomes loathsome.”2 Both of them kept their word—more or less. 1

Gesta principum Polonorum: The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, ed. and trans. Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer, CEMT 3 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2003), I, 6, pp. 34–35; henceforth: GpP. 2 Die Chronik der Böhmen von Cosmas von Prag, ed. Berthold Bretholz, MGH SS rer. Germ., n.s., 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923; repr. 1980), I, 15, p. 35; henceforth: Cosmas. All quotations from the Chronicle were translated by Petra Mutlova for the forthcoming CEMT publication.

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The so-called Gallus Anonymus, even though (in all likelihood) a monk, not only failed to elaborate on topics of sainthood, but expressly avoided the most suitable instance, where he could have. “Describing”, or rather merely hinting at, the “martyrdom” of Bishop Stanislas of Cracow, cruelly killed, probably on the order of King Bolesław II, he conspicuously avoided telling anything in particular. True, by the assumed time of his writing (around 1115–1118), the cult of St. Stanislas was not yet widespread, but this was hardly his reason, as he said nothing more than: How King Bolesław came to be driven out of Poland is a long story, but this may be said, that no anointed man must take bodily retribution on another anointed man for any wrong whatever. For this harmed him much, when he added sin to sin, when for treason he subjected a bishop to mutilation of limbs. For neither do we forgive a traitor bishop, nor do we commend a king for taking vengeance in such a shameful way.3

The issue was investigated in great detail by Polish scholars, mostly pointing to the fact that the author’s loyalty to—or more practically his dependence on—the dynasty suggested to him to tread carefully.4 He did, actually, the same with another act of cruelty in the ducal family, the blinding of Zbigniew by Bolesław Wrymouth, a deed he never recorded in so many words.5 While not sparing with accolades when describing the first Bolesław, the anonymous monk did not go as far as waxing hagiographical, preparing, so to say, a possible canonization of the first great ruler of the country. If the reconstructed biography of the author is correct,6 he must have been familiar with the Vitae of St. Stephen of Hungary, likewise a founder of a Christian kingdom in the same age as the Valiant. The image of Bolesław contains almost all the elements of a saints’ life: the rex iustus, the victor over pagans, the supporter of the church, and so on. True, the missionary effort, underscored for Stephen and other comparable rulers was not emphasized. That there was no known attempt at making him a founding-ruler-saint was 3

GpP, II, 27, pp. 96–97. Well summarized in Tadeusz Grudziński, Boleslaus the Bold, Called Also the Bountiful, and Bishop Stanislaus: The Story of a Conflict, transl. Łech Petrowicz (Warsaw: Interpress, 1985). 5 Actually, only Cosmas (III, 34, p. 205) spelled it out. 6 His possible stay in Hungary and familiarity with that country was most recently underlined by Dániel Bagi, “Szent László és Szent István Gallus Anonymus Gesztájában: Megjegyzések a III. könyv 25. fejezetéhez” (St. Stephen and St. Ladislas in the Gesta of Gallus Anonymus: Comments on bk. 3, ch. 25), Századok 139 (2005): 291–334 (also in Polish in Rozprawy Akademii Umiejętności, w. Hist-Fil., 108 [2008]). 4

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not the author’s fault, but was obviously connected with the internal history of the dynasty, what I am not competent to discuss.7 The Gesta contains, however, a few miracles, which is typical for hagiography. The “miraculous” healing of Mieszko’s blindness—interpreted mystice as standing for his seeing the light of baptism—is only briefly recounted. But the miracle brought about by St. Giles for the birth of another (main) hero of the Gesta, Bolesław III, is reported in detail, first in verse and then in prose. Here again a chance for preparing sanctification is missed, probably because of the shadow cast on the prince by his sin towards his half-brother, Zbigniew. True, in his case, almost only the martial merits are underlined, but then, a “knight-king” à la St. Ladislas of Hungary would have been a possibility. A full-fledged description of a “typical” miracle, that of a saint as Schlachtenhelfer, can then be found in book 2, chapter 6. The description of the defeat of some Pomeranians who entered the battlements of a Polish castle by treason, has all the marks of a widespread hagiographical motive: He, who is ever watchful, who will never slumber, set the vigilance of His soldier Adlabert to watch over the townsfolk as they slept,8 and unearthly arms struck terror in the pagans lying awake to ambush the Christians. For there appeared to the Pomeranian an armed figure mounted on a white horse, who with drawn sword struck terror in them and drove them down the castle steps and across the grounds.9

This account is not much different from Saint James’s, the Matamoros’s, appearance in the Battle of Clavijo and other saints supporting their folk in war.10 It may be worth noting here that Adalbert was mentioned also by Cosmas as a helper against enemies of the Czechs—what I discuss in more detail below—but not mounted on a white horse.

7

One of Gábor’s pupils tried to explore the success and failure of (Frankish and French) king’s becoming saints: Gregory Huber, “Not Quite Perfect: Failed Royal Saints” (master’s thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2008). The issue would deserve more attention. 8 Cf. Ps. 120:4–2. 9 GpP, II, 6, p. 131. 10 See, e.g., František Graus, “Der Heilige als Schlachtenhelfer: Zur Nationalisierung einer Wundererzählung in der mittelalterlichen Chronistik,” in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Karl-Ulrich Jäschke and Reinhard Wenskus (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1977), 330–348, without mentioning this episode, however. Actually, one of Gábor’s favorite saints, King Ladislas I of Hungary was seen in this role as well.

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Another event reported in the Gesta is also a hagiographical commonplace. The author introduces the story, immo Dei miraculum, “to those endowed with reason.” Some time around 1107, Pomeranians attacked the church of Gniezno and robbed the cathedral’s treasures. The old archbishop Martin and his clerks barely escaped their cruelty, but the raiders got off with the loot. However, “whichever of the pagans had about him the relics or the sacred vestments or the vessels of the sacristy was possessed by the falling sickness or by a terrible madness,” and returned everything to the cathedral.11 Finally, in book 3, the anonymous monk recorded a saint’s intervention, a passage that could have fitted nicely into a Life. On 10 August (probably 1109), St. Lawrence’s Day, the Pomeranians came unexpected to relieve the castle of Nakło from Polish siege. The relatively small number of warriors under the command of Bolesław III called upon St. Lawrence: “Martir Laurenti, populo succurre merenti!” and again with similar words, asking the saint to destroy the fury of the enemy. The duke encouraged his men to trust in the holy martyr’s intervention and, indeed, the “idolatry of the Pomeranians […] was crushed by the swords of the Poles.” “I call to witness God” so the author concluded, “by whose help and St. Lawrence, by whose prayers this slaughter was brought about.”12 While not exactly arriving on battlefield à la Santiago Matamoros, still, it’s something of Schlachtenhelfer. In summary, then, the author was surely familiar with hagiographical topoi and miracle stories, but, true to the genre of the gesta of rulers, did not wish to elaborate on any of the relevant events. The chances he “missed” for building up the image of a saintly member of the dynasty had, however, not literary but political reasons, some known and some unknown to us. Cosmas of Prague, as mentioned above, expressed his intention not to “repeat” the legends of the patron saints of his country, Ludmila, Wenceslas, and Adalbert/Vojtěch. Clearly, he was counting on a readership (and let me avoid speculating about its width) that was familiar with the Vitae of these saints, already central for the “national” consciousness of his people in the early twelfth century. However, he did include hagiography as well as additions to existing Lives that were not contained in the readings of his contemporaries. 11

GpP, II, 43, pp. 196–199; cf. Gábor Klaniczay, “Miracoli di punizione e malefizia,” in Miracoli: Dai segni alla storia, ed. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Marilena Modica (Rome: Viella, 1999), 109–137, listing and analyzing similar miracles. 12 GpP, III, 1, pp. 222–225.


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While reporting in general about the adventures of Vojtěch/Adalbert, he utilized his copy of Lives, occasionally quoting a few words verbatim from the one written by Canaparius, but avoided repeating “well-known” matters. In his case, only one story is told in detail that was not included in any other Life. In chapter 29 of book 1, Cosmas related the saintly bishop’s conversation with the hapless and enigmatic Strachkvas, offering him the Prague cathedral, which the latter refused. The saint predicted that this will not end well.13 Indeed, once Adalbert finally resigned, the monk Strachkvas, son of Duke Boleslav, claimed the see, but did not obtain it, for he was attacked by demons at the moment of his consecration.14 The matter is puzzling, for Cosmas at one point described the man (with words put into the mouth of Vojtěch) as a virtuous person well worth to be a bishop, and a few pages later characterized him as vain and unlearned who deserved to be kept away from the bishopric by miraculous intervention. Were it not clear that the Chronicle was written in one piece (even if over several years) by the same person, one would search for a contamination of different “redactions.” Of course, the entire figure is problematic: having born at the time of the fratricidal feast, “he was called Strachkvas, which means ‘a dreadful banquet’.”15 Now, it is hardly likely that such a name would have been in fact given to a child, but there is no way to find out what in fact happened. But that is not our concern here. Cosmas included a few other miracle stories in his Chronicle. Two are connected with the confirmation of the sanctity of persons close to his heart and, so to say, intended to replace formal canonization (as I learned from Gábor: not yet obligatory in his times). One of these constitutes a rare case in which the chronicler wrote in the first person singular. “One day, while I was standing in the crypt of Saints Cosmas and Damian the martyrs, chewing over my little psalms,” he wrote, an emaciated person appeared “who carried a candle and a silver string which, as he was ordered in a vision, was the same length as his body.”16 The man was look13

Cosmas, I, 29, pp. 52–53. Ibid., I, 30, p. 55. 15 Ibid., I, 17, p. 36. 16 I know of no similar “order” by a saint, but the custom of offering candles of the length of one’s body to a saint seems to have been widespread. There are several references to such a practice, for example, in the Life of Thomas Becket; see Benedict of Peterborough, The Life and Miracles of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, ed. John Allen Giles (London: Caxton Society, 1850), I, 69, pp. 105–106; III, 62, p. 238; V, 1, p. 274. Cosmas may have known about offers of this kind which could have given him the idea for the story. I am grateful to Ottó Gecser for having pointed out these passages to me. 14

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ing for the grave of “St. Radim” (Gaudentius, St. Adalbert’s half-brother, archbishop of Gniezno). Cosmas told him that he was not venerated as a saint, whereupon the stranger reported about his miraculous liberation from prison by Gaudentius, while incarcerated in Cracow. Once freed, a person appeared to him “whose garment was white as snow and whose face shone like the sun,”17 who identified himself as Radim, and sent the man to Prague, where his grave was located. (The Czechs had “transferred” his relics in 1039, when they robbed Gniezno and took the remains of Adalbert, Gaudentius, and the five martyred hermits, about whom more is discussed below.) It is interesting that Cosmas was apparently not quite sure, whether all this was real, for he added that: “Actually, the keepers of the church often see apparitions in that crypt when they go to the candle that is lit there at night.”18 The other “confirmation miracle” that would have fit well into a saint’s life, was related to Ludmila, grandmother of St. Wenceslas and venerated together with him in Prague and elsewhere in Bohemia. In this case, too, the holiness of the person was doubted. Abbess Windelmuth wished to have a piece of the veil of St. Ludmila enclosed into the pix of other relics, but Bishop Hermann of Prague refused to allow it, suggesting to “let the old woman rest in piece.” Thereupon a kind of ordeal by fire was arranged: “a huge frying pan was brought out full of glowing charcoal into which, upon the flaming coals, the bishop, having invoked the Holy Trinity, threw the cloth. Miraculously, smoke and flames leapt around the cloth but hurt it not.”19 The sanctity of Ludmila was thus proven, just as that of Gaudentius through the miracle in Cracow. While the “transformation” of St. Wenceslas from martyr to knightly hero started only after Cosmas’s time, one short reference may be seen as a precursor to it. Telling the—rather mixed-up—story of the ejection of the Poles from Prague in AD 1002, he wrote that when Duke Ulrich reached the city and had a retainer sound his trumpet in the middle of Prague, “By God’s miraculous grace and at Saint Wenceslas’s intercession, fear and terror overcame the Poles” and they fled the city. Clearly, the saint did what was expected from a patron: interceded with God for a miracle. Not yet a warrior, but already involved in military action, even if only “by proxy.” 17

Matt. 17:2. Cosmas, II, 34, pp. 130–131. 19 Ibid., III, 11, pp. 171–172. 18


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St. Wenceslas appeared as miracle worker together with St. Adalbert in a prisoners’ liberation story, set in the year 1091 by Cosmas.20 The conflict between King Vratislav and his son, Břetislav, had reached a point nearing civil war. The son’s troops were already encamped near Prague. Then, during one night, the two patron saints of the country appeared in a prison, broke down the door and the fetters of prisoners and told the men to go to their church and announce the miracle.21 They were also instructed that the two saints could not help Bohemia earlier because of the near-civil war that God’s mercy turned away from them. “On the very same day another wonder similarly shone forth, because—as the revelation of the holy martyrs had indicated—the king’s brother, Conrad, arranged peace between the king and his son.” The connection between the two is somewhat obscure, but as Cosmas put it, without it “the worst crime since the foundation of Prague would have been committed.”22 The most elaborate passage in the genre of hagiography is chapter 38 of book 1 about the five hermits killed by robbers in Poland. Cosmas devoted an entire chapter, some 1200 words, to their ascetic practices, the visit of the duke, their suffering and martyrdom by the robbers. All editions and translation, including the most recent, well-annotated English one, simply refer to the well-known text of the Vita quinque fratrum written by Bruno of Querfurt23 as Cosmas’s source. However, recently, when we looked with Ian Wood at the forthcoming translation by Marina Miladinov,24 we realized that Cosmas is not (or not exclusively) dependent on Bruno. While surely much shorter,25 Cosmas devoted much greater attention to the hermits’ ascetic practices and he mentioned brother 20

Ibid., II, 47, pp. 154–155. While it is not known, what kind of prisoners are meant here, liberation of captives is a widespread type of miracle going back to the New Testament (e.g., Acts 12:6–11). From the extensive literature, I was remembered the one by František Graus, “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefangenenbefreiungen’ der merowingischen Hagiographie,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2 (1961): 61–156. 22 Cf. Sall. Cat. 18.8. 23 Bruno of Querfurt, Żywot pie̜ciu braci pustelników (albo) Żywot i me̜czeństwo Benedykta, Jana i ich towarzyszy napisany przez Brunona z Kwerfurtu = Vita quinque fratrum eremitarum (seu) Vita uel passio Benedicti et Iohannis sociorumque suorum auctore Brunone Querfurtensi, ed. Jadwiga Karwasińska, MPH, n.s., 4, pt. 3 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973). 24 To be published in a volume of Central European hagiography, edited by Gábor Klaniczay, planned for 2011 as (probably) CEMT 6. 25 Consciously so, as Cosmas wrote: “I would like to write much about the lives of these fathers, but will write only a little, as a frugal meal is always tastier to eat.” I, 38, p. 68. 21

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Barnabas, who survived the massacre as he was sent to the duke returning the cursed money, but did not separate Cristinus, the servant (whose sanctity was acknowledged only later) in any way. Nor did Cosmas refer to Benedict’s travels through “guilty” (because of the treatment of St. Adalbert) Bohemia and Prague,26 nor to the great number of miracles registered in Bruno’s text. Considering that the Vita survived in a single copy, thus may not have been widely known even in his own time or that of Cosmas, the chronicler held to his word by not repeating well-known stories: he wrote this hagiographical piece on the basis of some unknown, additional information. The matter needs further study, to be sure. All of Cosmas’ hagiographical inserts have one thing in common. They refer to saints, officially accepted or not, whose veneration was centered on the cathedral of Prague and whose relics (except those of Ludmila) were kept there, where he was dean. The chronicler kept his word of not repeating stories available elsewhere, but added his own bit to the greater glory of the saints connected to his own house.

26

Bruno’s Vita (as n. 23, above), ch. 11.

Hagiography and Biography The Case of St. Francis of Assisi André VAUCHEZ

When we are dealing with a historical figure located in the distant past, we are usually confronted with problems posed by the scarcity of sources and gaps in the documentation.1 This is not the case with the Poor Man of Assisi, as few statesmen or saints in the Middle Ages have been the subject, in the decades following their deaths, of so many Lives, treatises or references from their contemporaries and subsequent generations. The rich personality of Francis, the contrasting interpretations which focused on him, both within and without his order, the numerous interventions of the papacy in favor of his cult and supporting the authenticity of his stigmata have generated in the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century an extraordinary flowering of texts, which expressed manifold and sometimes divergent interpretations of his life and deeds. The historian and the modern reader will not complain of this overabundance, which is only found at that time for Frederick II and St. Louis. As a result of that profusion, the temptation is great—and many have yielded to it—to combine the information conveyed by different sources regardless of their date and their specificity, as if it sufficed, in searching for the “real” face of the Poor Man of Assisi, to mix various ingredients to produce a synthesis that tells us more, in fact, about the personality of the author than that of the “Poverello.” But Francis is not a literary myth that everyone is free to interpret at will. He is a historical figure who can be known quite well from his writings and the contemporary documents that tell us about him. It is true that the sources of the thirteenth century do not tell us everything we would like to know about St. Francis and they often tend to present him as a model rather than to recount the stages of his biography or analyze his states of mind. Only 1

As to the sources and the secondary literature, I take the liberty of referring to my book, François d’Assise entre histoire et mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2009).

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when an effort is made to put into context and perspective the hagiographical literature can one gain a better understanding of his person and work. For the sake of completeness, iconographic sources—frescos, paintings, sculptures, stained-glass windows, enamels—should also be taken into account, but the research in this area is less advanced and, in most cases, the pictorial representations of the Poor Man of Assisi depend on hagiographical texts that the artists and especially the commissioners were inspired by. For many of our contemporaries, St. Francis remains a somewhat vague myth, the content of which ranges from an ideology of poverty close to liberation theology, a commitment to peace among religions, and an ecological attitude vis-à-vis the created world, especially the animal kingdom. There is probably a little bit of all that in the Poor Man of Assisi, but also many other aspects, and only a detailed knowledge of the sources of his time may allow us to keep our distance from the risky interpretations that have done so much harm to his memory, or from the explanations that trivialize his figure under the pretext of wanting to adapt it to the tastes of modern audiences. To understand Francis, one must discover his writings and immerse oneself in the reading of the Lives and treatises that were devoted to him in the century that followed his death, when the memory he had left behind was still fostered by witnesses who knew him personally. This was particularly true of Brother Leo, his secretary, who amassed a documentation of the first rank about his acts and deeds in the form of cards and notes, which was exploited by others until the early decades of the fourteenth century. It may come as a surprise that the Poor Man of Assisi gave rise to such a profusion of hagiographical texts instead of genuine historical biographies, in the sense we give to this word today. In fact, as he was considered a saint already during his lifetime and canonized in July 1228, less than two years after his death, the main sources concerning him are legends (Legenda or Vita in medieval Latin) or collections of miracles, because those who had known him knew he was a true disciple of Christ and an apostle aspiring to martyrdom, therefore a hero. Hagiographic texts distinguish themselves from biographies in that they are not written to tell the life of a man or a woman from birth to death, but above all to encourage their listeners or readers to lead a better life by presenting them a model of Christian perfection. While the rules and constitutions of his order tended to settle and thus to freeze his experience, the story of the deeds of Francis and of the miracles attributed to him called for a creative resumption of his message. These writings express a theological truth that goes beyond the

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historical truth, highlighting the secret thread of the presence and intervention of God in the life of a human being. But even if hagiography does not constitute a true description in the sense we give to this term today, in order to account for a higher truth, it must resort to patterns and narratives plausible for the intended public. It would be wrong to deprive oneself of the contribution of these texts but it would also be a mistake to consider the hagiographical dimension as an element added to the biography of the saint, which should be freed from this superfluous coating in order to discover reality. Legends belong to a literary genre the rules of which must be known for discerning the effects of literary devices of which they make use. The legends of St. Francis are no exception and, in our eyes, they have the disadvantage of being largely independent of chronology: except for when it comes to his youth and conversion, when they are forced to mention the facts in their sequence, their authors have much difficulty locating the events in time relative to one another and do not bother trying to date them. The man himself was indeed of less interest to them than his work, and for them, the significant events of his life were those that could affect the future of the Franciscan Order. Rather than revealing the personality of Francis or the stages of his biography, these writings help in comprehending the impact of the Poor Man of Assisi on the hearts and minds of his contemporaries. It is then up to the reader of today to detect the part of truth concealed in each testimony that only makes sense if confronted with all others. The rapid succession of hagiographic texts relating to the “Poverello” in the half-century following his death not only reflects his popularity and the success of his order, it also corresponds to a series of successive efforts on behalf of his spiritual sons to settle his image. These efforts were far from conclusive since the legends often diffused contrasting interpretations of his person and work. But in 1266, Bonaventure, then Minister General of the Franciscan Order, made the general chapter of the Friars Minor endorse the destruction of all Lives that existed before the Legenda maior of St. Francis, which he had just written, and which was, henceforth, the only Life allowed to be read in the Order of Minors. These tensions illustrate the importance of the issue: in search of an identity that was not initially given, the disciples of Saint Francis thought they could find in his life an answer to their queries. Much more in fact than any other religious order, the Minors were linked to the person of Francis, to his words and deeds. Franciscus forma Minorum: this Latin phrase, appearing in the texts of the liturgical office for his feast, is difficult to translate—“form” is too abstract while “model” would be quite

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insufficient to translate forma, the meaning of which belongs to the register of conformity. Since referring to the Poor Man of Assisi was considered by his spiritual sons as a vital necessity, it is logical that they sought in his deeds the key to their own history, then dominated by a fundamental question: how would the order be able to develop without departing from the spirit that had marked its beginnings and the example set by its founder? The passionate efforts they made to capture the Franciscan novelty and define it in terms acceptable to the Church and the wider society are reflective of the large echo that Francis’s message had with his contemporaries and the tensions that were soon to occur among those claiming to be his followers. In the eyes of the cleric brothers who seized power in the order from 1240 onwards, the outside activity, that is to say the pastoral care within the Church and at her service, was to condition the exercising of the virtues of poverty, humility and simplicity; for the others, who invoked the personal testimony left by the “Poverello,” it was, on the contrary, the exercise of the Franciscan virtues that had to determine their way of life and the modalities of their apostolate. The former set out to highlight the fundamental continuity that existed between the intentions of Francis and the institutional line followed by the Minors after his disappearance; the latter, for their part, put the emphasis on the contrast between the charismatic example left by their founder and the gradual decline of fervor among the Friars as they moved away from the perfection of the origins. In this latter perspective, the recourse to hagiography primarily aimed at halting the evolutionary process that religious orders inevitably encounter, by stressing the radicalism of the original Franciscan project. Until the mid-fourteenth century, the hagiography of the “Poverello” was marked by this conflictive tension between the two “souls” of Franciscanism: the brothers of the Community and the Spirituals. This rivalry was responsible for the production of texts of divergent inspirations, each biography or compilation responding to the previous one to fill its gaps or counter some assertions it contained. The importance that the Friars Minor attached to the figure, the words, and the deeds of Francis can only be understood if one is well aware of the novelty of his message. In the nineteenth century, many saw in him a precursor of the Renaissance or the inventor of the modern world. That is probably too much to say, but it is historically true that the Poor Man of Assisi had made Christianity accomplish a decisive mutation. Beyond the quarrels that could oppose one another, his spiritual sons agreed to see him as a leading figure in the religious history of the Church and humanity. Hence Franciscan hagiographers did sometimes dub him the


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“new evangelist” and the “new Elias,” sometimes even the “second Christ” (Alter Christus), a designation that would raise severe criticism and controversy from the fifteenth century onwards, especially at the time of the Protestant Reformation. But in what did Francis really innovate? Firstly, in and through his relationship to God and the world: as he admirably explains in the Canticle of Brother Sun, in his eyes the universe, nature and human beings partake of the same creation, both beautiful and useful, in which there are certainly degrees, but no discontinuities; animals, and particularly birds, which held a large place in his life, are not merely symbols or allegories to him, but realities of experience. Like the Emperor Frederick II, his contemporary, who wrote a treatise “On the art of hunting with birds,” he became interested in the creatures and the things “as they are what they are,” but contemplating them with great kindness and considering them as a testimony of the love of God towards humankind. The same principle of reality applies to Francis’ experience of God, which he never dissociated from his relationship with human beings: it is through meeting lepers and after having shown them mercy that he sensed in himself a deep inner transformation. This is when he became conscious that in Jesus Christ God made himself poor and had wandered among men who rejected him, and that it was by following his footsteps—that is to say the way by which God had made himself “minor” (very small, weak)—that one could hope to attain salvation. This is why the choice of poverty and humility, that is the refusal of power and of all forms of domination, is the basis of the way of life of the Friars Minor and of the rule that codified it from 1223 onwards. In this world, men can make contact with God incarnated in Jesus and present in churches through two kinds of tangible reality: His Word, which should be announced to all, and the Eucharist, that is to say the species of bread and wine that priests have the primary function of consecrating and distributing to the faithful. Nothing would be more inaccurate than to attribute to Francis, as it is sometimes done, all the innovations pertaining to religious life that occurred in the early thirteenth century, because to a large extent, he was himself the son of his time. The choice of penance, that is to say of an ascetic and pious lifestyle conducted in the world, already characterized most secular movements of his age. The same can be said of the importance given to mercy, which can be defined as an active attention to all forms of poverty, disease and marginality, which were multiplying in a Western society that was growing rapidly, and where those left out of the economic progress were numerous. But for Francis, the conversion

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process that brings people to recognize themselves sinners in front of God must also result in a change in their relations with others, henceforth based on non-violence and the search for peace. His propagation of the Gospel has therefore been accompanied by actions aimed at settling conflicts within cities and between antagonistic lineages, and it has immediately taken on a social dimension, once Francis became aware that the search for peace could not be dissociated from efforts to promote justice in the relations between people. The message of the Gospel had been known for nearly twelve centuries when Francis set out to make his life conform to it. So he did not invent it, but he attempted to bring it up to date and reveal all of its practical implications for a society undergoing major change in which money was becoming the supreme value. From his life and writings emerges a new definition of the religious, which ceases to be a separate domain, detached from the profane, to become instead a commitment concerning all aspects of the human personality and of existence. For Francis, salvation is not earned by giving alms nor even, no matter how attached he was to the Liturgy of the Hours, through the celebration of the rites. It is attained by living in a relationship of familiarity with Jesus, God incarnate, while seeking to convert the world by word and example, demonstrating a coherence as perfect as possible between words and deeds, the outside and the inside. In his view, poverty is not a negative reality: to lack, to be deprived of this or that—it is, first of all, to recognize God as the source of all good and of perfect joy, what is no blind optimism, but the refusal of letting oneself be deterred by the hardships and humiliations, and the fundamental certainty of having become, through Christ, a sinner forgiven and reconciled, thus a man saved for eternity. The Poor Man of Assisi also made a profound innovation by refusing for himself and for his followers any form of property, what had always seemed impossible until then, and aroused strong reservations in some sectors of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Moreover, he did not regard the world as a “valley of tears” or a structure of sin that they should flee for the refuge of a monastery. For the first time in the Middle Ages, Francis and his companions managed to combine a life of prayer, including times of solitude and contemplation spent in hermitages, with and an itinerant propagation of the Word of God to Christians and pagans through simple and practical preaching. In fact, more than sermons strictly speaking, these were harangues and performances with a strong emphasis on singing and gestures, in the manner of jugglers, so as to touch the heart and soul of the “illiterate”—those strangers to high culture who constituted the vast


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majority of their listeners. The familiarity that the Poor Man of Assisi acquired with the Bible after his conversion enabled him to go beyond the barriers that separated the clerical and the secular world and play the role of a mediator, or rather of a “ferryman” between those two cultural universes so distant from one another. Most of his writings are in Latin, which he utilized as a living language, even if that meant misusing its grammar; in doing so, he relaxed the rigidity and solemnity that characterized the sacred language to make it an instrument of communication. At the same time, he increased the stature of the vernacular by using it in areas that had remained unknown to it, like poetry and religious chant. In this respect, the Canticle of Brother Sun constitutes a radical innovation: it required indeed great boldness from the “Poverello” to dare to address God in his Umbrian dialect, the forms of which were still shifting and unstable, and he was probably the first man in the Italy of his time having had the audacity. The advance he made in that area was extraordinarily fruitful: from that time on, the piety of lay people would, through poetry and song, find its expression in a language which was that of everyday life, with its joys and sorrows. The confraternities of penitents and flagellants, which were soon to multiply under the influence of the mendicant orders, especially in urban areas, followed after him. In their “lauds” in the vernacular in honor of God, the Virgin, and the saints, the reunion of religious sentiment and profane emotion gave birth to a poetic and lyrical repertoire, which has, in the Mediterranean countries, constituted until the twentieth century a fundamental element of popular devotion. While Christianity had hitherto mainly stimulated rational reflection and artistic activity and had remained largely the preserve of the clerics and the social elites, in the wake of Francis, an emergence of emotional forces could be witnessed, which changed the face of Christianity and extended its impact to new segments of the Christian people. This breakthrough led to an opening up of religious life to the emotional depth of human beings, linked to an intimate familiarity with the birth and suffering of the Redeemer, whose stigmata Francis had carried. Francis fostered the emergence of new feelings like compassion towards the weak, tenderness vis-à-vis the creatures and a fervent enthusiasm for poverty and humility, which were to find, in the early fourteenth century, a magnificent literary expression in the works of the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi and Dante Alighieri. If it is true that St. Francis of Assisi had a deep impact on his time, some aspects of his message were nevertheless neither received nor understood by his contemporaries. For instance, most of the Friars Minor

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of the second generation considered him as their founder and the author of the rule by which they lived, but nothing more; and when the chroniclers of the period mention him in their writings, they generally only refer to the role played by the Friars Minor in the fight against heresy and for the moralization of society, which certainly did not constitute a priority for Francis during his lifetime. More significant still is the fact that this witness to twelfth-century evangelism lost at the time of pontifical theocracy sometimes found himself in an awkward position, going against the dominant trends of his time. Thus the secular nature of his movement and of his own spirituality collided with a marked evolution of the Church in the direction of a growing clericalization and normalization of religious life during the thirteenth century, what forced Francis to turn the evangelical revival movement that he had launched into a religious order, the structures and the objectives of which were soon to align themselves with those of the Dominicans. Living in convents, devoting much time to study and pastoral activity, which prevented them from working with their hands, the Minors shifted away from the poor and uneducated. The small minority who tried to remain faithful to the primitive ideal was soon compelled to take refuge in the hermitages and reduced to denouncing “Paris,” that is to say the university and science, which had “destroyed Assisi,” in the words of Jacopone da Todi. Francis had only accepted poor and precarious “spaces of living,” but the friars soon began to build large and beautiful churches—starting with the magnificent basilica that they erected in his honor in Assisi, far from the Porziuncola, which was the true birthplace of the order—and appealed to the best artists of the time to decorate them. Finally, while the “Poverello” had, in his Testament, expressly forbidden to add glosses to that text, which he considered the indispensable complement to the rule, as soon as 1230 the papacy exempted the Minors from complying with it, and from the 1240s, the Franciscan intellectuals began to produce treatises in which they learnedly pondered on how best to interpret the regulations that defined their way of life. On that point, the defeat of Francis was full and final, so irresistible was the tendency that was leading the Church and the religious orders to make more room for law and for a rational exegesis of texts, whether scriptural or legal. There is no reason to be shocked or to cry betrayal, because charisma, if it wants to survive, must fit into institutions that are inevitably bound to interpret it in a reductive manner and to follow the changes that occur in society and the Church. But one has to admit that the spiritual communities that have, over the centuries, claimed the legacy of Francis, often depleted his message, as seen in the case of poverty,


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which no later than the second half of the thirteenth century, had become a primarily legal concept for the Minors, defined by the refusal to own any goods, land and rights, and not a lifestyle similar to that of the destitute and marginalized. It can in fact be said that the Poor Man of Assisi was, during his lifetime, the protagonist of “another history,” different from that of his spiritual sons, a history which probably could not develop in the context of a religious order placed under the supervision of the Roman Church; but some of his writings or the hagiographic texts inspired by Brother Leo permit us to get a glimpse of what this history might have been. And it is precisely insofar as his message contains many potentialities that could not unfold in the past that it still retains today a real “force of contemporariness”—to use the felicitous expression of the Italian historian Grado Merlo2—and that it is still of interest to us. Translated from the French by David Karady

2

Grado Giovanni Merlo, Tra eremo e città: Studi su Francesco d’Assisi e sul francescanesimo medievale (Assisi: Porziuncola, 2007).

Idolatry or Power St. Francis in Front of the Sultan Péter BOKODY

The twenty-eight frescoes depicting the vita of St. Francis in the Upper Church in Assisi simultaneously attest to the rethinking of what should be displayed from the deeds of the Poverello and how. On the one hand, the frescoes were based on the canonical version of the life written by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and sanctioned by the general chapter of the Franciscan order in 1266 in Paris.1 Furthermore the frescoes are an early, if not the first, example of the newly emerging realistic paradigm in painting.2 Due to the coexistence of these two tendencies in the St. Francis cycle, the challenges of crafting a new visual hagiography was inseparably related to the development of realistic display. It is against this broader background of representational-iconographic interdependence that I will analyze certain details of the St. Francis in the Court of the Sultan fresco, which commemorated a central and widely known episode from the life of Francis. The encounter between Francis and Malik-al-Kâmil, sultan of Egypt, reportedly took place in September 1219.3 Francis went from the crusader camp in front of Damietta to the opposite Saracen camp to convert Malikal-Kâmil together with his army to Christianity and some days later returned alive. According to its inscription, the fresco in Assisi was meant to 1

Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: Una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1999), 3–49; Rosalind B. Brooke, The image of St. Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 243–246. 2 John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 19–56. 3 John V. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4–5.

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Fig. 1: St. Francis in the Court of the Sultan, San Francesco, Assisi, around 1291

St. Francis in Front of the Sultan

Fig. 2: Statuettes (detail of fig. 1)

Fig. 3: Lions on the base of the Sultan’s throne (detail of fig. 1)

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represent the moment when St. Francis, for the faith of Christ, wanted to enter into the fire together with the priests of the Sultan of Babylon, but they were not willing to do it and ran away immediately.4 Within the fresco, the actors are organized into three groups. On the left, four Saracen priests are running away. Francis stands in the middle and next to the fire together with brother Illuminatus. On the right, the Sultan is sitting on his throne in the midst of his soldiers, and points towards the fire. There are two buildings on the fresco each with an elaborate figurative decoration. On the top of the building-structure to the left, altogether five statuettes are depicted on dwarf columns.5 The statuettes represent winged, naked male figures, sitting on a pillow and holding festoons in their hands.6 On the right side of the picture stands the throne of the Sultan, which is not a simple chair, but a vaulted building.7 The base of the throne was decorated with golden reliefs of lions.8 John V. Tolan has analyzed in detail the visual and textual accounts of the encounter in his recent monograph.9 The reason to come back to the 4

“Cum beatus Franciscus ob Christi fidem voluit intrare ignem magnum cum sacerdotibus Soldani Babiloniae, sed nullus eorum voluit intrare cum eo, sed statim de suis conspectibus aufugerunt.” Giorgio Bonsanti, ed., La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2002), 530. 5 The exact number of the statuettes is unclear. There are definitely four pieces that exhibit the same features. However, at the right-back corner of the roof, there is a dwarf pillar as well, and a silhouette quite similar to these four statuettes appears there; it is partly covered with the festoon. As to the four clearly discernible statuettes, the original layer of gilt has been lost; only the yellow drawing is visible now. See Leonetto Tintori and Millard Meiss, The Painting of The Life of St. Francis in Assisi (New York: University Press, 1962), 108; Bruno Zanardi, Frederico Zeri, and Chiara Frugoni, Il cantiere di Giotto: Le Storie di San Francesco ad Assisi (Milan: Skira, 1996), 176. 6 Topographical evidence shows that the four gilded statues were executed independently and later than the huge giornata covering the upper part of the scene—they were in fact cut into the original surface. The exact moment of these alterations (giornate 104–107) cannot be grasped, just its terminus post quem with regard to the upper surface of the fresco (giornate 103). Cf. Zanardi, Zeri and Frugoni, Il cantiere di Giotto, 176. We know neither whether they replaced an already existing decoration or not, nor whether they were planned from the beginning or not; yet this intervention on the fresco definitely suggest that its actual state was a result of a thoughtful planning, and it signals the importance accorded to the details. 7 Throne recalls the funerary monument of Adrian V in Viterbo. See Decio Gioseffi, Giotto architetto (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1963), 28–30. 8 The gilt is lost; what can be seen now is the yellow under-drawing, which was originally covered. It may suggest, nevertheless, that the original base of the throne was altered as well. Zanardi, Zeri and Frugoni, Il cantiere di Giotto, 176. 9 The book was first published in French: John Tolan, Le Saint chez le Sultan: Le rencontre de François d’Assise et de l’islam; Huit siècles d’interprétation (Paris: Seuil, 2007).


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problem and more specifically to the Assisi fresco is that Tolan himself considered the case of the five depicted statuettes unsolved, as he hesitated whether to regard them as idols or not.10 Erwin Panofsky has already proposed an interpretation of the statuettes as idols.11 There is certainly a possibility to regard the statuettes as a sort ideological attack on the Saracens labeling them falsely as idolatrous, and it cannot be excluded that some of the contemporary viewers in the Upper Church understood the image that way.12 It should be highlighted, however, that neither the already quoted inscription nor the corresponding passage of the Legenda Maior mentioned idols in the milieu of the Sultan, and the Saracens are called non-believers.13 The reference to the Sultan as the ruler of Babylon 10

Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 143. The pro was that the depiction of idols would conform to the contemporary views on Saracens, the con was that to some extent similar statuettes appear on the papal chamber in the Dream of Innocent III. 11 Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (New York: Icon, 1972), 148n3. 12 On the problem of the ideologically charged representations of Saracens, see Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1991); Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University, 2003), 157–211. With regard to the fresco in Assisi, Rosalind Brooke argued that it is not a pejorative representation of the Saracens. Brooke, The image of St. Francis, 395. 13 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, The Major Legend of Saint Francis, in The Founder: Francis of Assisi; Early Documents 2, tr. Regis J. Armstrong et al., ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 602 (ch. 9, sec. 7). Tolan argued that there existed medieval texts, chronicles in the first place, where the Saracens were displayed as idolatrous due to the lack of information on Islam’s rejection of idolatry. John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 105–171. These texts rather show the situation in the twelfth century, after the first crusade. In the thirteenth century, high-ranking Franciscans were undoubtedly aware of dogmatic features of Islam, and regarded it as a heresy. For some contemporary Italian examples, see Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh, “La visione dell’Islam in alcuni testi Fiorentini Due-Trecenteschi,” in I fiorentini alle crociate: Guerre, pellegrinaggi e immaginario ‘orientalistico’ a Firenze tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Silvia Agnoletti and Luca Mantelli (Florence: Edizioni della Meridiana, 2007), 136–140. I briefly refer here to the case of William of Rubruck as well, who left Acre in 1248 for a missionary voyage between Buddhists, Muslims and Nestorians. In the debate in front of Möngke khan, William successfully allied with the Muslims against the Buddhists while affirming that there is only one God. Later he would have cornered the Muslims as well on the question of the Trinity, but his Nestorian companions took over the word. Tolan, Saracens, 223–225. This example shows that dogmatic differences were not only noted, but also exploited.

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can certainly be associated with the land of the idols, yet this wording is far from being conclusive, as Babylon became a generic designation of Medieval Egypt. Finally, the unambiguous reference to idolatry would require either the Saracens worshipping the idols or Francis destroying them. Neither of this happens within the fresco, the statuettes remain intact, placed on the top of the building and distanced from the action taking place beneath. Now, if one should wish to discard or at least soften this strong proposition on idolatry, a plausible alternative explanation must be offered, which will be attempted here. The principal statement of this reading is that the statuettes, instead of being an element of an anti-Saracen ideology, were originally meant to be a manifestation of the power of the Sultan, thus part of the secular iconography of the ruler. This reading would still allow that less informed audiences later regarded them as idols, but it emphasizes that at the moment when the new realistic pictorial cycle on the life of St. Francis was put together, the main aim of the fresco was to create an expressive, realistic and secular setting for the Saracen ruler. The morphology of the statuettes, the narrative context of the Legenda Maior and other restatements of the subject matter seem to confirm this conclusion. The statuettes themselves rather followed the traditional iconography of a Victory than that of an idol. They neither have a shield nor a rod.14 Furthermore, their wings are not webbed but feathered. Their sedentary pose on dwarf pillars and the festoon, which they hold together, create a display different from an erect solitary statue on a freestanding column. It has been already proposed that these statuettes had a Classical pictorial origin, even if exact one-to-one match for prototype cannot be provided.15 14

For Trecento representations of idols, see the Earthquake in Ephesus in the choir of the Sant’Agostino in Rimini, where four statuettes can be seen collapsing upon the prayer of St. John the Evangelist. The fresco is dated between 1315 and 1318. Alessandro Volpe, Giotto e i Riminesi: Il gotico e l’antico nella pittura di primo Trecento (Milan: Motta, 2002), 160–161. See also the St. Agnes led to the Brothel in the choir of the Santa Maria Donnaregina in Naples. The frescoes can be dated after 1332. Stefania Paone, “Gli affreschi di Santa Maria Donnaregina Vecchia: Percorsi stilistici nella Napoli angioina,” Arte medievale 3 (2004): 91. Os identified the statuettes as idols. Henk W. van Os, “Idolatry on the Gate: Antique Sources for an Assisi Fresco,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 171– 175, on p. 173. 15 Janetta Rebold Benton, “Some Ancient Mural Motifs in Italian Painting around 1300,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48 (1985): 152–158. Since a significant amount of the Classical pictorial heritage accessible during the Middle Ages is now lost, Benton based her argument on a cumulative comparison of Pompeian and Trecento examples.


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In the discussion of the presumably Classical origin of the statuettes, the mosaic decoration of the of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna has been neglected so far, however, it constitutes the single Late-Antique example known to us and accessible as well throughout the Middle Ages, where similar statuettes appeared.16 At the end of the nave, opposite one another, there are two buildings represented on the mosaics and identified with an inscription. On the northern side stands the town of Classe (CIVITAS CLASSIS), while on the southern side a palace (PALATIUM). Placed in various parts of the palace, but always holding a festoon and standing on a column, altogether nineteen statuettes of winged Victories in blue clothes are depicted. The statuettes of the Victories were part of the original decoration and survived the reshaping of the mosaic.17 It is important to note that these statuettes appeared within a Christian space, but on the secular palace of the ruler. Though with the reshaping of the mosaic the members of the court and Theoderic himself were effaced, the inscription stating the secular identity and function of the building—PALATIUM—remained, and the whole work was accessible throughout the Middle Ages.18

16

The basilica was built under the patronage of the Ostrogothic king, Theoderic (494– 526), perhaps around the end of his reign (between 520–526). In 561, following an edict of Emperor Justinian, the belongings of the Arian Church of Ravenna, thus the Sant’Apollinare Nuovo as well, were confiscated and given to the Catholic Church of the city. The church was rededicated to St. Martin in Golden Heavens and its mosaic decoration was “purified” from “heretic” elements under the supervision of archbishop Agnellus. Rita Zanotto, “La chiesa di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo a Ravenna,” in Venezia e Bisanzio: Aspetti della cultura artistica bizantina da Ravenna a Venezia (V–XIV secolo), ed. Clementina Rizzardi (Venice: IVSLA, 2005), 351–354. For this and the subsequent history of the church, see Emanuela Penni Iacco, La basilica di S. Apollinare Nuovo di Ravenna attraverso i secoli (Bologna: Ante Quem, 2004). 17 Otto G. von Simson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), 69–71 and 82. In both cases the alteration meant the replacement of the figures, presumably high members of the court of Theoderic, possibly even the king himself, with golden background in the case of Classe, and with blue background and white curtains in the case of the Palatium; furthermore, this effacement might have included the destruction of Theoderic’s statue (perhaps equestrian) represented in the tympanum of the palace as well. Giuseppe Bovini, “Antichi rifacimenti nei mosaici di S. Apollinare Nuovo di Ravenna,” Corso di Cultura sull’Arte Ravennate e Bizantina 13 (1966): 51–81. 18 The building of the basilica was being kept in shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. For the various restorations (pavement, bell-tower), see Penni Iacco, La basilica di S. Apollinare Nuovo, 93–96.

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This example can offer an alternative understanding of the reappearance of statuettes in Trecento painting besides regarding it as a mere expression of idolatry or an early antiquarian interest in Classical painting. The statuettes on the architectural setting of the Sultan’s court could assume a similar role in the secular iconography of the ruler. This interpretation is further confirmed by the golden reliefs of lions on the base of his throne. Even if these reliefs did not refer necessarily to the throne of wisdom and thus did not present him as a wise king, they definitely affirm his power. Tolan suggested that the curtain behind him has a kufesque inscription, and the clothing of Saracen figures on the fresco is intended to be exotic and oriental.19 All these elements can be interpreted as part of a pictorial strategy, the aim of which is to create a realistic setting for the exotic and mighty ruler. On the Bardi dossal, which is the only known depiction of the event prior to the fresco in Assisi, the Sultan appears almost as a Christian king; thus there, too, an attempt was made to display him as a ruler, but the iconography relied on Western models.20 It seems that a new ruler-iconography was developed in Assisi. Some fresco fragments were recently discovered in the San Pasquale Baylon chapel of the Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, presumably dated shortly after the St. Francis cycle in Assisi.21 There is a fragmentary representation of the Banquet of Herod on the right wall.22 On the top of the depicted building where the banquet takes place, two statuettes of winged 19

Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 143–144. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 105. The dossal is dated around 1245. William R. Cook, Images of St. Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone, and Glass from the Earliest Images to ca. 1320 in Italy: A Catalogue (Florence: Olschki, 1999), 98–102. 21 Innocent IV donated the church to the Franciscans on June 26, 1250. Marianna Brancia di Apricena, Il complesso dell’Aracoeli sul Colle Capitolino (Rome: Quasar, 2000), 63– 90. The medieval dedication of the chapel is unknown, and it was perhaps the funerary chapel of an important Roman family. For the mechanisms of patronage related to other chapels in the church during the Medieval period, see Claudia Bolgia, “Ostentation, Power, and Family Competition in Late-Medieval Rome: The Earliest Chapels at S. Maria in Aracoeli,” in Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. Brenda Bolton and Christine Meek (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 73–107. The decoration was probably done by one of the leading Roman workshops between 1295 and 1300. Tommaso Strinati, Aracoeli: Gli affreschi ritrovati (Milan: Skira, 2004), 17–22, and 30. 22 On the main wall facing the entrance there is a depiction of the Virgin and Child flanked by St. John the Baptist on the left and St. John Evangelist on the right. Presumably the last days of the saints flanking the Virgin were the topic of the frescoes on the sides. There are some remaining sinopiae representing heads, perhaps assembled around the table. Strinati, Aracoeli, 146. 20


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and naked figurines survived who, because of their outlook, sedentary pose, feathered wings and the way they hold the festoon, are one-to-one matches of the statuettes on the St. Francis in the Court of the Sultan scene in the Upper Church at Assisi.23 Similarly to the ordeal scene in Assisi, the Banquet of Herod also occurred in the space of the ruler, thus conforming to the interpretation of the motif as part of a secular-triumphal iconography. In both cases, the statuettes contributed to the reality-effect of the setting of the palace.

Fig. 4: St. Francis in the Court of the Sultan, Bardi dossal, Santa Croce, Florence, 1245

This interpretation is harmonious with the narrative account of Bonaventure as well, on which the fresco was based.24 Bonaventure’s aim was not to ban the Saracens as idolaters. The version in the Legenda Maior focused on explaining how instead of being martyred in the Saracen camp, Francis would receive a unique martyrdom, the stigmata of Christ.25 Furthermore, Bonaventure showed that because of the cowardice 23

Strinati, Aracoeli, 50. Even if the execution differs, since in Rome they were painted in monochrome and in Assisi they were gilded, this does not prevent their recognition as being the same motif. 24 See Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 109–134. 25 As it is signaled by the title of the chapter: “The ardor of charity and the desire for martyrdom.” Bonaventure, The Major Legend, 586 (ch. 9).

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of their priests, Francis left the enemy camp victoriously despite the unsuccessful conversion of the Saracens. It is important to note that there is a discrepancy between the text and the fresco. In the Legenda Maior, the Sultan did not even dare to order his priests to submit themselves to trial by fire, he explicitly told to Francis that he doubted whether any of them would have accepted the challenge.26 On the fresco the narrative took a different path: the Sultan did not rejected Francis’ initial challenge, the fire has been lit, and he is ordering the four priests to enter into it. This change successfully dramatized the pictorial narrative, as the burning fire in the middle focuses the stake of the encounter.27 An additional result was that Bonaventure’s hesitant Sultan has been transformed on the fresco into a mighty ruler issuing an order. His out-stretched right arm pointing to the fire must be understood as a command towards the four Saracen priests on the left, who are sneaking away.28 The statuettes of the Victories and the reliefs of the lions affirmed further his powerful status. Ultimately, this display of power was a way to glorify Francis: the failure of the priests to accept the challenge notwithstanding the clear order is the failure of the ruler as well and the manifestation of his limited power. The Poverello in the middle, who is willing to risk the trial as it is expressed by his gestures pointing to himself and the fire, remains thus the single victorious figure on the scene, despite all the mightiness of the Sultan. The Ordeal by Fire and the statuettes had a further restatement in a Franciscan context, in the Santa Croce in Florence.29 It was depicted in the 26

“I do not believe that any of my priests would be willing to expose himself to the fire to defend his faith or to undergo any kind of torment.” Bonaventure, The Major Legend, 603 (ch. 9, sec. 8). 27 Tolan noted this difference between the text and the fresco. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 144–145. 28 The difference is even more pronounced in comparison to the depiction of the scene on the Bardi dossal: there the Sultan, together with his men, carefully listens to the preaching of Francis, he does not dominate the situation at all. Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 103– 105; Francesco Grassi, “Santa Croce: Due modi di intendere la crociata; la tavola Bardi e Giotto; il Francesco ‘tràdito’ o tradìto,” in I fiorentini alle crociate: Guerre, pellegrinaggi e immaginario ‘orientalistico’ a Firenze tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Silvia Agnoletti and Luca Mantelli (Florence: Edizioni della Meridiana, 2007), 111, and 119–120. 29 The Ordeal by Fire had further restatements in Franciscan contexts, but statuettes were depicted only on the Bardi fresco among the surviving examples. They were not represented in the San Francesco, in Pistoia. Though Burke proposed that they appear in the old refectory of the San Francesco, in Bologna, it must be noted that on the old photograph of the wall the statuettes (or things, which can be statuettes), appear only on the Resurrection of the Youngster from Lerida, and not on the Ordeal by Fire, both represented in the lower


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funerary chapel of the Bardi family dedicated to St. Francis next to the chancel.30 It has been pointed out that in comparison to the version in Assisi, the composition of the Ordeal by Fire was altered: the major difference is that the figure of the sultan occupies the center of the fresco and thus dominates it completely.31 Francis and brother Illuminatus are placed on the right, opposite to the group of the Saracen clergy on the left. The dramatic moment of the fresco is the same as in Assisi: the Sultan is ordering his priests to enter into the fire, but they are running away. Nevertheless, the compositional change stressed further the dominance of the Sultan: while in Assisi the figure of Francis being depicted in the center could still claim the attention of the viewer, in the Bardi chapel he is marginalized. The four statuettes are symmetrically distributed on the two edges of the throne and the pavilion. In comparison to the dispersed two buildings in Assisi, here the architectural setting successfully embraces all the figures, and thus it represents an interior of the palace. Except for their sedentary poses and placement on dwarf-pillars, the statuettes were significantly changed: they have no wings, and they wear a robe, and they have a beard. Furthermore, they hold cornucopias in their hands.32 Because of these alterations, the strong allusion to the iconography of the Victory faded. On the other hand, this did not lead to an open display of idolatry, as these statuettes are equally far from the traditional iconography of an idol. In my view, the stated changes and the adoption of cornucopias in the first place, remained within the boundaries of the iconography of the ruler, but the emphasis was moved from triumph to wealth. The statuettes fashioned the Sultan on the fresco not so much as a mighty warrior (his power is already manifested through the alteration of the composition), but rather alluded to his richness. row. Maureen S. Burke, “The Martyrdom of the Fransiscans by Ambrogio Lorenzetti,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 65 (2002): 460-492, on p. 472. For the photograph, see Albert Brach, Giottos Schule in der Romagna (Strassburg: Heitz, 1902), fig. 10. 30 Ridolfo Bardi endowed the St. Francis chapel next to the sanctuary in 1310. Rona Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict: Saint Francis and Giotto’s Bardi Chapel (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 52–55. The date of the mural decoration of the chapel is debated and it ranges between 1311 and 1325. For a reassessment, see Nancy M. Thompson, “Cooperation and Conflict: Stained Glass in the Bardi Chapels of Santa Croce,” in The Art of the Franciscan Order in Italy, ed. William R. Cook (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 257–261. 31 Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict, 73; Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 179; Grassi, “Santa Croce,” 119. 32 Though two of the statuettes are damaged, the remaining parts allow establishing that they belong to the same pattern.

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Bonaventure emphasized the immense treasures of the Sultan indirectly: after the unaccomplished trial by fire, the ruler wished to give gifts to Francis, who renounced them “as if they were dirt.” Bonaventure asserted that Francis was “greedy not for worldly possessions, but the salvation of souls.”33 Francis’ renunciation of the gifts of the Sultan reiterated in fact the main theme of the Renunciation of Worldly Goods, depicted in the lunette of the southern wall of the chapel.34 Though the fresco is focusing on the moment of the ordeal, the open display of the Sultan’s wealth on the fresco alluded to and reinforced yet again the magnitude of Francis’s resistance to worldly possessions. In this sense the statuettes not only contribute to the iconography of the ruler, but they characterize a relevant aspect of it as well. It should be mentioned, that the members of the Bardi family, for whom the chapel was in the first place intended, were the leading merchants and bankers of Florence until their bankruptcy in January 1346.35 They could easily associate these statuettes with the wonders and treasures of the Orient rather than with the outrageous idolatry of the Saracens. The display of wealth and power, justified by the iconographic program of the chapel, could also resonate for them. The emphasis on the mightiness of the Sultan can find perhaps its trigger in the larger historical context of the St. Francis cycle in Assisi as well. As the cycle is not firmly dated, any conclusion must remain hypothetical. The initiative to decorate the nave of the Upper Church in Assisi came perhaps from Jerome of Ascoli, who as Nicholas IV was the first Franciscan pope (1288–1292).36 The actual extent of Nicholas IV involvement in the picto33

Bonaventure, The Major Legend, 603 (ch. 9, sec. 8). Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict, 72. 35 The Bardi were present in England already from the end of the thirteenth century as buyers of wool, and after 1312 they became a main lender of the Crown (under Edward II and Edward III). The decoration of the chapel can be dated around this successful period, before their heavy losses in England after 1340 and their bankruptcy in Florence in 1346. Armando Sapori, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence: Olschki, 1926), 5–9, 32–41, 52–86, and 171–182. See also Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict, 51–59; Benjamin G. Kohl, “Giotto and his lay patrons,” in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 193–196. 36 In the spring of 1312, during the debate about the observance of the Franciscan rule, representatives of the Conventual wing of the Franciscan order named Nicholas IV as the commissioner of the great sumptuousness of paintings in the church at Assisi. For the text and the implications of Nicholas IV’s patronage, see Donald Cooper and Janet Robson, “Pope Nicholas IV and the Upper Church at Assisi,” Apollo 157, no. 492 (2003): 32–34. 34


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rial program is unclear, as he did not visit Assisi during his reign.37 It should be noted, however, that Jerome was nominated cardinal bishop of Palestine already in 1281.38 Elected pope on February 22, 1288, he highlighted in his first letter that the Holy Land would figure in the main focus of his activities.39 Practically this meant the organization of a crusade.40 The decision to include a scene depicting St. Francis before the Sultan might have been made during these years. The confrontational tone of the fresco is completely different from the only known statement of the subject matter prior to it: on the Bardi dossal the Sultan and his men listen attentively to Francis’ preaching.41 In the context of planning the crusade the example of the Francis challenging the Saracen priests and the Sultan himself might have been a model for the Franciscan pope promising a successful endeavor on the footsteps of the founder. The staging of the Sultan as a mighty enemy after May 28, 1291, gained a bitter tone: al-Ashraf Khalil captured Acre, the last crusader stronghold on the Palestinian coast, the news of which seem to have reached Nicholas IV in August 1291.42 It cannot be decided conclusively whether the fresco was finalized after or before this date. The secular décor of the Sultan attests nevertheless the atmosphere of the years when the keeping or regaining of the Holy Land still appeared as a challenging but feasible project. Creating an appropriate setting for the adversary could have been the main aim of the developers of the iconographic program. The adoption of Late-Antique statuettes gave an unprecedented realityeffect to the representation recreating the imagined milieu of the Saracen ruler in the Upper Church. Instead of regarding them as an open expression of idolatry, these statuettes can be understood as a successful response to the demands of a new realistic iconography. All photos: © Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence 37

For a reconsideration of the text, see Donald Cooper and Janet Robson, “A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings: Frescoes and Franciscan Poverty at Assisi in 1288 and 1312,” The Burlington Magazine 151 (2009): 656–662; and Brooke, The image of St. Francis, 439–453. 38 Brooke, The image of St. Francis, 439. 39 In the “Iudicia Dei” on February 23, 1288. Antonino Franchi, Nicolaus Papa IV: 1288– 1292, ed. Franca Maroni Capretti (Ascoli Piceno: Porziuncola, 1990), 91–95 and 193. 40 Franchi, Nicolaus Papa IV, 193–203; and Franco Cardini, “Niccolò IV e la Crociata,” in Niccolò IV: Un pontificato tra Oriente ed Occidente, ed. Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1991), 135–155. 41 Grassi, “Santa Croce,” 116–120; Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, 103–108. 42 Franchi, Nicolaus Papa IV, 198–199; Cardini, “Niccolò IV e la Crociata,” 150–155.

Blessed John the French, The First Franciscan Minister Provincial in Hungary, and his Miracles Stanko ANDRIĆ

A quarter of a century ago, in his excellent critical survey of the topics related to the cult of the saints in medieval Hungary and of the studies dealing with them up until that time, Gábor Klaniczay did not miss mentioning “the vain attempts to promote the canonization of John Francia, the first minister provincial of the Franciscans in Hungary.” He quoted this case as an example of those “spontaneous cults” which the newlyarrived mendicant orders in the Kingdom of Hungary did not favor, as much as embrace the archaic conception of the holy rulers and princes.1 The only more extensive treatment of provincial John in modern historiography can be found in János Karácsonyi’s history of the Franciscan order in Hungary. Here the author recounted the main medieval source on “John the French” (Franczia János), placing its information into its most plausible historical context. Karácsonyi concluded that John must have performed his ministerial function and died around 1240; he was probably indeed a relative of the French royal dynasty; the statement in the source that he was French is corroborated by his choice of his last resting place in the township of Francavilla, which was a well-known “Latin” colony in Hungarian Syrmia.2 Thus, after all, the propounded sainthood of provincial John the French would not differ so much from the Hungarian Franciscans’ predilection for saintly rulers, since John was of the royal blood too—provided of course that the story about his descent is true. The last immediately relevant work in modern scholarship that I am aware of is Samu Borovszky’s description of a copy of the rare print from 1504 of the Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius, found in the 1

Gábor Klaniczay, “Le culte des saints dans la Hongrie médiévale (Problèmes de recherche),” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1983): 57–78, on p. 65. 2 János Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz rendjének története Magyarországon 1711-ig (A history of the order of St. Francis in Hungary until 1711), 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1922–1924), 1:16–17.

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University Library of Leipzig. Borovszky reprinted several excerpts from the book that are of interest with respect to the history of the Franciscans in Hungary, among which can be found one on provincial John and his miracle that took place in Francavilla.3 It is curious that the legend of the first Franciscan provincial in Hungary has not attracted more scholarly attention in recent times.4 Is this so only by chance, or is there a good reason for this silence? * The thriving Franciscan historiography of the early modern era counted provincial John as one of the order’s saintly figures. The leading historian of the order, Luke Wadding (1588–1657), in his monumental Annales Minorum (first edition 1625–1654), dedicated a separate paragraph almost entirely to the Hungarian provincial John, under the heading of the year 1287.5 Another Franciscan historian and theologian, Fortunatus Hueber (1639–1706), included provincial John in his Menologium Franciscanum (1698), a large compilation of summaries of the lives of the order’s saintly men and women, arranged according to the calendar. (In German the title is aptly rendered as Heiligenkalender der Franziskaner.) In his narrative which was intended to be read aloud in public, Hueber offered a reduced version of the legend about the first Hungarian provincial, inserting it among the stories gathered under the date of February 14.6 Besides these (and a few other) general works by the foremost authors of the order in the early modern centuries, provincial John as a saintly person was also commemorated locally, in the narrower region which encompassed his alleged burial place—the historic region of Syrmia (Ser3

Samu Borovszky, “A ferencziek történetéhez” (On the history of the Franciscans) Történelmi Tár 18 (1895): 749–755, esp. 750. 4 It is indicative in this respect that provincial John has no entry in Gyula Kristó, Pál Engel, and Ferenc Makk, eds., Korai magyar történeti lexikon (9–14. század) (Encyclopedia of early Hungarian history, 9th–14th centuries) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1994), nor is he mentioned there in the articles on the Franciscans (pp. 218–219), French-Hungarian connections (pp. 225–226), and the town of Nagyolaszi/Francavilla (p. 477). Cf. also Dezső Pais, “Les rapports franco-hongrois sous le règne des Árpád,” Revue des études hongroises et finno-ougriennes 1 (1923): 15–26, 137–144; István Sőtér, Magyar–francia kapcsolatok (Hungarian–French relations) (Budapest: Teleki Pál Tudományos Intézet, 1946). 5 Lucas Wadding et al., Annales Minorum seu trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, 3rd ed., 25 vols. (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1931–1934), 5:177. 6 Fortunatus Hueber, Menologium seu brevis et compendiosa illuminatio etc. sanctorum, beatorum, miraculosorum etc. ex triplici ordine etc. quos omnes seraphicus pater noster S. Franciscus ab Assisio etc. fundavit etc. (Munich: Straub, 1698), col. 548.

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bian Srem, Croatian Srijem, Hungarian Szerémség) between the Danube and the Sava rivers. However, John’s memory could not be preserved here in continuity from the thirteenth century onwards, primarily because, during the greater part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this land was under Ottoman rule which brought about large-scale population changes and a complete disintegration of the medieval church structures. Therefore the memories of almost all pre-Ottoman “defining moments” and traditions connected with this area had to be reintroduced here after the end of the Ottoman rule following the battle of Slankamen in 1691 and the treaty of Karlowitz (Sremski Karlovci) in 1699. The restoration of the official Catholic church organization was achieved jointly by the Franciscans, the Jesuits, and the diocesan priesthood, the Franciscans being apparently the main driving force. In the course of the eighteenth century, they founded or restored no less than five monasteries in what has by that time become understood under the geographic name of Syrmia: Vukovar, Šarengrad, Ilok, Petrovardin, and Zemun. This process of the Catholic revival in Syrmia was accompanied by the emergence of a peculiar form of regional cultural identity. The principal point of support for this new self-awareness as a distinct historical region was found in Syrmia’s “glorious” ancient Roman past (centered on the imperial city of Sirmium, the etymon of the region’s modern name) and its exceptionally rich early Christian legacy, but it also drew on more recent themes such as the “splendors” of the late medieval baronial family of Iločki (Újlaki) and especially the cult of the famous Franciscan saint John Capistran, who died and was buried in the monastery of Ilok (Újlak)—his bodily remains vanishing later on during the Ottoman period.7 7

For the history of Sirmium and its surroundings in Antiquity, as well as the vestiges of ancient Christianity in the region, see especially Miroslava Mirković, Sirmium: Istorija rimskog grada od I do kraja VI veka (Sirmium: A history of the Roman city from the first through the sixth century) (Sremska Mitrovica: Blago Sirmijuma, 2008); Petar Milošević, Arheologija i istorija Sirmijuma (Archaeology and history of Sirmium) (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 2001); and Vladislav Popović, Sirmium–-grad careva i mučenika: Sabrani radovi o arheologiji i istoriji Sirmijuma (Sirmium–-city of emperors and martyrs: Collected works on the archaeology and history of Sirmium) (Sremska Mitrovica: Blago Sirmijuma, 2003). On Syrmia under Ottoman rule, see Aleksandar Krstić, “Vreme turske vlasti u Sremu” (The period of the Turkish rule in Syrmia), in Srem kroz vekove: Slojevi kultura Fruške gore i Srema, ed. Miodrag Maticki (Beograd: Vukova Zadužbina, 2007), 75–101. On the Franciscans’ pastoral and cultural role in early post-Ottoman Syrmia (in a larger geographical framework), see Franjo Emanuel Hoško, Franjevci u kontinentalnoj Hrvatskoj kroz stoljeća (Franciscans in inland Croatia through the centuries) (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 2000); and idem, Franjevci i poslanje Crkve u kon-

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Fig. 1: The Tree of the Syrmian Saints, print from 1777 (now in Vukovar monastery)

tinentalnoj Hrvatskoj (Franciscans and the mission of the Church in inland Croatia) (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost, 2001).


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Fig. 2: The Tree of the Syrmian Saints, detail

Contributing in a decisive way to the region’s cultural and historical self-definition, the Franciscans sought to stress above all its admirable Christian heritage. Perhaps one of the most beautiful examples of this activity is a colored etching from 1777, entitled Arbor SS. BB. ac VV. Servorum Dei Syrmiensium and now found in the Franciscan monastery of Vukovar.8 The picture on the print was devised by Bono Mihaljević, a learned and reputable friar from the monastery of Ilok, and engraved by Johann Philipp Binder from Buda. It shows a tree whose branches are filled with the medallion-shaped images of the Syrmian saints and blessed, each accompanied by a short descriptive legend. Under the tree, the first post-Ottoman “duke of Syrmia,” the Roman aristocrat Livio Odescalchi (1652–1713), is standing escorted by a putto, on the land encircled by the rivers Danube and Sava. On the other side of the tree’s trunk, the picture displays an idealized view of the walled town of Ilok, the center of Odescalchi’s Syrmian estates. The tree’s crown contains altogether 39 images of saints or groups of saints. According to their de8

I am not aware of any other copies of this print that might exist elsewhere.

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scriptions on the picture, thirty of them represent the martyrs and prelates of the ancient Church (from the second to fourth centuries), four are medieval, and five belong to the Ottoman period. The very top of the tree is significantly occupied by the three saints who are perceived as the most symbolic for Syrmia’s cultural identity: saint Demetrius, “the patron of the Syrmian dukedom,” saint John Capistran (his position is counter to the chronology which otherwise proceeds in descending order), and Saint Bonus of Rome, a martyr whose relics were acquired by the monastery of Vukovar in 1754. One of the Arbor’s lower branches bears the imaginary portrait of the thirteenth-century friar John whose legend reads: “B.[eatus] Ioannes C.[onfessor] Ord.[inis] Min.[orum] 1. Provincialis per Hunga:[riam] obiit Fran:[ca] Villae in Custodia Syrm[iensi] A:[nno] 1288.” * Early modern Franciscan historiographers are not the primary sources of what we know about provincial John. The actual sources are closer to his own time, though still considerably posterior. They are found in various works of the order’s historiography of the fourteenth century. It is possible to distinguish a short and a long version of these earliest accounts. The short version appeared for the first time in the Catalogus sanctorum Fratrum Minorum (Catalogue of the saints of the Friars Minor), composed around 1335 by an unknown Italian friar. The Catalogus enumerates four saints in the Province of Hungary, with provincial John at the top of the list: In Villafranca frater Joannes, minister Ungariae, qui multis miraculis coruscat; inter alia post mortem suam corpus suum debebat transferri de uno loco per aquam profundam cum navi ad alium locum, et translatum est per seipsum sine adjutorio navigii ad locum debitum.9 [In Villafranca, Brother John, minister of Hungary, who shines with many miracles; among others, after his death his body had to be transferred from one place [= friary] across a deep water to another place, and it was taken to the due place by itself alone, without the help of a vessel.]

Almost the same is said about the saints of the Province of Hungary in the Provinciale ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Survey of the provinces of the 9

Leonhard Lemmens, Fragmenta minora: Catalogus sanctorum fratrum minorum, Fragmenta Franciscana 3 (Rome: Sallustiana, 1903), 33.


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Order of Friars Minor) attributed to Paolino of Venice, from around 1343.10 Finally, the same concise record on provincial John was taken over in two well-known chronicles from the second half of the century: the Chronica XXIV generalium (The Chronicle of the twenty-four general ministers), compiled between 1369 and 1374, probably by Arnald of Sarrant, and the De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu (On the conformity between the life of St. Francis and the life of Lord Jesus), composed by Bartholomew Rinonico of Pisa between 1385 and 1399.11 The long version of provincial John’s history is only known from the already mentioned publication of 1504, the Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius (The Mirror of the lives of Saint Francis and of his companions). This book printed in Venice contains a typical medieval Franciscan compilation in which parts taken from a number of earlier works are arranged into a more or less logical sequence. Its manuscript prototype, if it ever existed as such, has not been found, but we know of a number of similar handwritten compilations which by their contents stand very close to the Speculum vitae.12 The most thorough analyses, however preliminary, of the Speculum vitae are still those by Paul Sabatier (1858– 1928), who recognized “the frightening complexity of the elements” which make up this “curious miscellany.”13 In his most elaborate contribution to this problem, Sabatier came to the conclusion that the main sources 10

Provinciale Ordinis Fratrum Minorum vetustissimum secundum Codicem Vaticanum Nr. 1960, ed. Konrad Eubel (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1892), 34. 11 Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Minorum, Analecta Franciscana 3 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1897), 529–530; Bartholomew of Pisa, De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, 2 vols., Analecta Franciscana 4–5 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1906–1912), 1:324. 12 For the first attempts to reconstruct the manuscript tradition of the Speculum vitae, see Franz Ehrle, “Das Speculum vitae s. Francisci et Sociorum in den Handschriften,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 12 (1888): 116–122. 13 Sabatier’s principal contribution to the study of the Speculum vitae is Paul Sabatier, “Description du Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius (éd. de 1504),” in Opuscules de critique historique, vol. 1 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1903), 299–395. Many important observations are also given in his earlier biography of St. Francis—Paul Sabatier, Vie de s. François d’Assise (Paris: Fischbacher, 1893), lxix–lxxiii—and in the introductions to his editions of two major Franciscan chronicles: Speculum perfectionis seu s. Francisci Assisiensis Legenda antiquissima auctore fratre Leone, ed. Paul Sabatier, Collection de documents pour l’histoire religieuse et littéraire du Moyen âge 1 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1898), clii–clxi, clxxvi–cc, ccx–ccxi; and Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, ed. Paul Sabatier, Collection d’études et de documents sur l’histoire religieuse et littéraire du Moyen âge 4 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1902), xix, l–lii.

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of the Speculum vitae were two earlier works of Franciscan historiography (which Sabatier himself identified and prepared for publication): the Speculum perfectionis and the Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius. Besides amalgamating selected parts from these two chronicles, the unknown author of the Speculum vitae added at appropriate places some smaller fragments taken from a number of other sources, all of them existing before the 1320s when the original Speculum vitae must have been put together in Sabatier’s opinion. The only parts that were added at the time of the Speculum’s publication by print would be the chronological inventories at the end (a list of the order’s general chapters, a list of names of the Hungarian ministers provincial, and a catalogue of places where provincial chapters of Hungary were held) and a supplement to the existing catalogue of general ministers. Finally, Sabatier collected data on editions of the Speculum vitae which followed the editio princeps of 1504: besides one early undated (but probably posterior to 1504) edition printed in Paris, the work was published again in Metz in 1509, in Antwerp in 1620, in Cologne in 1623, and finally in Győr (Hungary) in 1752. The last two editions bear an extended title, Antiquitates Franciscanae seu Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius. Sabatier’s assumption that an original Speculum vitae was most probably composed in the 1320s becomes problematic when confronted with the more recent findings according to which its main sources were in fact of a later date than Sabatier believed.14 Max Perlbach’s view that an original Speculum vitae was composed around 1335 or 1340 (judging from several chronological indications in the text itself) seems, therefore, more acceptable.15 But was there indeed an original version, or a single archetype, of the Speculum vitae? In Sabatier’s hypothetical reconstruction, this compilation or miscellany was actually, from the very beginning, a group 14

For the Speculum perfectionis see esp. the new edition by D. Solvi—Anonimo della Porziuncola, Speculum perfectionis status fratris Minoris, ed. Daniele Solvi, Edizione nazionale dei testi mediolatini 16 (Florence: SISMEL, 2006)—and Felice Accrocca, “Oltre Sabatier: La nuova edizione dello Speculum perfectionis,” Miscellanea francescana 106–107 (2006–2007): 504–28. For the Actus beati Francisci, see the new edition by J. Cambell: Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius. Nuova edizione postuma di Jacques Cambell con testo dei Fioretti a fronte, ed. Marino Bigaroni and Giovanni Boccali (Assisi: Porziuncola, 1988). 15 Max Perlbach, “Die Handschrift der Denkwürdigkeiten des Minoriten Jordanus de Giano,” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 6 (1881): 606–612; cf. the French translation by Paul Sabatier in Speculum perfectionis, clxxxvii– cxcvi.


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of highly similar works, all of them having originated in an analogous way, in connection with the large Franciscan convent in Avignon. On this general hypothesis, the printed Speculum vitae would have indeed been based on a handwritten prototype, created in the second quarter of the fourteenth century and now lost. The specific feature of this “type” of the miscellany was, like in other “types,” not only a unique arrangement of common elements, but also a certain number of characteristic elements not found in other “types.” Researchers noticed at an early stage that these characteristic elements are mostly connected with Hungary. Besides the two entire “sections” at the very end (the previously mentioned lists of ministers provincial and of provincial chapters), there are Hungarian thematic additions or amplifications in several other places: in the catalogue of the saints and in the collection of Franciscan exempla or edifying anecdotes in the last part of the book (accounts of miraculous events in Segesd, Pécs and Trnava/Nagyszombat).16 The contents of the printed Speculum vitae is not the only connection between Hungary and the text group (or family) of the Speculum vitae. One manuscript belonging to the same group, unknown to Sabatier, is kept by the Széchényi National Library of Budapest: Cod. Lat. medi aevi 77, dated to the end of the fourteenth century and possibly originating from Germany, with yet another version of Speculum vitae on fol. 1–88v, here entitled Legenda beati Francisci et sociorum eius.17 Still more interesting is the existence of a miscellany of Franciscan histories and legends in an early Hungarian translation. It is now known as the Jókai Codex (formerly Ehrenfeld Codex), in possession of the same library in Budapest, and famous for being the oldest preserved manuscript book entirely written in Hungarian language. The codex is dated to the time shortly after 1440, but in its extant form it is undoubtedly a copy of an earlier translation, from the end of the fourteenth century. Soon after being discovered in 1851, the codex was connected with the printed Speculum vitae, and the later research has identified all of its Latin originals, showing that it mainly translated parts from the Actus beati Francisci and the Speculum 16

The last story, concerning a baron named Ladislaus Orzyad—see Speculum vitae beati Francisci et Sociorum ejus (Venice: Simone da Lovere [Simonis de Luere], 1504; available at http://gallica.bnf.fr), fol. 221v; cf. Sabatier, “Description,” p. 352, section 280— was not noticed by Borovszky, “A ferencziek.” 17 Lajos Katona, “Az Ehrenfeld- és Domonkos-codex forrásai” (The sources of the Ehrenfeld and Domonkos codices) Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 13 (1903): 59–78, 188–195, on pp. 65–75; the description of the manuscript is available at http://www.arcanum.hu/oszk, under “Kézirattár.”

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perfectionis. An analysis of the codex’s relationship with the Speculum vitae group must take into account that it is incompletely preserved (at least 27 folios are missing). It is in any case worth noticing that the contents of the existing codex have no characteristic Hungarian elements and thus it shows no special kinship with the printed Speculum vitae.18 The idea about a Hungarian author of the printed version of the Speculum vitae was first formulated by Joannes Hyacinthus Sbaralea (Gian Giacinto Sbaraglia, 1687–1764). In his posthumously published supplement to Wadding’s survey of Franciscan writers, Sbaralea introduced an author named Fabianus Hungarus by gleaning bits of information from various places in the Speculum vitae.19 If indeed there was a Hungarian friar named Fabian who prepared one manuscript version of the Speculum vitae in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, another Hungarian friar was apparently required at the time when the manuscript eventually went to print in Venice (1504), and it is this last redactor who updated the lists of the order’s generals and of the ministers provincial; the list of the provincial chapters, closing the book, was more probably—because of its specific structure—a wholly new addition of 1504. Presently there is no clue as to the identity of this final contributor to the “Hungarian” Speculum vitae; the colophon of the Venice edition seems to offer no help in this respect. The question of the authorship of the printed Speculum vitae may be even more complicated than it appears so far. At least on one occasion,20 18

Jókai-kódex [facsimile edition], ed. Dénes Szabó and János Lotz, Codices Hungarici 1 (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány P. Tudományegy.; Stockholm: Stockholmi Magyar Int., 1942.); Jókai-kódex, XIV–XV. század: A nyelvemlék betűhű olvasata és latin megfelelője (Jókai Codex, 14th–15th: Diplomatic transcription of the early Hungarian text and its Latin counterpart), ed. János P. Balázs, Codices Hungarici 8 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1981); Irina Nikolaeva, “The Jókai Codex as a Hagiographic Source: The Question of its Origin,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 1 (1993–1994): 135–144; László Szörényi, “La problematica del codice ‘Jókai’ alla luce degli studi recenti sulle leggende di San Francesco,” in Spiritualità e lettere nella cultura italiana e ungherese del Basso Medioevo, ed. Sante Graciotti and Cesare Vasoli (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 133–147. 19 Joannes Hyacinthus Sbaralea, Supplementum et castigatio ad Scriptores trium ordinum S. Francisci a Waddingo, aliisve descriptos 3 vols. (Rome: Lino Contedini, 1806), 233, 727. On this cf. Ehrle, “Das Speculum vitae,” 122; idem, “Kritische Mittheilungen über die ältesten Lebensbeschreibungen des hl. Franziskus,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 7 (1883): 389–397, on pp. 392–393; and Sabatier’s judgement in Speculum perfectionis, clxxxiii–clxxxiv. 20 Régi Magyar Könyvtár, III. kötet: Pótlások, kiegészítések, javítások (Library of old Hungarian books, volume 3: Supplements, additions, corrections), 5 vols., ed. Gedeon


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Fabianus from the Speculum vitae was identified with a well-known Hungarian Franciscan friar of this name, who however, could not be either of the authors/redactors discussed until now. This is Fabian of Igal, who was the minister provincial of the Conventual branch of the Hungarian Franciscans from 1452 until 1474, when he died and was buried in Pécs. He was remembered as an efficient head of the province who consolidated the ranks of the Hungarian Conventuals against the rise of the rival Observants, and who promulgated a new statute of the province (quoted under the title Regula Fratrum minorum and now lost). The basic biographical data on him are actually known from Speculum vitae itself, where he is included in the list of the provincial ministers.21 Indeed he may have played a role in the formation of the text printed in 1504, but for obvious chronological reasons he could be neither the editor of the final text nor the author of the original miscellany. Yet, linking Fabian of Igal with the Speculum vitae seems justified in a broader sense: the fragments of Hungarian Franciscan historiography which are preserved in the printed Speculum vitae clearly belong to the tradition of the Conventual branch, which owed its survival as a province largely to the ability of Fabian of Igal. In other words, in the Speculum vitae we have some relics of the otherwise lost historiographical tradition of Hungary’s medieval Conventuals—a counterpart of the better preserved history (or “self-history”) of the Hungarian Observants, the writing of which began in the early decades of the fifteenth century.22 Borsa, Sándor Dörnyei, and Irma Szálka (Budapest: OSZK, 1990–1996), 2:518, no. 6137 (on the Cologne edition of the Speculum vitae from 1623). 21 “Frater Fabianus de Igal minister eligitur Zegedini anno 1452. obiit 1474. sepelitur in Quinqueecclesiis.” Speculum vitae (as in footnote 16 above), fol. 238v. See also Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:65; Csaba Csapodi and Klára Csapodiné Gárdonyi, Bibliotheca Hungarica: Kódexek és nyomtatott könyvek Magyarországon 1526 előtt (Bibliotheca Hungarica: Codices and Printed Books in Medieval Hungary), 3 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1988–1994), 2:311, no. 3176. 22 The latter history normally appears under the title Chronica seu origo Fratrum Minorum de Observantia in provinciis Boznae et Hungariae Christo Jesu militantium. One of its manuscripts is published in Ferenc Toldy, Analecta monumentorum Hungariae historica, vol. 1 ([Budapest], [1871]), 215–310. See also Andor Tarnai, “A magyarországi obszervánsok rendi krónikájanak szerzői és forrásai” (Authors and sources of the chronicle of the Hungarian Observants), Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 77 (1973): 135–147; Csaba Csapodi and Klára Csapodiné Gárdonyi, Ariadne: A középkori magyarországi irodalom kéziratainak lelőhelykatalogusa (Ariadne: Location catalogue of the manuscripts of medieval literature in Hungary) (Budapest: MTAK, 1995), 23; Péter Kulcsár, Inventarium de operibus litterariis ad res Hungaricas pertinentiis ab initiis usque

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The problems of the text group of the Speculum vitae, its external affinities and dependencies as well as its internal relations, obviously require much further research.23 The peculiarities of the printed (“Hungarian”) Speculum vitae will require a special chapter in these future studies. Without delving deeper into this complex and perplexing matter, let me finally come back to the section of the Speculum vitae which interests us here the most: the catalogue of the saints (fol. 198v–206v in the Venice edition of 1504). It is included in most or all of the known manuscript versions of the Speculum vitae, but it is only in the printed version that it contains significant interpolations. The same catalogue is also found in several codices outside the miscellany of the Speculum vitae. Its modern editor Leonhard Lemmens seems therefore right when he rejected—on the ground that it neglected the heterogeneous nature of the Speculum vitae— Sbaralea’s attribution of the catalogue to the same Fabianus Hungarus who supposedly compiled the entire Speculum vitae. Lemmens himself concluded his own scrutiny by the statement that the catalogue was composed around 1335 by an unknown friar of the Province of St. Francis in Italy.24 This finding is highly relevant both for the datation of the Speculum vitae as a whole and for the datation of the enlarged Hungarian passages in the catalogue of the saints. The passage dedicated to provincial John, occupying one whole page in the edition of 1504, reads: In provincia Hungarie in Franchavilla frater Iohannes primus minister provincie Hungarie qui fuit minor frater regis Francie Philippi Parvi, qui multis miraculis corruscavit, et nunc corruscat, qui inter alia tres mortuos suscitavit. Quorum duo fratres nostri fuerunt scilicet in ordine sancti Francisci et ambos vidi. Tertius est unus pellifex et adhuc vivit. Qui etiam suscitavit unam feminam que novem diebus iacuerat quasi mortua, quia nihil sentiebatur in ea calor vel anhelitus. Apparuit ei beatus ille frater Iohannes et dixit ei: Surge et vade ad sepulchrum meum, gratias agas Deo qui per merita mea suscitavit te. Que statim surrexit incolumis ac si nihil mali habuisset. Que omnia ista ore proprio narravit mihi. Item inter alia ante mortem suam prescivit diem ad annum 1700 / A magyar történeti irodalom lelőhelyjegyzéke a kezdetektől 1700-ig (Budapest: Balassi / OSZK, 2003), 636. 23 Among important contributions not quoted here until now, see Eduard Lempp, Frère Élie de Cortone: Étude biographique, Collection d’études et de documents sur l’histoire religieuse et littéraire du Moyen âge 3 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1901), 24–33 and 163–169, who discusses the sources of a lengthy passage in the Speculum vitae dedicated to the life of the second minister general Elias of Cortona. It is also noteworthy that among the unpublished materials of the Society of Bollandists there are some “preliminary studies” dedicated to the comparison of all printed editions of the Speculum vitae (quoted by Sabatier in Speculum perfectionis, cci). 24 Lemmens, Fragmenta minora, vii–xiv.


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mortis sue; et dixit fratribus: Charissimi, oportet me hodie transire de hoc mundo; ideo rogo vos amore Dei ut statim portetis me ad Franchamvillam, quia iste locus desertabitur, et non sepeliatis me hic. Qui ordinato curro imposuerunt ad currum. Ipsi autem intrantes refectorium comederunt modicum. Cum autem vellent fratres iniungi equos ad currum, non invenerunt currum nec ipsum sanctum patrem. Currentes hincinde viderunt vestigia currus in ripa Save in luto. Currunt per viam que ducit in Franchamvillam, qui venientes invenerunt currum stantem cum sancto corpore ante portam claustri ubi dixerat se sepeliri, sine aliquo homine et animali, qui distat a predicto loco plus quam octo miliaria Lombardica. Qui locus est modo desertus circa flumen Save, quem sanctus frater Iohannes predixerat. Qui multa alia et diversa miracula fecit, et adhuc incessanter facit hic plura alia miracula contractis, cecis, aridis, demoniacis, impetrat quotidie suis meritis sanitatem omnibus.25 [In the Province of Hungary, in Francavilla, Brother John, the first minister of the Province of Hungary, who was a younger brother of Philip the Little, king of France, who shone with many miracles, and shines now too, who among other things resurrected three dead people. Two of them were friars of our order, i.e. in the Order of Saint Francis, and I saw them both. The third is a furrier and is still living. He also resurrected a woman who was lying for nine days as if being dead, because no warmth or breathing could be felt in her. This blessed Brother John appeared to her and told her: “Stand up and go to my grave, say your thanks to God because he resurrected you through my merits.” She immediately stood up in good health as if she had not suffered from anything. She recounted all this to me by her own mouth. Moreover, among other things, before he died he foresaw the day of his own death; and he told the brothers: “My dearest, it is proper that I depart from this world today; therefore I beg you by the sake of God that you immediately take me to Francavilla, because this place [= friary] will be deserted, so don’t bury me here.” They prepared a carriage and placed him on the cart. But they first entered the refectory and lunched a bit. When the brothers wanted to harness the horses to the cart, they did not find the cart nor the saint father himself. Running around the place they spotted the tracks of the cart on the bank of the Sava, in the mud. They ran along the road leading to Francavilla and, having arrived there, they found the cart standing with the saint body on it in front of the door of the cloister in which he had asked to be buried, without any man or animal, which [place] is at a distance of more than eight Lombard miles from the previously mentioned place. This [latter] place is now deserted, near the Sava river, just like the saint Brother John had predicted. He worked many other and various miracles, and still incessantly works here numerous other miracles to the disabled, the blind, the feeble, the devilpossessed; every day he restores health to all of them through his merits.]

* This lengthy account of provincial John’s death and miracles is strikingly rich in realistic details. It is obvious that it could not be derived from the more widely disseminated short version of the legend. The opposite could 25

Speculum vitae, 204v. Cf. Borovszky, “A ferencziek,” 750; Chronica XXIV generalium, 529–530n4.

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very well be the case, but it is not yet excluded that the two versions are somehow independent of each other. This question may be resolved, or at least clarified, if we can prove that first, the long version is older than the short version and, second, that all of the factual information contained in the short version is also found in the long version. As to the chronological sequence, we have seen that the short legend appeared for the first time in the Catalogue of the Franciscan saints composed probably around 1335. The long legend does not give any explicit indication of when it was written, but it does offer some implicit clues. At two places, the legend’s narrator speaks in the first person (et ambos vidi; ore proprio narravit mihi); he apparently did not know the saintly friar personally, but he saw and talked to some of his miraculés. Of another one, furrier (or peltmonger) by profession, he says that he adhuc vivit. In one of the healing miracles, which the narrator describes in more detail, it is made clear that the saint worked it after his death, through the agency of a vision experienced by the sick woman. It seems that, unlike this miracle, the three “resurrections” presented in fewer words took place during the provincial’s life; but this is not entirely obvious. From the point of view of chronology, this last detail is of crucial importance, and unfortunately it cannot be resolved either way with certainty. If some of the reported healing miracles were worked in vita, and if the legend’s writer met personally some of those who experienced them, then the time when the legend was written down cannot be very remote from the lifetime of provincial John himself. On the other hand, we do not know whether John, having performed his office around 1240, lived on for some time as an ex-provincial, or he died during his term of office (as Karácsonyi thought). If the first was true, the time frame within which the legend was recorded in writing would extend further into the late thirteenth or the early fourteenth century; but it could hardly happen later than 1335.26 Another point in the text which could connote some chronological information is related to the Franciscan monastery in which provincial John lived shortly before his death and which he predicted would be deserted in the future; a few lines later, the narrator added that indeed it had been deserted according to the provincial’s prophecy. In order to exploit this information, the monastery in question should be identified and the time 26

Karácsonyi dates the writing down of the legend to 1316 (Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:16), but it is not quite clear on what ground. He apparently connected its appearance with the compilation of the catalogue of Franciscan provinces included in Bartholomew of Pisa’s De conformitate, which he wrongly dated to 1316.


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of its desertion should be looked for in the relevant sources, if they exist. On the other hand, the locus of the provincial’s burial, in Francavilla, was still active when the account was written (because it is said that the saint miracula ... adhuc incessanter facit); which means that the legend was written down during the life span of this monastery, and not later. This should be checked in the available sources as well. These historical questions too must remain open for the time being (though I will return to them partly in the last section). In conclusion, we need to admit that, in the absence of unambiguous information, the time of the long legend’s writing remains vague, although its wealth of small facts and historical details conveys the impression of a closeness to the lifetime of its hero. The other aspect of the relation between the two versions—the character of the correspondence between their material contents—might be a problem easier to solve. The short version clearly consists of a few slight stylistic variations on the original account which appeared in the saints catalogue around 1335. The latter simply says that provincial John shines in many miracles, of which it describes just one, the dead saint’s miraculous transfer from one unnamed friary to another across a “deep water” and without the help of a boat or ship. On the surface, this evidently differs from the long version, which does not expressly mention the saint’s body crossing a water. However, the longer text does refer to the river Sava (which is a rather large river in its Syrmian section), and it does so twice: the friars first spotted the wheel tracks of the cart (on which they had laid the saint’s body) in the mud on the Sava’s bank; the friary where the saint died and which was the departure point of his miraculous last travel, “is now a deserted place near the river Sava.” If the cart indeed had to cross the river on its journey between the two friaries, the narrator of the long version did not, perhaps, feel the need to stress it, as someone well acquainted with the local topography. But it is equally possible that the river did not actually separate the two places and thus that there was no “miraculous” crossing of it. The fact is that this ambiguous point from the long version is no longer present in the short version, where it appears resolved in favor of an even greater miracle. This can be explained in two different ways: either the author of the short version had access to his own source of information about the event, now lost and independent of the long version; or this author, having the long account (or something very similar to it) at his disposal, interpreted it in a sense which was not explicitly stated in it, but the elements of which were clearly there. (It is even imaginable that, unlike the “indigenous” author of the long version, the author of the short one could not quite understand what would make the

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saint’s transfer miraculous if not the crossing of the river.) In the first case, the two versions would be independent of each other and the long one could be, at least in theory, more recent than the short one. In the second—and, in my opinion, somewhat more plausible—case, the short version would have been created on the basis of the long version preceding it, and its relation to the more complex original story could be described as another example of what Robert Lechat termed “le développement légendaire.”27 * Although there is no evident proof for that, we have seen that both the chronological clues and the content relation to the more firmly dated short legend suggest the probability that the long legend, despite its being preserved within a much later composite source, was actually of a somewhat older origin. At this stage of my research, its creation could be dated to the time around 1300, in a fairly broad sense. The possibility that the long legend is a more recent artifact would not completely diminish its value of a first-class historical source: the story about the provincial’s death and miraculous travel would in that case be based on a rich and durable oral tradition of the local Franciscans, apparently reaching back to the times when these events occurred. The historical soundness of our main source is especially striking when it is considered in its local context. The topographical setting that it presents is perfectly realistic. The borough of Francavilla, whose Franciscan friary was chosen by provincial John as his last resting place, was a wellknown medieval settlement of foreign (“Latin” speaking) hospites in Hungarian Syrmia, at the foot of the Fruška Gora mountain. Such ethnic character of the settlement is reflected in its Hungarian name which prevailed in the later Middle Ages, Nagyolaszi (meaning ‘Great Vlach [= Romance or Neolatin] place’), which in turn generated the present form, Manđelos. The locality was first recorded by Albert of Aix, chronicler of the First Crusade. According to a passage in the early thirteenth-century Chronicon Faventinum, after the siege of Milan in 1162 one part of the refugees from this city settled in Francavilla in Hungary. Before 1179 the Premonstratensian abbey of Riéval in Upper Lotharingia founded in Francavilla a dependent monastery of the Holy Cross, which was subsequently taken over by the Benedictines and was still living in the late fourteenth 27

Robert Lechat, “Lettres de Jean de Tagliacozzo sur le siège de Belgrade et la mort de S. Jean de Capistran,” Analecta Bollandiana 39 (1921): 139–151.


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century. Although Francavilla was expressly mentioned as one of the meliores villae which were “destroyed” in Syrmia during the Mongol invasion (1241–1242), the settlement resumed developing into a civitas inhabited largely by merchants. The town’s decline began at the end of the fourteenth century with the first Ottoman incursions into Syrmia.28 Francavilla was a home to two Mendicant friaries, a Dominican and a Franciscan, both mentioned only in the fourteenth century and—at least to our present knowledge—only in the two orders’ general catalogues.29 The Franciscan house in Francavilla, a member of the Custody of Syrmia, is listed in the two best known catalogues of the order in the fourteenth century, Paolino’s Provinciale (around 1343) and chapter I/11 in Bartholomew of Pisa’s De conformitate (1385–1399).30 The same catalogues also list the friaries in places called ad Sanctum Demetrium and ad Sanctum Yreneum, belonging to the same custody. The first is the well-known medieval civitas of Szávaszentdemeter, now Sremska Mitrovica, on the left (Syrmian) bank of the Sava river; the second was a smaller agglomeration belonging to the bishop of Syrmia, who held there one of his two chapters, situated on the river’s other bank (or on a river island) just opposite to Mitrovica.31 The sources about the Franciscan houses in these two places are equally scarce and their archaeological traces are not yet uncovered.32 Still it is quite clear that the unnamed friary in which provincial John died 28

Dezső Csánki, Magyarország történelmi földrajza a Hunyadiak korában (Historical geography of Hungary in the times of the Hunyadis), 5 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1890– 1913), 2:236; Pais, “Les rapports franco-hongrois,” 25, 139; Korai magyar történeti lexikon, 477; Stanko Andrić, “Samostan Svetog Križa u Frankavili (Manđelosu)” (The monastery of the Holy Cross in Francavilla [Manđelos]), Istorijski časopis 52 (2005): 33–81. 29 András Harsányi, A domonkos rend Magyarországon a Reformáció előtt (The Dominican order in Hungary before the Reformation) (Debrecen: Nagy Károly Grafikai Műintézet, 1938; repr., Budapest: Paulus Hungarus / Kairosz, 1999), 82, 84; Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:204–205; Beatrix F. Romhányi, Kolostorok és társaskáptalanok a középkori Magyarországon: Katalógus (Monasteries and collegiate churches in medieval Hungary: Catalogue) (Budapest: Pytheas, 2000), 46. 30 “Custodia Sirmensis habet ... locum Francae Villae” (De conformitate vitae, 1:554). See also Wadding, Annales Minorum, 9:292, where the two catalogues are presented parallelly. 31 Csánki, Magyarország, 2:238–239; György Györffy, “Das Güterverzeichnis des griechischen Klosters zu Szávaszentdemeter (Sremska Mitrovica) aus dem 12. Jahrhundert,” Studia slavica Acad. sci. Hung. 5 (1959): 9–74; Sima M. Ćirković, “Civitas sancti Demetrii,” in Sremska Mitrovica, ed. Radomir Prica (Sremska Mitrovica: Skupština Opštine / Muzej Srema, 1969), 59–71. 32 Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:270, 279–280; Romhányi, Kolostorok, 60, 62.

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must have been in one of these two places. They are both situated circa flumen Save. A direct and important road connected Mitrovica with Francavilla to its north. The distance is about 12 kilometers, which agrees very closely with the exact information provided in the long legend: plus quam octo miliaria Lombardica would mean “more than” 14,278.5 meters (one Lombard mile being equal to 1,784.81 m),33 or roughly about 14.5 kilometers. The only remarkable topographical difference between Mitrovica and Sanctus Yreneus (Szenternye in Hungarian) with respect to their road connection with Francavilla is that the Sava river had to be crossed only when travelling from the second place, while a carriage starting from Mitrovica would always be upon solid ground. The short version of the legend would therefore give priority to the friary in Sanctus Yreneus; but its credibility on this point is doubtful. If the quoted Franciscan catalogues reflected the actual state of facts at the time of their writing, this would have important consequences for the datation of the long legend about provincial John. It would entail that the legend was composed as late as after Bartholomew’s De conformitate, because the legend describes the friary on the bank of the Sava—either in Mitrovica or in Sanctus Yreneus—as currently deserted. However, the argument is uncertain because there is no proof that the catalogues actually listed only the currently active houses instead of reiterating the names of the houses which existed at some point in the past. * In discussing this short and deceptively simple text, I don’t want to miss an opportunity to comment briefly from a more structuralist and hagiographical angle. There are two plot elements in the legend’s central story for which I want to cite interesting hagiographical analogies, which are both found within the field which may be called Hungarian medieval hagiography. The legend reports that provincial John—foreseeing the desertion of the friary in which he was living when his death approached—insisted to be buried in another friary, in Francavilla, whose future was presumably more secure. About two centuries later, another Franciscan, of the Observant branch, a much more famous saint, John Capistran (of Capestrano), announced a similar decision concerning his own final resting place, but with a significant difference. In 1456, Capis33

For this see: http://www.historydata.com/miscellaneous.php. Last accessed on June 9, 2010.


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tran chose with full awareness to be buried in the Observant convent in Ilok (incidentally not far from Francavilla), “among schismatics and close to the Turks,” with the explicit purpose of averting its possible desertion: “when my bones have been buried there, the friars will not leave this convent and thus, residing here, they will offer light and conversion to the people.”34 Perhaps it is not exaggerated to conclude that this pair of biographical episodes reflects a change in Franciscan and even overall mentality, indicating that a peaceful, safety-seeking, resigned image of the old Franciscan (Conventual) saint gave way to an active, zealous, bellicose ideal of the Observant saint. The other analogy concerns the miracle itself for which provincial John was best remembered among his confrères: his dead body being transferred on a cart to the neighboring friary without the assistance of a man or an animal. Parallels to such a story cannot be found in the comprehensive handbook of Frederic Tubach.35 However, the legend of Saint Ladislas, Hungarian king 1077–1095, composed in two versions in the early thirteenth century, narrates a very similar story when describing what followed the king’s death. When his mourning subjects, because of an intense summer heat, decided to bury the king in the closer church of Székesfehérvár rather than in the originally intended but faraway Nagyvárad (now Oradea), the supernatural intervened while the travelling cortege paused for a rest at a roadhouse: although left without any draught animal attached to it, the carriage with the king’s body started by itself going in the other direction and was later found progressing along the road to Nagyvárad and the burial place of the king’s own choice.36 Having to close provisionally this inquiry, I am aware that the hardest questions still remain open for investigation. What should be done with the legend’s statement that provincial John was the “younger brother of Philip the Little, king of France”? In his retelling of the legend on the basis of Speculum vitae, which actually has elements of an implicit com34

Stanko Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2000), 60–61. 35 Frederic C. Tubach’s Index exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales, Folklore Fellows Communications 204 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981), summarizes several tales with carts and wagons as their ingredients, but none of them is analogous to ours. 36 Imre Szentpétery, ed., Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum, 2 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1937–1938; repr., Budapest: Nap, 1999), 2:522–523. I wish to thank Szabolcs Varga for drawing my attention to this text.

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mentary on it, Wadding cautiously affirmed that John was vir princeps, “a princely man.”37 Karácsonyi too concluded that the saintly friar was “a relative of the French royal house.”38 Is it possible to be more specific and identify precisely the person in question? Or is it justified, on the contrary, to dismiss the legend’s allegation as purely fictitious? Finally, how confident can we be that provincial John existed at all? Is there any other piece of documentary evidence referring to him directly or indirectly? The first minister provincial of Hungary mentioned in contemporary charters was James (Jacobus), known to have performed the ministership in 1246– 1247.39 He cannot be found, however, in the catalogue of Hungarian provincial ministers in the Speculum vitae. Obviously, all of the sources pertaining to the earliest stage in the history of the Franciscan Province of Hungary will have to be considered very carefully before a final judgment can be made on provincial John and his troublesome historicity. All photos: © Stanko Andrić

37

Wadding, Annales Minorum, 5:177. Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:16. 39 Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, 1:17. 38

Fama sanctitatis and the Emergence of St. Margaret’s Cult in the Rural Countryside The Canonization Process and Social Mobility in Thirteenth-Century Hungary József LASZLOVSZKY

Canonization was one of the most important phenomena in the life of the late medieval Church. The thirteenth century marked a new period in the cult of saints, as papal canonization emerged as an important element in regulating sainthood in Latin Christendom.1 As a result of this development, more and more detailed documents and texts were created (testimonies, descriptions of the processes, legends, etc.), which are excellent sources for various historical research questions. One of these questions is the problem of fama sanctitatis, a process through which the local cult of the saint emerged and various details of the saint’s life became known even in small settlements relatively far from the original site of the cult.2 The new and more document-oriented forms of the canonization processes led to a significant increase in the number of relevant written documents even in places where the number of surviving sources is much smaller compared to the usual Western European situation. The significantly smaller number of such texts in the period preceding these developments creates difficult conditions of research, yet at the same time they still offer a unique opportunity for studying various characteristics and spheres of daily life in medieval East Central Europe.3 The case of Hungary in the 1

Gábor Klaniczay, ed., Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge: Aspects juridiques et religieux / Medieval Canonization Processes: Legal and Religious Aspects, Collection de L’École française de Rome 340 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004). 2 Christian Krötzl, “Fama sanctitatis: Die Akten der spätmittelalterlichen Kanonisationsprozesse als Quelle zu Kommunikation und Informationsvermittlung in der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft,” in Procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge, 223–244. 3 For similar problems elsewhere, see Christian Krötzl, “Die Heiligen und ihre Klienten: Zur Verwendung hagiographischer Quellen in der Alltagsgeschichte des Mittelalters,” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 31 (1994): 9–23; idem, Pilger, Mirakel und Alltag: Formen des Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (12.–15. Jahrhundert, Studia Historica, 46 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1994).

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second half of the thirteenth century is a particularly interesting example, where these sources shed light on a number of aspects of contemporary life for the first time. One of these aspects is the emergence of the local cult of saints, a complex process on the frontline of recent hagiographic studies. A closely related aspect of the same question is how the emerging new cult started to influence the local social milieu. Female saints influenced by mendicant spirituality indicate the beginning of a fundamentally new era within the history of the cults of saints in the thirteenth century. A major element in this development was the figure of the blessed princess, who was connected to the royal court.4 Mendicant orders, which underwent a remarkable transformation and exercised impressive influence in every region of Europe, played a crucial role in the cult of these princesses. Saint Margaret of Hungary is one of the most interesting figures of this new era, and the available sources permit us to study both her commitment to a saintly way of life and the emergence of her veneration as a saint. Documents from her canonization process and the texts of her legends have already been explored by generations of researchers, although hagiographic studies were not prominent in Hungarian historical research during the second half of the twentieth century.5 In the recent years, the canonization process and the related documents have again been discussed intensively in the Hungarian scholarly literature. New translations and studies have been published on the legends, and the site of Margaret’s monastic life in a Dominican nunnery has also been investigated by recent archaeological excavations.6 The most important 4

Gábor Klaniczay, “Familienklöster als fürstliche Residenz für heilige Prinzessinnen,” in Quasi liber et pictura: Tanulmányok Kubinyi András hetvenedik születésnapjára; Studies in honour of András Kubinyi on his seventieth birthday (Budapest: ELTE Régészettudományi Intézet, 2004), 281–288. 5 For the earlier research, see Tibor Klaniczay and Gábor Klaniczay, Szent Margit legendái és stigmái (The legends and stigmata of St. Margaret), Irodalomtörténeti Füzetek 135 (Budapest: Argumentum, 1994). 6 Árpád-házi Szent Margit legrégibb legendája és szentté avatási pere (The earliest legend and the canonization process of St. Margaret of Hungary) (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 1999); Viktória Hedvig Deák, Árpád-házi Szent Margit és a domonkos hagiográfia: Garinus legendája nyomában (St. Margaret of Hungary and Dominican hagiography: On the track of Garinus’ legend) (Budapest: Kairosz, 2005). For the summary of the archaeological investigations, see: Katalin Irásné Melis and Attila Tóth, “A Budapest Margitszigeti királyi udvarhely és a domonkos apácakolostor területén előkerült építészeti kőtöredékek katalógusa” (Catalogue of the architectonical stone fragments found in the territory of the courtly residence and nunnery on the Margaret Island in Budapest) Budapest Régiségei 40 (2007): 179–218.

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contribution to these studies was made by Gábor Klaniczay, who discussed the life of Margaret, the emergence of her cult, and the related hagiographic material in the widest international context and situated them within those broad historical processes that shaped the Church, society, and politics in the Middle Ages.7 The aim of this paper is to discuss a miracle story recorded in the canonization process and in the various versions of the legend of St. Margaret, a Hungarian royal princess, daughter of Béla IV (1235–1270). This miracle happened in the rural countryside; therefore, it offers an insight into how complex relationships between persons playing a crucial role in distributing the news about Saint Margaret contributed to the emergence of her local cult. As a result of the detailed description of this event recorded in the canonization process, one can raise a number of new research questions. Details of everyday life and material culture in this rural milieu can be compared with other written documents (mainly charter evidence) and with data derived from archaeological investigations of contemporary rural settlements. An interdisciplinary approach dealing with these sources can also offer a complex image of rural society in the thirteenth century. Issues of living standards and social mobility can be highlighted by these investigations, and the results of such studies can also be utilized for the discussion of social aspects related to the emergence of local cults of saints. Most of the miracles recorded in the canonization process are related to the life of the nunnery and to Margaret herself; only a few of them are set in other places. Given that miracles outside the ecclesiastical context were usually connected to settlements close to the site of her life,8 the miracle story of Nevegy is rather exceptional, as the site of this event, demonstrating the supernatural power of Margaret, was far from the nunnery, in a small village in a very rural area. Therefore, a number of new questions can be asked. Who were those who brought the information to the village people on the life of the Dominican nunnery built in the neighborhood of the royal court? Through whom did the residents of a small village get to know about the princess living there, already regarded as a saint during her life? What were the reasons that made 7

Gábor Klaniczay, Az uralkodók szentsége a középkorban: Magyar dinasztikus szentkultuszok és európai modellek (Sanctity of rulers in the Middle Ages: Hungarian Dynastic Cult and European Models) (Budapest: Balassi, 2000); idem, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. Éva Pálmai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 8 For the sites of the miracles and for their social milieu in the context of testimonies and the legends, see Deák, Árpád-házi Szent Margit, 307–415.

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people turn to Saint Margaret and believe in her supernatural power at a dramatic situation in their lives? Another complex and interesting question is how and why small details of the miracle story disappeared in later versions of the legend? Various aspects of life in the rural countryside where omitted bit by bit as the accurate record of the canonization process was turned into different versions of the legend composed for a wide range of audiences. At the same time, new elements turned up in the later versions and these elements cannot be detected in the eye-witness accounts described in the thirteenthcentury process. Thus, the transformation of this single miracle story represents the complex character of medieval sainthood and cult of saints. Therefore, all the main questions here are related to the role of communication between the different spheres of society and social mobility in the spread of the saint’s cult. A scholar who aims to analyze the background of a miracle story and the role played by various people in it is in an almost ideal situation (at least, as far as Hungarian sources are concerned), since a study like this can rely on recent research results. Moreover, the increasing number of charters in the second half of the thirteenth century provides an opportunity to identify the historical actors of a miracle event even if it took place in the rural countryside. Thus, it is possible to make a kind of microhistorical analysis relating to individual cases recorded in the canonization process. In what follows, I will first investigate the life and environment of the persons involved in the story and then I will compare it to the data extracted from historical and archaeological sources. The story analyzed here can be told relatively easily, as it is also presented in this short form in the texts of the legends, especially in the late versions, which only focus on the main elements of this event.9 A few 9

The text of the relevant parts in the canonization process testimonies: Monumenta Romana Episcopatus Vesprimiensis, vol. 1 (Budapest, 1896), 325–331 (hereafter MREV). A Hungarian translation of these texts is available in Árpád-házi Szent Margit legrégibb legendája, 244–251. For different versions of the same miracle in different legends, see Kornél Böle, Árpádházi Boldog Margit szenttéavatási ügye és a legősibb latin Margitlegenda (The canonization case of Blessed Margaret of Hungary and the earliest Latin Margaret-legend) (Budapest: Szt. István Akadémia, 1937), 36; Garinus de Giaco, “Szent Margit élete” (The life of St. Margaret), trans. Viktória Hedvig Deák, in Legendák és csodák: Szentek a magyar középkorból II., ed. Gábor Klaniczay and Edit Madas (Budapest: Osiris, 2001), 181–294, esp. 288; Albin F. Gombos, ed., Catalogus fontium historiae Hungariae, 4 vols. (Budapest: Szt. István Akadémia, 1937–1938), 1532, 2023– 2024, 2541 (hereafter: Gombos).


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years before the canonization process, which started in 1271, the family of Nicolaus de Tarnoch lived in the rural countryside in the diocese of Vác. Nicolaus moved to the village of Nevegy (Neuigh) from the woodland area of Nógrád County. On an autumn night, Gunig, the wife of Nicolaus, discovered that her baby child lay lifeless next to her. She tried to awake the child, but he seemed to be dead. The mother started screaming and wailing bitterly, which woke up an older child, her daughter, Anguilla. The shouting and crying were also heard by the father, sleeping outside the house in the courtyard with the animals, who, after being let into the house saw that there was no life in his son. They tried to revive the child with the warmth of the fire but their attempts were unsuccessful. In her final despair, the mother started to pray for the life of her child and she also asked Margaret’s intervention to bring him back to life. A miracle took place: at dawn, after some hours, life came back into the dead child. Various versions of the story were attested by the whole family; they made their testimonies in front of the church commission that investigated miraculous events, similarly recalling certain small details of that night a few years before. The testimonies were recorded on August 29, 1276. First, Gunig, the mother, spoke about the miracle, then the father, Nicolaus, told the commission his version and, finally, the older daughter, Anguilla, was asked about the event. All three of them gave a short account of that night and they were also questioned about the miracle. Often they were asked the same question; some details were repeatedly examined by the committee. The miraculously revived son, who had grown into a sixyear-old boy since the events, was also present at the church enquiry, giving another kind of testimony of the miracle. Fortunately, the record of the canonization process still included certain small details in relation to the event (names, places, information about the family), which slowly fell out of the abridged, summarized legendary versions. Of these relatively accurate data of the investigation, only the following general information survived: there was a certain Nicolaus, the head of a family, living in a certain place near Pest in the diocese of Vác, or living within the limits of the town called Pest .10

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“In diocesi episcopatus Waciensis, in termino opidi vocabulo Pest, cuisdam patrisfamilias, nomine Nicholai...” Gombos, 2023. “Vala egy ember Pesten es ennek vala egyetlen egy fya” (“There was a man in Pest and he had one son”). Gombos, 1532.

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Miracles, Everyday Life, and Archaeology Scholars dealing with Hungarian medieval material culture discovered this story in the record relatively early, since it contained many small details about vernacular architecture, households, and settlement structure.11 The prominent researcher of vernacular architecture, Klára K. Csilléry, mentioned several elements of the canonization process in various places when presenting medieval housing.12 For example, one can learn from the rather laconic description that the fireplace was in the middle of the house on the floor. The mother lay the child next to it when they tried to revive him. The father, who was woken up by the screaming and wailing could not enter the house at first since it was locked from the inside. He was only let in so he could also see what happened after a lengthy period of shouting and hammering on the door. Such details of the different parts of rural houses are almost entirely missing from other written sources of the period. Although archaeological investigations have brought to light a significant number of houses from the Arpadian age, certain elements cannot be studied on the basis of excavated features. The type of Nicolaus’ house cannot be identified on the basis of the testimonies in the canonization process, but some elements of the description can be compared to archaeological data. Most of the excavated remains of vernacular architecture from Arpadian-age rural settlements were semi-subterranean sunken huts (Grubenhaus) roofed by organic materials. Different types of wooden buildings have also been identified on the basis of written sources or archaeological investigations. Stone or brick buildings, however, were not typical elements of villages at that time, except for churches. Most of the village houses were one-roomed buildings, just as the house of Nicolaus. Open fire places were characteristic features of these rural houses as well, in a similar way as is described in the testimonies (in medio domus circa focum) of the miracle at Nevegy.13 As Csilléry pointed out in her study on vernacular architecture, the texts of the legends also kept this element 11

The first reference to this miracle story as an important source for the material culture and everyday life of the Arpadian age is László Makkai, Klára Csilléry, and Géza Entz, “A magyar lovagkor” (The Hungarian chivalric period), in Hogyan éltek elődeink?, ed. Péter Hanák (Budapest: Gondolat, 1980), 21–32, esp. 29–30. 12 Klára K. Csilléry, A magyar népi lakáskultúra kialakulásának kezdetei (The beginnings of vernacular housing culture in Hungary) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982) 144, 185, 197. 13 “[P]arentes defuncto in medio domus circa focum posito proprii filii morte interemptores seipsos deplorabant...” Böle, Árpádházi Boldog Margit, 36.


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of the story.14 Furthermore, the short description of the event offers insight into other minor details of the building, like the possibility of locking the door of the house from inside. Although the various other architectural elements of the house are not described in detail, a general image of this household emerges clearly from the testimonies of the family. The relatively short text recorded in the canonization process, however, also reveals further elements concerning the settlement structure of the area where Nicolaus’ family lived. These elements have not been discussed in the relevant secondary literature before; only some of them were mentioned in passing. This may have been because this miracle story, which took place in the rural countryside in the thirteenth century, contains various elements that can only be interpreted on the basis of the results of the most recent archaeological excavations. Reading attentively the testimonies of the family members, one can assume that the scene of the miracle was an isolated farmstead with a single-room house with other buildings or structures nearby for keeping animals. Answering the questions about the neighbors and other circumstances of the miracle, Gunig mentioned that the closest neighboring house in the settlement stood at a distance “as far as one can shoot with an arrow.”15 This answer was repeated by Nicolaus almost word for word: “Quantum potest sagittare unus homo cum arcu.”16 This information can be combined with data derived from archaeological excavations of rural settlements of the tenth through the thirteenth centuries.17 According to archeological reconstructions, the typical structure of these settlements was different from the villages of the Late Middle Ages, which followed a more organized pattern, often along the line of a street.18 The Arpadian-age villages consisted of sunken huts and proba14

The early sixteenth-century Hungarian version of the legend also kept this element of the description: “Ez gyermeknek ev zuley kedeg veueek az meg holt gyermekevt es teveek az haznak keuvzepyre az zen melle...” Gombos, 1532; Csilléry, A magyar népi lakáskultúra, 197. 15 MREV, 326. 16 Ibid., 328. 17 A short summary of the relevant archaeological data is Mária Wolf, “Rural settlements,” in The Ancient Hungarians, ed. István Fodor (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 1996), 60–61; Marianna Bálint et al., “Medieval Villages and their Fields,” in Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Zsolt Visy (Budapest: Nemzeti Kulturális Örökség Minisztériuma, 2003), 383–388. 18 Ferenc Maksay, A magyar falu középkori településrendje (The settlement system of medieval Hungarian villages) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1971)

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bly of other types of houses (wooden structures). The excavated sunken huts of these villages were far from each other; in most cases they were scattered irregularly over the area of the village. Often 40 to 70 meters of empty space separated the individual households from each other. Most of the houses also had external working areas. Grain was ground in front of or beside the houses, and there were also open-air fireplaces or ovens. In most of the excavated settlement sites, large ditch systems were found between the houses or they often surrounded rectangular spaces without archaeological traces of buildings. The functions of these ditches can be interpreted as pens or parts of a drainage system. Largescale excavations revealed that enclosed fields (empty zones) or areas to keep animals together were also characteristic elements of these villages, as these parts are indicated by the ditch systems. Only for the later period of the Arpadian age can one interpret the enclosed areas of the villages as individual plots or tofts. The inner structure of these villages and the types of buildings are characteristic of a peasant society with a fairly high level of mobility. The superimposed settlement features of the excavated sites from the later period, particularly the multi-layered house remains of the late medieval villages, can also be seen as proofs of a more settled way of life which corresponds to the social transformation process of peasant society in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These settlement features in the excavated village sites and the distance between the house of Nicolaus and the buildings of the closest neighbors mentioned in the canonization process seem to be compatible with each other. However, new archaeological data gathered during the last decades started to question this interpretation. Therefore, it is worth revisiting the issue of settlement forms and structures in this article, too. Archaeological field surveys (field walking and mapping of archaeological sites) have revealed a large number of deserted village sites from the tenth to the thirteenth century. They shared a number of characteristic features and their form and structure have also been investigated by archaeological excavations. They usually cover large areas; the surface scatter of archaeological finds—mainly potsherds characteristic of this period—extends to several hundred meters. This large extent of such settlement sites can be explained by the structure of the villages, reconstructed on the basis of the spatial distribution of sunken huts, ditch systems, and other built structures. From the 1980s onwards more and more archaeological survey projects started to produce significantly different results for


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the settlement system of this period.19 Archaeological field walking in Békés and Pest counties in the framework of the Hungarian Archaeological Topography project produced new Arpadian-age sites of a different character in fairly large numbers. These sites were small; the size of the surface scatter of the few potsherd finds was often only 50, maximum 100, meters in diameter. Often these sites were found near large village sites or between them, but they were clearly separated in a spatial sense from each other and from the surface features of the village sites. From another viewpoint, the small farmsteads or hamlets of the Arpadian age have been the targets of historical studies since the 1940s, as ethnographers or historians were looking for the medieval roots of the isolated farmstead system particularly typical for the early modern and modern settlement system in the region of the Hungarian Great Plain. These scholars were able to detect traces of isolated farmsteads or hamlets in the written sources (mainly charter material) from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Although there is no connection between these settlements and the early modern isolated farmstead system, data derived from these studies are also significant for the interpretation offered here. The terms terra, sessio or predium used in the charters of this period often referred to small settlements, clearly separated from larger contemporaneous villages. Hungarian words mentioned in Latin charter texts or used as place-names also provide information on these scattered settlement forms. The telek (land, plot, toft) was one of them, and the place-name forms with suffixes like -telke (land of), -ülése (plot of), -laka and -háza (house of) indicate a large number of such settlements in this period. These small hamlets were products of an expansion process influenced by various land colonization attempts. While hospes villages often created by woodland clearing, or settlements with place-names using -falva (village) suffixes, were the products of a colonization process of a larger peasant community, the isolated farmsteads or hamlets were the results of individual or family migration. Members of the rural population with a relatively free status were able to move out of a village community to the open uncultivated lands of the village area. Often they were involved in an extensive form of animal husbandry and they kept their animals in these areas. The outer zones of the village area thus became manured land, 19

For the summary of these research projects and the interpretation of the isolated farmsteads, see József Laszlovszky, “Einzelhofsiedlungen in der Arpadenzeit: Arpadenzeitliche Siedlung auf der Mark von Kengyel,” Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 38 (1986): 227–257.

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which then was suitable for creating ploughland areas. After a certain area lost its fertility as a result of several years of continuous cultivation, these families moved on to cultivate another small area of the village with the help of their animals. In this way, if free land was available in large amount, they were able to increase the number of their animals in a significant way, and, at the same time, they produced grain and plant foods enough for themselves from the ploughed areas. What was crucial in this process was that they had relative freedom to follow this way of life as they were not forced to do service for royal estates, ecclesiastical or private lords.20 The archaeological sites of isolated farmsteads surveyed by archaeological-topographic projects can be connected with this process. This conclusion can also be corroborated by archaeological data derived from recent excavations. In the 1980s, a fish-farm was constructed in the outskirts of Kengyel, a village lying in the Middle Tisza region. The rescue excavation carried out here before the construction works revealed archaeological remains from various historical periods, including a number of small scatters of Arpadian-age settlement features.21 Situated along a former river bank, these features were separated from each other by empty areas 100 to 300 meters long. One of the small settlement sites excavated here produced the most significant finds for the topic of this article. A sunken house, an open-air oven, a fireplace, and several ditches were found during the investigation of this site (fig. 1). On the evidence of potsherds plastered into the firesurface of the oven, the settlement was dated to the twelfth–thirteenth century. Similar pottery fragments came to light from the fill of the three 20

For this process, see József Laszlovszky, “Földművelés a késő középkori Magyarországon” (Agriculture in late medieval Hungary), in Gazdaság és gazdálkodás a középkori Magyarországon: Gazdaságtörténet, anyagi kultúra, régészet, ed. András Kubinyi, József Laszlovszky, and Péter Szabó (Budapest: Martin Opitz, 2008), 49–83. 21 Laszlovszky, “Einzelhofsiedlungen;” for the reconstruction of this isolated farmstead, see Csilla Siklódi, ed., Between East and West: Everyday Life in the Hungarian Conquest Period / Über die Grenze zwischen Ost und West: Ungarn im 9.–11. Jahrhundert (Budapest: Promptus, 1996), 30–34. For other excavated features of this site, see József Laszlovszky, “The Correls in the Villages of the Arpadian Age: The Employment of the Phosphate Analysis in the Investigations of the Settlement Structure,” in Internationale Archäologische Studentenkonferenz (Pécs, 1982), 199–207 (in Hungarian: “Karámok Árpád-kori falvainkban: Talajfoszfát-analízis alkalmazása az árkok szerepének meghatározásánál,” Archaeologiai Értesítő 109 [1982]: 281–285); idem, “Tanya-szerű települések az Árpád-korban” (Farm-steads in the Arpadian Age), in Falvak, mezővárosok az Alföldön, ed. Novák, László, Az Arany János Múzeum Közleményei 4 (Nagykőrös: Arany János Múzeum, 1986), 131–153.

Fig 1: Excavated isolated farmstead at Kengyel. 1-2. Ditches 3. Fireplace 4. Sunken-hut 5. Wind-screen 6. Open-air oven 7. Ditch


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ditches excavated at the same site. One of these ditches was more or less circular. In order to define its function, soil samples were collected from the area encircled by this ditch as well as from the area beyond the ditch. Soil samples were also taken from similar ditch structures of the neighboring sites of isolated farmsteads. The analyses of these soil samples indicated very high phosphate levels in the area encircled by the ditch and in the ditch itself, suggesting that the area enclosed by the ditch was an animal pen since a high phosphate content can be ascribed to the accumulation of dung. The structure of this pen was similar to the constructions used in the extensive type of animal husbandry, which were recorded by ethnographers on the Great Hungarian Plain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Based on other excavation results and ethnographic parallels, the area enclosed by the circular ditch probably functioned as a sheep pen while another area bordered by ditches was a cattle pen. The third ditch enclosed a much smaller area than the other two, and the results of the soil analysis did not indicate that it had been an animal pen. It seems more likely that the inhabitants of the isolated farmstead built some kind of sheltered place for themselves near the house. There was also an open-air fireplace beyond the sheep pen, near the river bank. The farmstead was not used for a long time; it was abandoned after the maximum use-life of such constructions (like the sunken hut). Probably this meant several years, but surely not more than the time of one generation. There were no traces of rebuilding or superimposed archaeological features that would indicate more than one period of use. At the same time, it is also possible that the inhabitants of this farmstead simply moved further along the river bank after some years where they created another small settlement, fields for their agrarian production, and structures for their animals. The other excavated farmsteads can be interpreted as traces of this movement or as farmsteads used in parallel by other families at the same time. In any case, these scattered settlement units did not form one coherent village, the type of settlement which is known from the excavation of contemporary village sites. Thus the whole excavated complex resembles very much the house and courtyard of Nicolaus, described in the testimonies of the canonization process (fig. 2). One further element can also be mentioned in this context which highlights other details of the testimonies of the canonization process. The distance of the neighbors from the house of Nicolaus—as far as one can shoot with an arrow—is also a question which can be discussed on the basis of recent archaeological and interdisciplinary studies. The bows and arrows of the times of the Hungarian Conquest have been in the forefront

Fig 2: Reconstruction of the isolated farmstead at Kengyel (Graphics: B. Puskás)


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of historical research of this period since the end of the nineteenth century as these weapons were the most effective military instruments of the conquest and the tenth-century Hungarian raids in Europe. Archaeological finds excavated in burial contexts—animal bone elements of the composite bows—offered the first pieces of information for reconstructing these weapons. More recently, mechanical calculations and experimental archaeological investigations have produced significant new data for the bows and arrows of the tenth century.22 Less information is available for the later centuries of the Arpadian age, as burials with weapons ceased in the church cemeteries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, one can assume that the weapons of this period were also similarly powerful military instruments as in the Conquest Period. Although it is not the task of this article to discuss the problem of the shooting range of bows and arrows in the thirteenth century, one can still formulate some propositions relevant to this investigation. Experimental studies of bows and arrows confirm the hypothesis that the distance between the house of Nicolaus and the closest neighbors was much longer than was usual between the scattered households in Arpadian-age villages. Nicolaus’ first answer concerning the neighbors stated that they did not have close neighbors.23 Only when a further question raised this issue again,24 did he give the answer with the shooting range of an arrow. This was quite close to the distance that can be seen between the individual isolated farmsteads identified by archaeological field surveys and the excavations at Kengyel. Two other important points can also be mentioned to support the parallel discussion of the records of the testimonies in the canonization process and the archaeological and historical data for the contemporary settlement system. Recent rescue excavations related to motorway constructions have produced new data on the settlement pattern of the region mentioned in the testimony of Nicolaus. A large number of Arpadian-age settlements came to light in the area of the modern settlements of Üllő, Monor, and Vecsés. The areas of these villages are directly attached to the region 22

Gábor Szőllősy, “Mennyivel voltak jobb íjaik a honfoglaló magyaroknak, mint a korabeli Európa más népeinek?” (How much better were the bows of the Conquest Period Hungarians than of other people in contemporary Europe?), Keletkutatás, Autumn 1995, 37–51; Sándor Horváth, Géza Körtvélyesi, and László Legeza, “The Statics of the Traditional Hungarian Composite Reflex Bow,” Acta Polytechnica Hungarica 3 (2006): 73– 89. 23 “Interrogatus, qui erant vicini sui tunc, respondit: Nullum habebam vicinum prope.” MREV, 328. 24 “Interrogatus, quantum poterat distare proximior vicinus…” Ibid., 328.


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where the miracle event happened in the thirteenth century. The excavated settlements in this area show a similar pattern—a combination of large village sites and isolated farmsteads. Many of the later small settlement sites can be firmly dated to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on the basis of the archaeological material. Although there is no relevant written record for these sites—they were rarely mentioned in charters—a similar process can be reconstructed for the transformation of the settlement pattern and for the land-use system in this area which was described in the case of the Kengyel site. The role of extensive animal husbandry and a relative high level of mobility in the case of the isolated farmsteads can be confirmed by historical and archaeological data. This region, from the thirteenth century onwards, was one of the most important production zones of cattle and other animals, as one can see from the huge animal markets of Pest in the Late Middle Ages. The relatively fertile land, which was particularly suitable for keeping animals in this area, offered an excellent opportunity for people to be involved in breeding animals on a large scale for sale in the market for the growing urban population. This required, in the first period, a fairly high level of mobility, particularly for those who entered this economic system with the help of their family alone, not with a workforce of slaves and other service people. Such spatial mobility is clearly demonstrated in the life of Nicolaus. He came from the other side of the Danube, from Nógrád County. Then he settled with his family in the area of Nevegy, but the place of his house changed several times during a relatively short period. This is clear from the testimonies of the family members and from the questions of the commission. The boy, Sebastianus, who was the central figure of the miracle, was born in the village of Tarnoc, and the same village was given as the place of origin of his father, Nicolaus. In fact, twins were born at that place, but the girl, the sister of Sebastian, died before the miracle happened. The events of the November night described in the testimonies happened in their house at Nevegy. At the time of the canonization process, six years later, when they were questioned about the miracle, they were still living in Nevegy, but in another house, as their previous house had already been abandoned.25 This spatial mobility, however, was not typical for all inhabitants of the village of Nevegy. At the time of the canonization process the five households of servants of the local lord, Veligh, were still living in the same places where they had been living when the miracle happened. 25

Csilléry, A magyar népi lakáskultúra, 185.

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Thus, a clear conclusion can be drawn from the testimonies and from the relevant archaeological data. The family of Nicolaus shows intensive spatial movement during a short period of time. This mobile lifestyle was clearly connected to their main activity, which must have been connected to extensive animal husbandry and to some type of land colonization process. Their way of living and the image of their household are also typical for the isolated farmsteads of the period, as they can be reconstructed on the basis of charter evidence and archaeological excavations. Social Mobility and fama sanctitatis Concerning the social status of this family, a certain amount of social mobility can be ascribed to them, similarly to the intensive spatial movements during the few years of their life described in the canonization process. The conclusions in this context can be based on their testimonies, as Nicolaus and the members of his family were asked interesting questions which shed light on the complex social situation of this family.26 Special attention will be paid to the testimonies of all three persons answering the same questions. Further conclusions can be formulated on the basis of those passages where the three versions clearly differ or the answers contradict each other. Concerning the question of their social status (interrogatus / interrogata, si est liber vel servus / libera vel ancilla...27) they gave significant answers. Gunig, the wife of Nicolaus, answered: “free and noble” (libera et nobilis),28 while the husband gave a more modest answer to the same question: “I am not a serf” (non sum servus).29 Their daughter Anguilla answered in a third way: “free” (libera).30 Similar differences can be seen in their answers to questions about their financial status (...interrogata, si maritus est dives, vel pauper).31 Gunig made the strongest statement, as she answered: “rich” (satis dives),32 while the daughter’s answer was somehow in between: “not rich, not poor” (nec dives, nec 26

For a short discussion of these questions, see József Laszlovszky, “Social Stratification and Material Culture in 11th–14th Century Hungary,” in “Alltag und materielle Kultur im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” ed. András Kubinyi and József Laszlovszky, special issue, Medieum Aevum Quotidianum 22 (1991): 32–68, esp. 53–54. 27 MREV, 327, 329. 28 Ibid., 327. 29 Ibid., 329. 30 Ibid., 330. 31 Ibid., 327. 32 Ibid., 327.


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pauper).33 In this answer, she spoke about her husband, since she was already married. Nicolaus answered differently, saying: “I am not rich” (non sum dives).34 However, this was rather an understatement. He was, or became, quite a rich person as it can be seen from his career reconstructed by György Györffy on the basis of written sources.35 Györffy described Nicolaus as a rather poor figure of the lesser nobility, and his interpretation was apparently based on the fact that he was sleeping with his animals in the courtyard on an early November day. At the same time, he also pointed out that Nicolaus, who was working without serfs or servants, was able to raise his social and financial status with the help of his animals. He built another house some years later and, in 1297, a certain Nicolaus de Neveg sold a fairly large piece of land to the Dominican nunnery for 26 marks, which was a huge sum of money. In order to understand the social changes in the life of Nicolaus, one needs to study contemporary historical texts and data related to living standards derived from archaeological investigations. On the testimony of written sources, Arpadian-age rural society was an intricately structured, strongly stratified formation.36 In this period, the social position of individual persons or groups was determined by their legal status, the extent of feudal servitude and personal bondage, and the possession of private property. Additional diversity resulted from the fact that, depending on their type of holding, the various categories and terms denoted different relations. There were considerable differences between the social forms and related services of royal, ecclesiastical, and private estates. This complex system was further complicated by the different meanings specific terms had within different groups. Thus, the different answers of the different members of the same family in the miracle case of Nevegy concerning their social and financial status is not simply a sign of their social mobility, but also typical of the period. The lowest layer was characterized by a service (servus) relation but, at the same time, service in general had a complex meaning, as office hold33

Ibid., 330. Ibid., 329. 35 György Györffy, “Budapest története az Árpád-korban” (History of Budapest in the Arpadian Age), in Budapest története, vol. 1: Budapest története az őskortól az Árpádkor végéig, ed. László Gerevich (Budapest: Budapest Főváros Tanácsa, 1973), 217–349, esp. 312. See also idem, Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza / Geographia historica Hungariae tempore stirpis Arpadianae, 4 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1963–1998), 3:532–533. 36 Laszlovszky, “Social Stratification.” 34

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ers of the royal estates with a fairly high social status were similarly in a service relation to the king. The generic term servus, which seems to have been a crucial social category used by the members of the ecclesiastical commission of the canonization process, covered men of highly diverse statuses. The lowest was the real servant of full bondage. A similar category was applied used to female servants; the word ancilla is a frequently used term in contemporary written sources. This type of bond-person is also mentioned in the Nevegy miracle story. The closest neighbors to the house of Nicolaus were those servants of their Lord Veligh, who were the first to learn about the miracle that had happened with Gunig and her son. Their social status was very clearly different from the family of Nicolaus: they were serfs of the lord (...predictus dominus Veligh et servi sui et ancille que habitant ibi).37 There was no dichotomy in the answers in this case; for a cross-question, Nicolaus gave an even clearer answer, showing the social difference between him and his neighbors: Nicolao, servo ipsius domini Velicz (et) Tilnal, Cephdeva, que sunt ancille ipsius domini.38 The next social layer comprised freed persons, the liberti and libertini. They bought their freedom or were manumitted by their lords to various degrees of freedom in exchange for a certain sum of compensation. The libertas, a crucial social category compared to the servus status, was another important term used for various social groups, as it was also used in the canonization process. The manifold interpretation of libertas was also to be found among the freeman, since “the freeman of the church” in fact enjoyed but limited freedom with various duties and services to the ecclesiastic estate. On the other hand, persons who held important posts in the royal castle organization or persons who owned relatively large estates, a village or a part of village with servant families, were similarly included in the category of liber status. This already complex and intricate system, which offers in itself a kind of explanation for the different answers of the family members of Nicolaus, started to change around the mid-thirteenth century. The second half of this century, following the chaotic period after the destructions of the Mongol invasion in 1241–1242, saw a large-scale social transformation. The devastating effects of the invasion coupled with a period of famine and social tension resulted in the change of social bonds. The Mongol invasion in many ways speeded up a transformation process which had 37 38

MREV, 328. Ibid., 328.


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already started in the first decades of the century.39 The political movements which led to the issuing of the Hungarian Golden Bull (1222) were paralleled by the movements in the uppermost social layers. A specific reorganization or, more precisely, a tendency towards uniformity, can be observed in different strata of society, particularly in the case of the peasant population. The role of the middle layer became more important: part of their personal bondage remained unaltered, but the nature of their bondage and their condition were more precisely circumscribed. Libertas became the main target of various social groups; all of them wanted to copy the rights, conditions, and libertas of the hospes population and the social status of a free man became a desirable goal for other social layers. This process was also influenced by the changing social position of the different servus groups. The growth of agricultural productivity, coupled with an emerging market economy and commodity production, gradually ousted the praedia, the production centers based on servus labor, from the economic scene. The lack of workforce in the depopulated areas and the need for hospes groups to colonize uncultivated lands were important factors in the process, which led to the emergence of legally uniform serfdom, the late medieval peasant society. For certain formerly existing layers, this process involved a rise in status and for others it meant a decline. The late medieval expression serf—iobagio—which from the fourteenth century onwards was used to denote this basic class of the feudal system, the peasants, was used to denote a somewhat better position within a certain layer of the rural population in the Arpadian age: the highest-ranking group of men of free legal status on royal estates. Therefore, it is not surprising that for the members of an upwardly mobile family of the rural population, such as Nicolaus, Gunig, and Anguilla at Nevegy, the classical social category of servus was clearly below their social status. At the same time, the important term of the period, libertas, was no longer clear or prestigious enough. It is also known from written documents that the uppermost layer of the rural population rose to the rank of noblemen, who by that time had organized their order. This transformation can be detected in Gunig’s answer, when she added the word nobilis to the term libera. This does not mean the noble status of the fourteenth century, here the word nobilis was simply used to emphasize their real free status. Turning back to the original question of this study, it is clear that the spatial and social mobility of Nicolaus was the key factor in distributing 39

Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok (The last Arpadians) (Budapest: História / MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1993).

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the news and information on Margaret and her emerging cult in the rural countryside. It was he who must have learned about the rising cult of the royal princess. In the very first part of their testimonies, the members of the family were also asked about the life of Margaret, the target of the canonization process. In the case of Gunig, the mother, and Anguilla, the daughter, the answers were simple. They did not know anything about the life or the miracles of the royal princess. Nicolaus, however, mentioned that he heard about it (Non fui conversatus hic, sed audivi dici, quod sancta domina fuit).40 He was also questioned about the persons who had told him these things (Interrogatus, a quibus audivit...).41 His answer very much confirms the results of recent research on the hagiographic sources of Margaret, as the Dominican order played a key role in the emergence of her cult.42 The first thing he mentioned in this context were the brethren (a fratribus et aliis christianis).43 His way of life, his involvement in animal husbandry, and possibly his contacts with the market of Pest offered Nicolaus plenty of opportunities to hear about Margaret, or perhaps even more, about the miracles connected to her. This was the way this news reached the rather remote rural village community of Nevegy. During that terrible night when Sebastian was found dead in the house, his mother started to pray to Saint Margaret because she had heard that the royal princess was able to perform miracles, and indeed, a miracle was perceived to have happened due to her supernatural power. These pieces of information must have arrived at their house via Nicolaus, and his family was the next group of people to play a role in the emergence of a local cult of Margaret. It is clearly recorded in the testimonies—but not in the later versions of the legend—that there were no other eye-witnesses of the miracle at Nevegy than Nicolaus and his family. As their neighbors lived relatively far from their house, the shouting and crying did not bring them to the house or courtyard of the family during that November night. However, the next morning the members of the family talked about the miracle to their distant neighbors, the small community of servants of Lord Veligh. The miracle story from Nevegy did not stay in this relatively isolated rural community, as it reached the commission members of the canonization process, or rather, the Dominicans who prepared the investigation. It must have been through the same channels as Nicolaus heard about 40

MREV, 327. Ibid., 327. 42 Deák, Árpád-házi Szent Margit. 43 MREV, 327. 41


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Margaret that the Nevegy miracle was learned about by the fratres. It is also clear that Nicolaus was able to transform his spiritual connections with the Dominican nunnery, established during the process of canonization, into clear business value. He was familiar not only with the growing cult of the royal princess, but also with the growing economic power and estates of the nunnery, which became the richest landholding institution in the area of Buda and Pest during the decades after the canonization process. In this milieu, Nicolaus was able to sell his “colonized” lands at a fairly high price. This successful financial management of his business activities, and probably also the famous miracle event, contributed to raising the social status of his family. From a relatively unimportant freeman, living in a small house and sleeping with his animals in the courtyard, a significant and powerful figure emerged in a few decades, whose wife was able to claim rightly that they were rich and noble. Social mobility in a transforming peasant society and fama sanctitatis were, thus, two interrelated aspects of late thirteenth-century everyday life in the rural countryside.

The Techniques of a Hagiographer The Two Legendae of Saint Margaret of Hungary Viktória Hedvig DEÁK OP

Her soul desired the heavenly things so deeply that her body, with the supernatural help of the Holy Spirit, followed the movement of her heart. Her soul, filled with love and contemplation, was detached from her bodily senses, and her body miraculously rose in the air. This happened many times, especially on Good Friday around noon, when the uncovered cross was shown to the people; on the feast of All Saints; on the vigils of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and on her solemnities – she rose one foot or even higher in the air before the very eyes of many sisters; and she remained in that position for quite a long time, between heaven and earth, while her body was sustained only by God, who raises the humble. For she died to the world and lived only for God, and she reached the peak of apostolic perfection: so that she no longer lived, but Christ lived in her, and because her life was hidden with Christ in heaven, her body seemed to be almost dead here on earth.1

This paragraph, set at a central point in the so-called Legenda Maior of Saint Margaret of Hungary by Garinus de Giaco, dating from 1340, presents her thirteenth-century heroine as a mystic in whose life the peak of spiritual perfection is reached by the extraordinary event of levitation, a feat which is deemed highly characteristic of her. The mystical phenomenon of levitation occurred quite often in the lives of saints especially in the fourteenth century, as an expression of that new mysticism where a 1

“Tanto denique desiderio mens eius in celestia ferebatur, ut spiritu diuino supernaturaliter eleuante, motus corporis sequeretur superius motum cordis. Contemplantis et amantis animus a corporeis sensibus abstrahebatur, et corpus diuinitus in ethera ferebatur. Pluries siquidem in die sancto parasceues hora quasi sexta dum crux nudata populo monstrabatur, et in omnium sanctorum ac assumptionis beate uirginis uigiliis et sollemnitatibus uidentibus multis sororibus elevabatur corpus eius in sublime a terra per unum cubitum uel amplius, et sic per satis longam moram inter celum et terram manebat, illo solo molem corporis substentante qui ponit humiles in sublime. Et quoniam mortua erat mundo, uiuens autem Deo, ad apostolice perfectionis scandens fastigium, uiuebat ipsa iam non ipsa, quia Christus uiuebat in illa [cf. Gal. 2:20]; unde quia uita eius abscondita cum Christo [cf. Col. 3:3] sursum in celestibus habebatur, corpus super terram quasi mortuum cernebatur.” Legenda Maior, ch. 35; see also footnote 10 below. All translations are mine.

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direct experience of the transcendent reality necessarily involved the body.2 However, if one is familiar with the more reliable sources on Saint Margaret (which we have quite abundantly), especially regarding her canonization process, one can be almost sure that no such event happened in her life.3 The comparison of this legend of Saint Margaret of Hungary with the other sources might offer a case-study to follow the process of how the rewriting of a saint’s life results in a quite radical reshaping of her figure; at the same time, we can have a close look into a hagiographer’s “tricks of the trade” since we have at our disposal all the sources the author used. One is able to observe how he edits the testimonies, which details he adds or takes away, whether he focuses on what the sisters emphasize or rather on something else. Margaret, daughter of King Béla IV, lived as a Dominican nun in the Monastery of the Insula leporum (now Margaret-Island) on the Danube, and died in 1270. A year after her death, her brother, king Stephen V started her canonization, impressed by a miracle that happened in his presence at the tomb. This first part of the process was conducted by Hungarian prelates, between 1272 and presumably 1274. It was during this period or shortly after, that the so-called Legenda Vetus was written, supposedly by brother Marcellus, ex-provincial of the Dominicans and Margaret’s confessor. This is a relatively brief and very sober legend, which focuses on the humility and the poverty of Margaret, and tells her story in chronological order. The structure of this legend follows the traditional pattern: the first part describes the life of Saint Margaret, then the miracles that happened at her death, and finally it recounts the miracles which occurred at the tomb. It does not, however, contain any material from the second part of the process which took place in 1276. One can suppose that this text served as part of the canonization material.4 2

On the so-called mystical holiness and its mandatory requirements, see André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 1997), 376–386, 407–412. 3 For an overview of the documents and legends concerning Margaret, see Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 423–428. 4 The unique manuscript of the legend is now in the Vatican Library: Ms. Vat. Lat. 15237. The text of the manuscript is published as Quaedam legenda b. Margaritae de Ungaria, in Catalogus fontium historiae Hungariae, ed. Albin F. Gombos, 4 vols. (Budapest: Szt. István Akadémia, 1937–1938), 3:2009–2029.

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Since in the first investigation of the process her fama sanctitatis became evident, a second investigation was started in 1276, the so-called inquisitio in partibus, with a commission of Italian legates, named by Pope Innocent V, himself a Dominican. The investigation lasted approximately four months, and was conducted in a very detailed way, according to the rules issued by the pope. A considerable part of this documentation is still available.5 Having completed the investigations, the legates sent the minutes to Rome. After this step was taken, a general silence regarding the canonization of Margaret followed, and it lasted for a long time.6 From the process, the testimonies of 110 witnesses have survived, among whom 38 were nuns of the monastery where Margaret lived.7 There is further evidence, though, that the canonization of Saint Margaret remained in the focus of the Arpadian, and later of the Angevin, ruling dynasty. After an unsuccessful one in 1306,8 the next attempt to

5

The edition of the text is based on a copy discovered in 1641, when the coffin of Margaret was opened during another attempt to have her canonized. This copy was sent to Rome, to the Sacra Rituum Congregatio, and was copied again by the Dominicans in 1729, and by Ignác Batthyány, bishop of Alba Iulia in 1780. The present edition is based on these two copies: Vilmos Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio super vita, conversatione et miraculis beatae Margarethae virginis, Belae IV. Hungarorum regis filiae, sanctimonialis monasterii virginis gloriosae de insula Danubii, Ordinis Praedicatorum, Vesprimiensis dioceses, in Monumenta Romana episcopatus Vesprimiensis, vol. 1 (Budapest, 1896), 162–383. 6 It seems that the 1272–1276 canonization process remained unsuccessful, what was not an unusual fact. André Vauchez has shown that out of the 71 investigations ordered by the Holy See between 1198 and 1431, only 35 led to canonization. Vauchez, Sainthood, 51–53, 61–84. It seems probable that the rapid change of popes in those years forestalled any efficient examination of the material. 7 According to my calculations, based on the patterns of testimony (number of witnesses for one miracle, etc.), approximately 45 testimonies have been lost. For the details, see my Árpád-házi Szent Margit és a domonkos hagiográfia. Garinus legendája nyomában, (Saint Margaret of Hungary and Dominican hagiography) (Budapest: Kairosz, 2005), 290–293. On Margaret’s process, see Gábor Klaniczay, “Proving sanctity in the canonization processes (Saint Elizabeth and Saint Margaret of Hungary),” in Procès de canonisation du Moyen Age: Aspects juridiques et religieux / Medieval canonization processes: Legal and religious aspects, ed. Gábor Klaniczay (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004), 117–148. On redactional patterns in the material, see Gábor Klaniczay, “Raccolte di miracoli e loro certificazione nell’Europa centrale,” in Notai, miracoli e culto dei santi, ed. Raimondo Michetti (Milano: Giuffrè, 2004), 260–287. 8 Most probably it was King Charles Robert, the Angevin candidate for the crown of Hungary, who sent his legate to the papal court to promote Margaret’s canonization, since for him a successful canonization could have meant the reinforcing of his position. Later on the case of Margaret’s canonization remained important for the Angevin dy-

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achieve Margaret’s canonization was made around the year 1340. This time, along with a new sepulchral monument of Saint Margaret finished on the Island (and sponsored by the Hungarian Dominican province and the royal family), a totally new legend of Margaret was commissioned by the government of the Order of Preachers,9 since the new attempt for the canonization necessitated a new legend (as part of the canonization dossier) for at least two reasons. The old legend, that of brother Marcellus, did not contain the whole material of the 1276 investigation, especially the new miracles. Moreover, the old legend was somehow antiquated and out of fashion. Though it emphasized well the radical poverty, mortification and humility of Margaret, it could not compete with the then current mystical ideal of holiness, as represented in the lives of the holy women of the Low Countries and in the legends of Dominican penitent women. The Dominicans in Avignon could get access to the canonization proceedings in the archives of the Papal Curia, but had no legend of Margaret at hand. Seeing that it was worthwhile to promote her cult, they wanted a new legend.10 The new legend, the so-called Legenda Maior wanted in turn to mould Margaret’s life to the fashion of that age and to meet all the requirements for official holiness, as well. However, this work did not prove to be an easy one, since the text of the Legenda Vetus is very sober, avoids mentioning any of those episodes which could be of interest in the fourteenth nasty, alongside with the promotion of the cult of other Hungarian saints. See Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, 324, 337. 9 In spite of the joined effort of the Angevin dynasty, the Hungarian Dominican province, as well as the Dominican Order itself, this new attempt failed again. On later attempts during the Middle Ages, see Ottfried Krafft, “Árpád-házi Szt. Margit szentté avatási perének 1379-es újra felvétele” (Retrial of Saint Margaret of Hungary’s Canonization Process in 1379), Századok 140 (2006): 455–464; and Gábor Klaniczay, “Kísérletek Árpád-házi Szent Margit szentté avatására a középkorban” (Attempts at the Canonization of Saint Margaret of Hungary in the Middle Ages), Századok 140 (2006): 443–454. It was only in 1943 that Margaret was finally canonized by Pope Pius XII. 10 For a more detailed account of the birth of the Legenda Maior and of the role of the Dominicans in it, see my article, “The Birth of a Legend: The so-called Legenda Maior of Saint Margaret of Hungary and Dominican Hagiography,” Revue Mabillon 20 (2009): 87–112. For the text of the Legenda Maior, I am using the Paris manuscript, (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, manuscript 1072.) The only existing edition of the Legenda Maior is based on a Neapolitan manuscript, which is not the best one; moreover, to make matters worse, the edition (Vita b. Margaritae Hungaricae, in Catalogus fontium, 3:2481– 2545) commits its own faults and omissions. I am currently working on a critical edition of the Legenda Maior.


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century (visions, prophecies, ecstasies, levitations, stigmata) and also seemed to be stylistically antiquated. The same is true for the acts of the canonization process where the companions of Margaret witness her life in a remarkably simple way, without any sensitivity towards mysticism. It is evident in their case that they were not “trained” in this field. The difference can be detected even more clearly if one peruses the almost contemporary Schwesternbücher written in the Dominican convents of Germany: many Eucharistic miracles, visions of the Trinity, levitations and other characteristic elements of the beguine spirituality appear there abundantly. However, the spiritual milieu of these monasteries remained unknown for the nuns in Hungary. The author of the Legenda Maior is brother Garinus de Giaco, a renowned theologian and later Master of the Order of Preachers,11 who was commissioned in 1340 by the Master of the Order, Hugo de Vaucemain to write the legend, based on the canonization process. The main source of the legend is the documentation of the 1276 canonization process, but at least partly, Garinus had at hand the Legenda Vetus, too.12 This Legenda Maior is a rather voluminous compilation, which is at least three times longer than the Legenda Vetus. Its structure differs essentially from the previous legend. The Legenda Maior is divided in two equal parts, following the traditional pattern: the first is about Margaret’s life and death (de vita), the second about the miracles which occurred by her intercession after her death (de miraculis). Garinus gives a very detailed description of all that he considered useful to show the virtuous life of Margaret: in the first six chapters of the first part of the legend he follows a chronological order, then he focuses on various aspects and virtues of Margaret’s life (her devotion to the passion of Christ, the name of Jesus, and the Eucharist, her ascetic practices, and her life of prayer), and then comes the above-quoted chapter on levitation. Coming back to the quotation above, a close study of this excerpt could reveal the hagiographical method and the intention of the author. This is a story of key importance if we are to understand that concept of holiness to which Garinus wanted to fashion Margaret’s figure. According to Garinus, the spiritual perfection in Margaret’s life was accomplished in a mystical union with Christ, represented by the ecstasy and the levitation. 11

On the person of Garinus, see Daniel-Antonin Mortier, Histoire des Maîtres Généraux de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, vol. 3 (Paris: Picard, 1907), 217–273. 12 On the question of Garinus’ sources, see my above-mentioned study, “The Birth of a Legend.”

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That is to say that in Garinus’ opinion, the core of Margaret’s spirituality is the extraordinary mystical experience. The centrality of this episode is supported by the fact that this chapter closes in the legend with a part on the virtues of Margaret, and is followed by the mystical miracles that happened during her lifetime. Of course, there is no mention of any such event in her canonization process. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the author invented this episode from nothing; he rather amplified his material and filled it up with new elements. For example, the dates mentioned here turn up in other contexts: it is mentioned by a witness that on Good Fridays Margaret was always moved during the liturgy, and “when the body of Christ [on the cross] was lifted up in the sanctuary, she prostrated herself on the ground and burst into tears and cried so loudly that it could be heard by others outside.”13 It is very typical of Garinus—here and at many other times— that he amplifies and embellishes the stories of the canonization process, and/or reinterprets them as plainly mystical phenomena. Let us see two examples. During the process, some nuns remembered the event when the sisters found Margaret laying before the altar, not answering to anyone, in an unconscious state of mind.14 Of course, Garinus refers to this event as an ecstasy. There is no hint whatsoever that the witnesses thought the same, quite to the contrary: they rather thought that Margaret simply fainted because of exhaustion. For this reason Margaret’s novice mistress bawled her out saying she was killing herself.15 He transforms an episode from the childhood of Margaret in a similar vein. When she was four years old, “[…] she was given a cross, and she asked what it was; the other girls, her companions told her that it was our Lord, who was martyred for the sake of mankind, and when she heard this, started to cry.”16 According to the narrative of Garinus: As soon as she heard the mystery of the saving cross, there flamed up in the depths of her heart the love for the Crucified, and since she could not hide her devotion towards Him, she immediately fell on her knees before the cross, and adored her Lord and God in spirit and in truth with great devotion. She gently embraced her beloved spouse on 13

Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 214. Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 225. 15 Olympiades reported the event like this: “Ego ivi ad eam, et invenimus eam iacentem ante altare, et quando ipsa surrexit dixi sibi quod interficiebat se et quod male faciebat et menacavi eam et ipsa repsondit: Ego steti parum sic.” Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 225. 16 “[D]icta puella accepit unam crucem et querebat, quid erat hoc, et alie puelle, socie sue dixerunt, quod erat noster Dominus, qui fuerat martyrizatus pro gente, et tacite dicta puella incepit plangere.” Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 166. 14


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the cross. She cried and sighed, and seeing with her spiritual eyes, she saw as one present, her Redeemer being nailed to the cross and shedding his blood from fresh wounds. When she understood that the cross was the sign of the living God and looked up on Him who hung there and who solely was able to save all those who have their hope in Him, she cried out loudly among tears and said: Lord God, I commend myself to you. From that hour she was crucified with Christ, and the love for the Crucified was so much engraved into her heart that it seemed that there was nothing before the eyes of her heart except Jesus Christ, the Crucified.17

It is evident here how from a totally simple and real episode the author composes a mystical narrative which describes a form of ecstatic experience. Of course, there is no mention of any extraordinary mystical events in the Legenda Vetus either! Here the important element, the devotion to Christ’s passion, is described in the style of the experiences of thirteenthfourteenth-century women mystics. Moreover, it is interesting to see how the author applies the expressions sponsus/sponsa to the relationship between Jesus and Margaret; these are expressions which never occur either in the Legenda Vetus or in the acts of the canonization process. The main purpose of the author was to compose a text suitable for a canonization. This meant a necessary shifting of accent. We can see the signs of this effort in the fact how Garinus neglects to emphasize the role of poverty in Margaret’s life. Though it was mentioned at least ten times by the witnesses that Margaret resolutely wanted to live in poverty, or that she loved poverty, Garinus rather stresses her humility. This shift in the interpretation is probably due to the change that the concept of holiness underwent in the first half of the fourteenth century, during the Avignon papacy when poverty was replaced by other virtues, such as devotion, orthodoxy, obedience, and the like. This change is totally understandable if we think of the struggles of John XXII and the Franciscans concerning the real poverty of Christ.

17

“Audito puella salutifere crucis misterio, amore crucifixi in medullis cordis celitus estuans et conceptam deuotionem ad ipsum celare non valens, confestim positis genibus ante crucifixum prostrata deuotissime adorauit in spiritu et ueritate (cf. John 4:23) dominum Deum suum. Amplexari cepit dulciter in cruce pendentem: dilectissimum sponsum suum. Emittebat planctus, erumpebant gemitus, et uidebat interioribus oculis redemptorem suum quasi presencialiter clavis in cruce transfixum, uidebat quasi nouis uulneribus sauciatum. Attendens igitur hoc esse signum Dei uiui, et aspiciens illum ibi pendentem, qui solus saluat sperantes in se, alta uoce lacrimabiliter exclamauit et dixit: domine Deus noster, me tibi conmitto. Ex hac autem hora sic Christo confixa fuit cruci et sic impressum in uisceribus crucifixi gestabat amorem, ut ante cordis oculos nichil habere uideretur nisi cum Paulo Christum Ihesum et hunc crucifixum (cf. 1 Cor. 2:2).”

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Beside the mystical re-interpretation of the events of Margaret’s life, the author also uses other methods of reshaping his sources. It is somewhat striking that while for a present-day reader everything would be interesting which is unique or characteristic of Margaret, especially from her childhood, such pieces of information are the most neglected in Garinus’ legend. He is not interested in saying that Margaret wanted to pray all the time except when she was in school, or that at the age of seven she started to sing the Veni Creator and wanted to make profession—all these could be precious pieces of information for a present-day biographer. In another case, he interprets the event according to his own intention. For example, sister Catherine mentions that “she did not want to see her father nor to talk to him, and she talked to her mother very shortly.”18 The witness did not give any reason why it happened, and one can only guess that it was due to the fact that Margaret lived in the monastery from the age of three, so she must have been estranged from them to some extent. However, Garinus gives a different explanation. On the basis of the testimony cited above, he writes that “for this reason she avoided talking to her father in all possible ways that was not irreverent, lest seeing her talking to her royal father reminded those present of the glory of royal dignity, and her having born of royal descent appeared all the more glorious to those looking at them.”19 Instead of making fascinating digressions into her childhood, Garinus’ intention was to show that her heroine had the maturity of old age even as a child—“mirabantur sorores mores senectutis in parvula”—relying on the well-known topos of the puer-senex used in hagiography at least from Gregory the Great’s biography of Saint Benedict onwards. Similarly, while Garinus prefers to describe in a very detailed manner the mystical side of Margaret’s prayer life, he fails to quote those testimonies which give the most personalized account of how she prayed and how she taught her sisters to pray. In her own words: “Commend your body and soul to the Lord, let your heart be with Him that neither death nor any human being can separate you from the love of God.”20 Here it emerges 18

Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 166. “Ob hanc igitur causam uitabat modis omnibus, quibus honeste poterat, regis patris sui colloquia, ne ex inspecto familiari regis colloquio in memoriam assistencium ueniret gloria regie maiestatis, et ipsa puella regalibus orta natalibus, intuencium oculis gloriosior appareret.” Legenda Maior, ch. 5. 20 “Commenda corpus tuum et animam tuam domino, et semper cor habeas ad ipsum, ita quod neque mors, neque alia creatura retrahat te de amore Dei.” Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 254. 19


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again how the hagiographer’s mentality differs from that of the modern biographer: what is unique, or really personal, or could be interesting for a modern reader as something that expresses the heroine’s personal development, is not appealing to Garinus; he is looking for the typical alone that can be related to sacred scripture. Hence he does not mention the names of witnesses in miracle stories since he considers it useless. Or if a certain miracle happened only once, according to the witnesses, the Garinus says that it happened to many others, too. To support the mystical interpretation of Margaret’s life, the author uses all those events which could be interpreted as miracles characteristic of mystical holiness. These episodes, on the one hand, stress Margaret’s particular relationship to God and, on the other hand, verify the authenticity of her holiness, her fama sanctitatis. As I have said above, chapter 35 on levitation is followed by stories describing miraculous events that happened in Margaret’s lifetime. There are altogether 25 of this kind of events: healings, prophecies, special light phenomena and miracles which could be called “miracles of punishment.” It reveals a great deal about the different authorial intentions that out of these 25 events listed in the Legenda Maior (all based in some way on the canonization process), the Legenda Vetus mentions only five. Let us take a look at two examples. In chapter 38 we read the following: When in rapture her soul was overwhelmed by a sublime radiance, returning from her contemplative state her face seemed even more beautiful and noble as usual. The inner radiance of her soul wrapped in light shone on her face, so that her face seemed radiant like the face of Moses talking to the heavenly King. Her face mirrored such beauty, that her sisters wanted to see her face in the midst of this holy radiance, and though 21 they admired it, did not presume to look upon this heavenly beauty.

This narrative is based on the testimony of sister Catherine who said: “When she finished her prayers, her face was so beautiful that we did not dare look upon her.”22 It is evident that the fact of ecstasy and contemplation are the additions of the author. 21

“Et quoniam in extasi perfundebatur eius mens fulgoribus maiestatis, de contemplatione rediens, apparebat preter solitum pulchra facie et venusto aspectu. Irradiabatur facies corporis ex intimis splendoribus illustrate mentis. Splendida videbatur facies eius instar illius Moysi post colloquium summi regis; relucebat in eius facie tantus fulgor pulchritudinis, ut sorores desiderarent quidem videre vultum eius in decore sancto, sed admirantes nimium, illius celestem pulchritudinem aspicere non audebant.” 22 “Quando exibat ipsa de orationibus suis, tantum puchra erat in facie, quod nos non audebamus eam respicere.” Fraknói, ed., Inquisitio, 268.

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The next chapter wants to stress again the authenticity of Margaret’s extraordinary holiness: The burning furnace of her love could not be hidden, it flamed up sevenfold in her heart lit by the gifts of sevenfold grace; and from there burning sparks shot out, like fire from glowing coal, and the flame flashed. Her soul was similar to burning fire: it could not hide the fire within and not disclose it; and she could not bear the divine fire burning her inner self without revealing it.

Here, then, another important feature of the legend comes out: Garinus always wants to put Margaret’s story into the context of salvation history, and make Margaret’s life resemble the life of Jesus himself. So, he brings in the story of Abel’s sacrifice upon whom God’s fire descended—a similar event happened to Margaret too: During a night in Advent, when the others were asleep, she went to her secret place of prayer to pray on her own. She knew in a supernatural way the heavenly secrets to be revealed to her, for she asked one of the sisters, namely sister Helen to stay close, not to tell anyone what was happening there and not to let anyone go there and disturb her in any way. When Margaret had been praying for a long time, suddenly a globe of fire and a big flame appeared over her head during the prayer. Helen was scared and run away. She went into the choir, where she found prioress Catherine and Olympiades praying. She told them the secret: she announced what she saw. Both of them went there with Helen, discovered the flame over the head of the virgin, and seeing it, they were astonished. As once the burning bush appeared to Moses and was not consumed, so over the head of Margaret the glory of the Lord was revealed in the figure of burn23 ing fire, and did not burn her veil or hair.

23

“Fornax ardens amoris in camino cordis eius succensa septuplum per infusionem donorum gratie septiformis sic occultari non potuit, quin ex illa quasi de medio carbonum ignis ardentium coruscarent scintille flammantes et procederet splendor ignis. Anima siquidem eius calida, quasi ignis ardens, absconditum ignem in sinu tenere non poterat, quin extra prodiret, et ignis divinus, in uirgineis uisceribus estuans, ferri non poterat, quin deforis prosiliret. Sicut igitur olim super immaculatum animum et munus egregium uirginis innocentis Abel dominus inflammauit, sic super mundissimam uirginem, orationem impinguati cordis in odorem suauitatis domino offerentem, ignis de celo descendit et holocaustum deuoti cordis offerentem se diuinitus approbare monstrauit: lampades ignis atque flammarum super caput uirginis descenderunt. Quadam etenim nocte in aduentu domini, ceteris dormientibus, ad suum secretum accedens oratorium, ut priuate oraret, secretorum celestium, que super ipsam erant futura diuinitus non ignara, rogauit quamdam sororem, nomine Helenam, ut prope locum staret, et quod illic esset nemini reuelaret, nec quemcumque accedere permitteret, qui eam aliquatenus impediret. Cum autem uirgo sancta diucius orasset, subito globus igneus et magna flamma ignis apparuit super caput orantis. Timuit Helena timore magno et perterrita fugit. Quantocius chorum intrauit, ibi sorores Katerinam priorissam et Olympiadem orantes inuenit. Prodidit eis


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In the rest of the story, the three sisters try to “wake up” Margaret to get an answer from her. Then, after the disappearance of the fire, a sweet perfume remained. During the canonization process, only sister Helen talked about this event. Of course, she did not mention any ecstasy, only that she really saw fire over the head of the praying Margaret, and when she warned her of this, the flame disappeared. There is no hint of others being present: it is Garinus who puts two more sisters on the stage to emphasize the importance and reality of this event. Thus this miracle becomes the sign of divine approval; the pleasant odor also signifies the holiness of Margaret. Finally, I would like to stress the importance of the narrative of Margaret’s death (ch. 60). A saintly death increasingly became one of the main requirements for holiness during the fourteenth century, since it proved the saint’s perseverance until the end of his or her life. In the descriptions of these holy deaths, it becomes more and more typical that hagiographers make the saints’ death similar to the death of Jesus. So, according to the author of the Legenda Vetus, there was nothing extraordinary in the fact that Margaret sensed her death in advance: her death was a normal human death. In the Legenda Maior, her passing away is a sophisticatedly constructed story where we can see the death of a saint who reflected in herself the life and death of Christ. According to Garinus, Margaret foretells the date of her death by the supernatural gift of prophecy. (The word supernatural is one of the favorite words of the author which he uses as a synonym of divine, to stress the extraordinary side of events. It is significant that the word never occurs in the Legenda Vetus.) On her deathbed, Margaret looked upon the cross and prayed psalm 30, and then died speaking out loud the same words Jesus had on his lips dying: “Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Ps. 30:6).24 So, the misterium, quod viderat, nunciauit. Aduenerunt ambe cum Helena et flammam ignis stantem super caput uirginis inuenerunt et uidentes stupuerunt. Sicut enim quondam apparuit Moysi rubus ardens, qui non comburebatur, sic super caput puelle patebat species glorie domini, quasi ignis ardens et diu super uerticem sanctam stetit, nec tamen pilus ueli uel capitis urebatur. Mens quidem ipsius tunc miris ardoribus tangebatur, et in meditationibus eius exardescebat ignis amoris; sed quia erat ignis ille diuinus non comburens sed illuminans, non consumens sed lucens, qui dudum sacrata pectora et corda discipulorum diuinis feruoribus inflammauit, aliud incendium diuinum non ledebat foris.” 24 “Appropinquante uero felici cursu certaminis, sacratissimi corporis Christi et extreme unctionis sacra cum instancia petiuit et cum maxima deuocione ac largissima lacrimarum effusione de manu fratris Michaelis prioris provincialis suscepit, ad extremam autem horam perueniens, sancte crucis signaculo se muniuit et cum uultu leto ad sancte crucis ac crucifixi presentem illic imaginem oculos deuote direxit. Illius quoque sui et

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author follows perfectly the rules: as he connected all the deeds and virtues of Margaret with the example of Jesus, so now he has her follow Jesus in his death—she dies with the same words as Jesus. Garinus also lays great emphasis on Margaret going to confession, receiving holy communion, and being anointed before death: this could be the impact of fourteenth-century hagiography, where the taking of the sacraments became a central element in canonization processes as a sign of faithfulness to the Church. (The Legenda Vetus did not mention this detail, though the author was at the deathbed of Margaret, and other witnesses mentioned it.) Garinus also stresses that Margaret died on Saturday, since this day (along with Friday and Sunday) had a strong Christological significance: she passed away after Compline, around Saturday midnight—“this happened because the Lord showed in this way that after her sufferings she will go to the glory of the resurrection by the grace of God, who glorifies His saints and crowns them with the glory of eternity.” It would be interesting—but in this place it would be too long—to see how this manner of re-writing and reinterpreting works in the second part of the legend. Nevertheless, I think that Garinus was an extremely ingenious author: he was able to create a new legend which was based upon real facts but at the same time was able to present her heroine according to the requirements of a different age, that of mystics and prophets.

omnium saluatoris in hora mortis sequens exemplum, cuius in sancte uiuendo fuerat imitata semper uestigium, integro sensu atque aspectu, quasi parum uideretur infirma, incepit dicere psalmum illum dauiticum, in te domine speraui, non confundar in eternum. Cumque dixisset, in manus tuas, domine, commendo spiritum meum coram positis sororibus et cum multis lacrimis orantibus obdormiuit in domino [...].”

St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Italian Vernacular Literature Vitae, Miracles, Revelations, and the Meditations on the Life of Crist Dávid FALVAY

Although Saint Elizabeth had never been to Italy in her lifetime (1207– 1231), the density of sources her veneration produced there after her death rivals those stemming from her homelands, Hungary and Thuringia. Her inclusion in the catalogue of saints was celebrated in Perugia in 1235 and, given that centralized and formalized procedure canonization had developed into by the thirteenth century, every document made for this purpose had to arrive at the Papal court before the final ceremony. This means that the earliest written sources of information about Elizabeth’s life and cult—a short biography, the so-called Summa vitae, written by her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, and the testimonies of her four maidens, which in their longer and better known version are entitled Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum (henceforth: Libellus), as well as the collections of post mortem miracles recorded at her shrine—were available in Italy right from the beginning.1 

The present article is partly based on my PhD thesis written under the supervision of Gábor Klaniczay and defended in 2006 at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The underlying research has been supported by a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa i Tatti, Florence, the Hungarian Research Fund (OTKA PD 75329), and by the Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I would also like to thank the help of Anna Benvenuti. 1 For a general overview see, for example, Matthias Werner and Dieter Blume, eds., Elisabeth von Thüringen—eine europäische Heilige: Katalog (Petersberg: Imhof, 2007); Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Edith Pasztor, “Sant’Elisabetta d’Ungheria nella religiosità femminile del secolo XIII,” in Donne e Sante: Studi sulla religiosità femminile nel Medio Evo (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 2000); Sankt Elisabeth: Fürstin Dienerin Heilige (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1981); Ilona Sz. Jónás, Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet, 2nd ed. (St. Elizabeth of Hungary) (Budapest: Ecclesia, 1997); and the proceedings of the conference “Il culto e la storia di Santa Elisa-

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Dávid FALVAY

Apart form the availability of sources, there are at least two causes which explain Elizabeth’s popularity south of the Alps. On the one hand, her figure connected the lay or mendicant type of religiosity, well known to the Italian audience, with something new for most of them, especially in the central part of the peninsula: the world of aristocratic courts and dynasties. On the other hand, her life-model could be propagated as an appropriate ideal for all women in the classification of ecclesiastical writers: virgins, wives, widows.2 Among those religious communities which disseminated and maintained her cult in Italy, the role of the Franciscans—and, especially, that of the Franciscan Third Order—is the best documented and the most widely known. It is also because the Franciscan Third Order venerated Elizabeth as one of its patrons from a later period onwards.3 In a fifteenthcentury unpublished Florentine codex, for instance, we find, together with a Life of St. Elizabeth, and other Franciscan sources, a rule (regula) of the Female Third Order of Saint Francis in the Italian vernacular.4 In what follows, I will offer a short survey of Italian vernacular literature about St. Elizabeth including translations or adaptations (volgarizbetta d’Ungheria in Europa,” in Annuario 2002–2004: Conferenze e convegni (Rome: Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma / Istituto Storico Fraknói, 2005), 200–299. For the latest comprehensive synthesis, see Ottó Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth: Their Rewritings and Diffusion in the Thirteenth Century,” Analecta Bollandiana 127 (2009): 49–107. For the canonization: Gábor Klaniczay, “Il processo di canonizzazione di Santa Elisabetta: Le prime testimonianze sulla vita e i miracoli,” in Annuario 2002–2004, 220–232. A recent Italian translation of the early sources is Lino Temperini, ed., Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria nelle fonti storiche del Duecento (Padova: Messaggero, 2008). 2 For Elizabeth as a modell, see Gábor Klaniczay, “I modelli di santità femminile tra is secoli XIII e XIV in Europa Centrale e in Italia,” In Spiritualità e lettere nella cultura italiana e ungherese del basso medioevo, ed. Sante Graciotti and Cesare Vasoli (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 75–109. 3 There has been a long debate about whether Elizabeth could have been a member of the Franciscan Third Order. The latest results were presented at the conference Santa Elisabetta, Penitente Francescana: Convegno Internazionale di Studi nell’ottavo centenario della nascita di Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria, Principessa di Turingia, organized by Fernando Scocca and Lino Temperini in 2007, in the Antonianum, in Rome; see also Lino Temperini, Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria (1207–1231) gloria dei Penitenti Francescani (Rome: Editrice Franciscanum, 2002), Lori Pieper, “A New Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: The Anonymous Franciscan,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 93 (2000): 29– 78. For arguments against the positive answer to the question, see André Vauchez, Esperienze religiose nel Medioevo (Rome: Viella, 2003); and Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth,” 64–66. 4 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (henceforth: BNCF), Cod. Palat. 118. ff. 16r–19r.

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zamenti), on the one hand, and texts written originally in Italian, on the other. In each case I will also have to take a brief look at those most important Latin vitae which served as starting points for the Italian ones, either as originals of translations/adaptations or as sources of works newly composed in the vernacular. Elizabeth’s popularity in Italy is well demonstrated by the fact that the Legenda Aurea also contains her vita. This is all the more important, if we consider that there are only four contemporary (thirteenth-century) saints in the whole collection: St. Dominic, St. Francis, St. Peter of Verona, and St. Elizabeth. The Legenda Aurea, together with the Fioretti and the Meditationes Vitae Christi, can be characterized as the “best-sellers” of Italian religious literature of which hundreds of manuscripts have survived.5 The Legenda Aurea was translated very quickly into Italian: there are at least 12 vernacular manuscripts that survived from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.6 As to the volgarizzamento of Elizabeth’s Life, it can be found in at least four manuscripts containing the entire collection, and it has also been transmitted separately.7 5

Iacopo da Varazze, “De sancta Elisabeth,” in Legenda aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols. (Florence: SISMEL, 1998), 2:1156–1179. For the history of the Legenda aurea and its chapter on Elizabeth see, among others, Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, Ricerche sulla composizione e sulla trasmissione della “Leggenda Aurea” (Spoleto: CISAM, 1994); Alain Boureau, La légende dorée: Le system narratif de Jacques de Voragine († 1298) (Paris: Cerf, 1984); André Vauchez, “Jacques de Voragine et les saints du XIIIe siècle dans la Légende Dorée,” in Legenda aurea: Sept siècles de diffusion, ed. Brenda Dunn-Lardeau (Montréal: Bellarmin; Paris: Vrin, 1986); Edit Madas, “La Légende dorée—Historia Lombardica—en Hongrie,” in Spiritualità e lettere, 53– 63; Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth,” 71–73. 6 Jacques Dalarun et al., eds., Biblioteca Agiografica Italiana (BAI): Repertorio di testi e manoscritti, secoli XIII–XIV, 2 vols. (Florence: SISMEL, 2003), 2:413–416. See also Valerio Marucci, “Manoscritti e stampe antiche della Leggenda Aurea di Iacopo da Varazze volgarizzata,” Filologia e critica 5 (1980): 30–50. 7 The three MSS in which the Italian Vita of St. Elizabeth is to be found separately are: (1) Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1290, 148b–155a; cf. Dávid Falvay, “Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria nei manoscritti della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze,” in Tra magiaristica e italiansistica: cultura e istituzioni, special issue of Annuario: Studi e documenti italo-ungheresi (Rome: Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma; Szeged: Università degli studi di Szeged, Dipartimento di italianistica, 2005), 172–186. (2) BNCF, Magliabechiano XXXVIII. 74, ff. 9r–26, edited by Marc’Antonio Parenti as Volgarizzamento della vita di S. Elisabetta di Ungheria, Langravia di Turingia: Testo antico toscano, ora per la prima volta stampato (Modena: Soliani, 1848). (3) Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, I. 115 Inf., ff. 22v – 35. The two latter ones have been transcribed and analyzed recently

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Besides the Legenda aurea, another important Latin source for our topic is the so-called Tuscan vita, edited by Leonhard Lemmens.8 The relevance of this short text apparently datable to the beginning of the fourteenth century lies in the fact that it is usually regarded as the first vita that contains the famous rose miracle.9 In Italian, the rose miracle appears for the first time in a coeval text of a totally different genre: the so-called Florentine Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (Cronica Fiorentina del secolo XIII). Historians of Italian language are familiar with this narrative text from the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, which has also been published, but it has remained unknown to scholars dealing with St. Elizabeth.10 The Florentine Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century is an interesting case in Italian philology, since one of its two surviving manuscripts is an autograph and, what is more, the particular way of writing, calligraphy and pagination of this manuscript allow us to separate the main text— which is the Italian translation of the world-chronicle by Martinus Polonus (Oppaviensis) entitled Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum—from the by Eszter Konrád in her “La vita di Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria nella Legenda Aurea e i suoi volgarizzamenti” (master’s thesis, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2009). 8 Leonhard Lemmens, “Zur Biographie der heiligen Elisabeth, Landgräfin von Thüringen,” Mittheilungen des Historischen Vereins der Diözese Fulda, 4 (1901): 1–24, on pp. 15–19. The most recent and convincing analyses of this text are Ottó Gecser, “Handschrift eines franziskanischen Legendars / Handschrift eines franziskanischen Breviers,” in Elisabeth von Thüringen, 241–242; and Gecser, “Lives of St. Elizabeth,” 74–80. 9 There is also a parallel Latin version of the rose miracle, in the vita of the so-called Anonymous Franciscan, which seems to be contemporary to the Tuscan Vita, but has apparently originated from within Central Europe. See Pieper, “A New Life;” and Ottó Gecser, “Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria e il miracolo delle rose,” in Annuario 2002–2004, 240–247; and idem, “Szent Erzsébet rózsacsodájának előzményei és legkorábbi latin szövegváltozatai” (The rose miracle: Its antecedents and earliest Latin versions), in Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet kultusza a 13–15. században, ed. Dávid Falvay (Budapest: Magyarok Nagyasszonya Ferences Rendtartomány, 2009), 105–121 (abstract in English: ibid., 122). 10 Edition: Cronica fiorentina del sec. XIII, in Testi fiorentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento, ed. Alfredo Schiaffini (Florence: Sansoni, 1954), 82–150; excerpts from it have been republished as “Cronica fiorentina,” in La Letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, ed. Pietro Pancrazi and Alfredo Schiaffini, vol. 3: La prosa del Duecento, ed. Cesare Segre and Marco Marti (Milan and Naples: Riccardo Ricciardini, 1959), 907–929. I would like to thank Prof. Giampaolo Salvi, who called my attention to this Chronicle. I examined it in detail in Dávid Falvay, “A rózsacsoda Itáliában: Olasz nyelvű kéziratok” (The rose miracle in Italy: Vernacular manuscripts), in Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet kultusza, 123–139 (abstract in Italian: ibid., p. 140).


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numerous additions made by the Italian compiler, which can be considered as a partly original work with pieces of information and traditions connected to Tuscany (mainly political and social events). The modern editions of the chronicle, however, do not separate the different parts of the text; consequently it is necessary to consult the original autograph codex (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II. IV. 323 (Magl. XXV).11 From the characteristic calligraphy we can clearly see that only the first sentence about the papacy of Gregory IX, and the beginning of the section about Elizabeth—“Elli canoniççò la beata sancta Helisabet, filia del re d’Ungaria”—belong to the base-text (the translation from Martinus Polonus’ chronicle), and the subsequent detailed description of the rose-miracle seems to be an original work of the anonymous Tuscan compiler.12 The traditional dating of the text is the end of thirteenth century, but on the basis of codicological and philological arguments, the first decade of the fourteenth century seems more probable. But even at this later date, the passage in the chronicle ranks among the earliest occurrences of the rose-miracle, contemporaneous to the first known Latin versions. In contrast to the Latin ones, the fourteenth-century Italian vernacular versions of Elizabeth’s Life exhibit a new textual type that mixes the Ital11

For a description of the MS, see Sandro Bertelli, ed., I manoscritti della letteratura italiana delle origini: Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Florence: SISMEL, 2002), no. 25, p. 99. See also Alfredo Schiaffini, Testi fiorentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1926), 82; Pasquale Villari, I primi due secoli della storia di Firenze, 2nd ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1905), 42–44; Pietro Santini, Quesiti e ricerche di storiografia fiorentina (Florence: Seeber, 1903), 54–58. 12 “La quale un giorno, essendo pulzella delle più belle del mondo e delle più ammaestrate in iscritura, sì era piena di tanta limosina e caritade, ke nulla cosa si lassciava a dare per Dio; e dispendea donava per suo amore tutti suoi vestiti e gioielli, tutto il pane levava delle mense e dava a' poveri, ricevendone molte vergongne dal padre e dalla madre e dalle sue cameriere. Or avenne un giorno che llo re d'Ungaria suo padre fece una grande festa, dove convitò molti baroni e chavalieri, per maritare Ysabetta sua filia al filgluolo dell'Antigrado della Magna. E quella stando alle finestre della camera, e vide molta quantità di poveri ch'aspettavano la limosina, celatamente fece torre per suo comandamento tutto il pane della casa, e fece dare per Dio a' poveri; e finalmente vi ne canparo v poveri ke nnon ebero limosina. Ellisabetta si mosse, e tolse il pane ch'ella dovea desinare colle sue cameriere, e portavalo in grembo per dare a' poveri; sì ch'all'uscire della camera, il Re co molti baroni le si fece incontro per farle vergongna. Fecesi mostrare quello c'avea con seco. La faccia le coninçiò ad arossare, ed a inpiersi di paura e di vergongna, e mostrali il grenbo; e questo pane fu diventato tutto rose bianche e vermilgle. Ed era per la passqua della Nattività di Cristo all'uscita di dicenbre. Donde tutta la corte e 'l reame si n'enpieo, e quivi fue la maggiore fessta del mondo; tutte le tavole si trovaro piene di rose e di fiori e di pane biancho, e tuttavia crescea.”

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ian translation of parts of the Libellus with newly formed elements of her cult such as the miracle of the rose and the miracle of the dress (according to which an angel brings her “a shining crown and dress” that she would wear in the company of a noble guest, since she had distributed all her royal garments among the poor).13 These stories are completely missing from the first sources, but they conserve Elizabeth’s original life-model in a more fictional, condensed, and metaphoric form. The miracle of the dress (also known as the miracle of the mantle) was further diffused in Italy because it was integrated in a characteristic Italian representative of a popular medieval genre, the collection of miracles of the Virgin Mary. Several miracle collections of the Virgin are known from medieval literature, in different vernacular languages as well,14 but only the unpublished fourteenth-century Italian-language collection of Duccio di Gana contains this miracle of St. Elizabeth15 In accordance with the characteristics of the genre, in Duccio’s version, instead of the angels of God it is the Virgin who sends her the shining dress.16 13

For a comparison of the two surviving Italian versions of Elizabeth’s Life, see Dávid Falvay, “Due versioni italiane trecentesche della vita di Santa Elisabetta d’Ungheria,” in Annuario: Studi e documenti italo-ungheresi (Rome: Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma; Szeged: Università degli studi di Szeged, Dipartimento di italianistica, 2005), 13–23. We find the first Latin versions of this miracle in two texts from the end of thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century: in the Life written by Theoderic of Apolda and published by Monika Rener in her Die Vita der heiligen Elisabeth des Dietrich von Apolda (Marburg: Elwert, 1993), 42–44; and in the Tuscan vita (see Lemmens, “Zur Biographie,” 16). 14 On the miracles of the Virgin in medieval vernacular literature, see Gautier de Coinci, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. Frédéric Koenig, 4 vols., Textes littéraires français 64, 95, 131, and 176 (Geneva: Droz, 1955–1970); Gonzalo de Berceo, Los milagros de Nuestra Señora, in Obras completas, ed. Brian Dulton, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (London: Támesis, 1980). Gautier de Coinci, Gonzalo de Berceo, and Alfonso X el Sabio, Miracoli della Vergine: Testi volgari medievali, ed. Carlo Beretta, intr. Cesare Segre (Turin: Einaudi, 1999). Mary Jane Kelley, “Ascendant Eloquence: Language and Sanctity in the Works of Gonzalo de Berceo,” Speculum 79 (2004): 66–87; eadem, “Spinning Virgin Yarns: Narrative, Miracles, and Salvation in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora,” Hispania 74 (1991): 814–823. 15 For a detailed philological overview, see Mary Vincentine Gripkey S.C.L., “Mary Legends in Italian Manuscripts in the Major Libraries of Italy,” Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952): 9–47 and 15 (1953): 14–46; about the two MSS of Duccio’s collection, see ibid., 14–17. The two other known Italian collections are published in Ezio Levi, ed., Il libro dei cinquanta miracoli della vergine, Collezione di inedite o rare dei primi secoli della lingua (Bologna, 1917), and in Piero Misciatelli, ed., Miracoli della Gloriosa Vergine Maria (Milan: Treves, 1929). 16 The two extant MSS of the collection are Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Barb. Lat. 4032, ff. 1–122v and BNCF, Magliabecchiano XXXVIII, ff. 9–79. For the edition


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Another branch of those texts which were attached to Elizabeth’s hagiographical dossier in fourteenth-century Italy seem to be much farther from the earliest accounts of her life than the above-mentioned miracles. The Book of Revelations of the Virgin (henceforth: Revelations)—which has survived in several Latin and Italian MSS, as well as in Middle-English, Catalonian, Spanish, and French versions—is a typical work of female visionary mysticism probably written by an anonymous author in Italy. Although it was contaminated very soon with her cult, the Revelations has little to do with Elizabeth’s real life as it transpires from the first sources, which was, above all, a vita activa—even if references to her mystical experiences appear in the Libellus too. The book comprises thirteen revelations or visions in which mostly the Virgin Mary, but in a smaller part also John the Evangelist and Christ himself, appear to Saint Elizabeth to tell her theological and moral secrets and teachings. Some episodes of this text are related to the childhood of the Virgin (her being left in the Temple, her prayer etc), which help us to individuate some main sources. The text was probably written in Latin at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Latin and the Catalonian versions have been published in a critical edition by Livarius Oliger in 1926, and also the middle-English version has been edited. In the Latin version and in the variants in most other languages (French, Spanish, Catalonian, Middle-English) there are very few references to Saint Elizabeth, and they are basically limited to the incipit and the explicit formulae.17 On the other hand, we know two Italian variants of the Revelations in which the text is incorporated in a vita of the saint containing some data from her historically more authentic life story, the miracles of the roses and the dress, and some passages about her death taken from the Libellus.18 of this version of the miracle, see Dávid Falvay, “Elisabetta d’Ungheria: Il culto di una santa europea in Italia negli ultimi secoli del Medioevo,” Nuova Corvina: Rivista di Italianistica 14 (2003): 113–125. 17 Livarius Oliger, “Revelationes B. Elisabeth: Disquisitio critica una cum textibus latino et catalannensi” Antonianum 1 (1926): 14–83; Alexandra Barrat, “The Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Problems of Attribution,” The Library, 6th ser., 14 (1992): 1–11; Sarah McNamer, The Two Middle English Translations of the Revelations of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, Ed. from Cambridge University Library MS Hh.i.11 and Wynkyn de Worde’s printed text of ?1493, Middle English Tests 28 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1996); Kálmán Tímár, “Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet látomásai,” in Religio 61 (1909): 580, 594, 611; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 372–375; and idem, “I modelli,” 75–109. 18 “Rivelazioni sulla vita della Madonna e Leggenda di Santa Elisabetta,” in Scrittori di religione del Trecento: Volgarizzamenti, ed. Giuseppe de Luca, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Turin:

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Nevertheless, the Revelations contributed to the diffusion of Elizabeth’s name and cult in Italy due, first of all, to its having been quoted at length by one of the most famous religious writings of the late Middle Ages, the Meditations on the Life of Christ (Meditaciones Vitae Christi, henceforth: Meditations) by Pseudo-Bonaventure or, as in the recent critical edition, by a certain Iohannes de Caulibus OFM. In 1990 Sarah McNamer dated the entire Meditations to post 1336 on the basis of her hypothesis concerning the authorship of the Revelations attributed by her to Elizabeth of Töss (d. 1336/1338), and this new date is widely accepted, among others in the critical edition of the Meditations as well. In my view this dating is supported neither by the authorship and date of the Revelations nor by the manuscript tradition of the Meditations. Given the significance of the latter work to medieval studies in general, and the place of the Revelations in the Italian cult of St. Elizabeth in particular, it seems worthwhile to dedicate the remaining part of my essay to this issue. * Although scholars have studied the Meditations since the eighteenth century, there are still at least two main issues that have not been resolved: the question of the original version of the work, and that of the date of its composition. Furthermore, one can mention also the issue of authorship, since the name proposed by the critical edition, Iohannes de Caulibus, does not appear in any medieval manuscript. This famous work has survived in more than two hundred medieval manuscripts, and in at least three main versions. Since the fundamental study by Columban Fischer in 1932 we speak about the long text, the short one and the minimal one (also known with the title Meditationes de Passione Christi). Later on, other scholars, such as Alberto Vaccari or Giorgio Petrocchi, modified this classification and made it more sophisticated, and the majority of scholars today accept that the longest version is the original one and the others are abbreviations.19 This is the reason why Einaudi, 1977), 4:705–726; it was originally published in Delle vite de’ santi, ed. Domenico Maria Manni, 4 vols. (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 1735), 4:357–370. See also Florio Banfi, Santa Elisabetta di Ungheria, Langravia di Turingia (Assisi: S. Maria degli Angeli, 1932); Falvay, “Due versioni.” 19 Columban Fischer, “Die Meditationes vitae Christi: Ihre Handschriftliche Überlieferung und die Verfasserfrage,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 25 (1932): 3–35, 175– 209, 305–348, 449–483; Alberto Vaccari, “Le Meditazioni della vita di Cristo in volgare,” in Scritti di erudizione e di filologia, vol. 1 (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1952), 341–378.


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the 1997 critical edition of the text by Mary Stallings-Taney (Mary Jordan Stallings) offers the long or complete Latin version.20 On the other hand, Sarah McNamer in her 1990 article argued that not the long Latin, but a shorter Italian version (of 41 chapters) must be the first variant of the Meditations.21 Recently, in 2009, McNamer has resumed her studies on this topic and published a long essay, in which she slightly modifies her views, and indicates a previously almost entirely unknown version as the original, namely an even shorter Italian text of 31 chapters, which survived in a single, fifteenth-century codex, the MS Canon. Ital. 174 of the Bodleian Library.22 The precedence of an Italian version is not a new idea, but it has usually been rejected. Recently, however, other authors have also argued for it besides McNamer. Isa Ragusa, for instance, in her article of 2003 speaks about a possible “oral composition” of the treatise, which may have been in the vernacular Italian.23 Ragusa herself in another article and Holly Flora in a recent monograph argue for the precedence of a long Italian version of the work in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Ital. 115.24 The traditional date of the Meditations was the beginning of the fourteenth century,25 but in 1990 Sarah McNamer postponed this date and proposed 1336 as the terminus post quem.26 This new date seems to be 20

Iohannes de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi olim s. Bonaventurae attributae, ed. Mary Jordan Stallings, CCCM 153 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). Also the shortest version has been published: Mary Jordan Stallings, ed., Meditationes de Passione Christi olim Sancto Bonaventurae attributae (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1965). 21 Sarah McNamer, “Further Evidence for the Date of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Franciscan Studies 50 (1990): 235–261. 22 Sarah McNamer, “The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Speculum 84 (2009): 905–955. She has also published a monograph that I could not consult before submitting this article: Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 23 “[P]ossiamo dedurre che anche la versione orale delle Meditationes era in volgare.” Isa Ragusa, “La particolarità del testo delle Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Arte Medievale, n.s., 2, no. 1 (2003): 71–82, on p. 79. 24 Isa Ragusa, “L’autore delle Meditationes vitae Christi secondo il codice ms. Ital. 115 della Bibliothèque Nationale di Parigi,” Arte medievale, 2nd ser., 11, nos. 1–2 (1997): 145–150; Holly Flora, The Devout Belief of the Imagination: The Paris “Meditationes Vitae Christi” and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). I am grateful to the author for having let me consult her work before publication. 25 Emmanuel von Severus and Aimé Solignac, “Meditationes Vitae Christi,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, 16 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–1995), 10:913. 26 McNamer, “Further Evidence,” 235–261.

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widely accepted since both the above mentioned critical edition of the Latin version,27 and Mario Arosio in his long entry about the supposed author, Iohannes de Caulibus, in the prestigious Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani accept McNamer’s hypothesis and refer to her argument alone.28 In her recent article, McNamer modifies her earlier hypothesis in a fundamental way, since the only manuscript from the fifteenth century(!) containing the supposed Italian original does not include the quotation from the Revelations. Consequently, McNamer admits that “While the testo minore and the other vernacular and Latin versions must still be dated to the period after ca. 1336, it is possible that the Canonici version may well have been composed several decades earlier. As far as I have been able to determine, the only firm terminus post quem for its composition is 1298.”29 However, the main point of her study is to prove—mainly with not very convincing stylistic arguments and with almost no philological basis at all—the precedence of this specific Italian version, and she takes for granted the post 1336 date of all other known versions the Meditations. McNamer’s dating is based on the supposed “authorship” of the Revelations. Her views about this problem30 can be summarized in the following way: it is evident that the Revelations is not an authentic text about St. Elizabeth of Hungary; we know that its author or protagonist was a Hungar27

Iohannes de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi; see the editor’s introduction on p. ix: “Barring the identification of the passage in chapter 3 (Meditations, 3.5–69) as other than the Revelations of Elisabeth of Töss, at present it would seem that ca. 1346 (an approximate date for the diffusion of the Revelations of Elisabeth of Töss) is the terminus post quem for the date of composition…” Elsewhere the editor approaches the problem of dating more cautiously, and notes that “questions arising from the manuscript evidence […] make these dates less certain;” see C. Mary Stallings-Taney, “The PseudoBonaventure Meditaciones Vitae Christi: Opus Intergum,” Franciscan Studies 55 (1998): 253–280. 28 “[G]li studi della ricercatrice statunitense hanno consentito di spostare ulteriormente in avanti nel secolo XIV la data di composizione. L’attribuzione delle Revelationes [...] è stata messa in discussione [...] esiste un'altra candidata alla paternità del testo, la meno conosciuta monaca domenicana Elisabetta di Töss...” Marco Arosio, “Giovanni de’ Cauli,” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 55 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2000), 764–774. Also the author of the most recent scholarly text-edition accepts this late date: Giuliano Gasca Queirazza, ed., Meditacioni di la vita di Christu (Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 2008), xiv. 29 McNamer, “The Origins,” 946. In spite of this modification, she repeats her previous argument at the beginning of the article; see ibid., 905n1. 30 McNamer bases her main arguments on the studies of Alexandra Barrat, summarized in Barrat, “The Revelations of St. Elizabeth.”


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ian princess called Elizabeth, who was devoted to the Virgin Mary, had mystical experiences, lived in a monastery or in a similar community, and in three Latin manuscripts she is called a virgin; these pieces of information fit the life of Elizabeth of Töss (known also as Elizabeth of Hungary Junior, 1292/94–1336/38), because she was a Hungarian princess (the daughter of King Andrew III) and also a virgin, who lived her life in a religious community, the Dominican nunnery of Töss. From her vita, written probably by Elsbeth Stagel (d. 1360),31 we learn that she was especially devoted to the Virgin Mary, and that she had mystical experiences as well.32 As I have already dealt with this hypothesis in more detail,33 I will only summarize here the main points of my argumentation. As to the Marian devotion and the mystical experiences, it is true that they were not of central importance in Elizabeth of Hungary’s life, but in Italian female religiosity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these were general, widely diffused elements. Similarly, if speaking about a saintly woman, it was almost automatic in the Middle Ages to call her a virgin. And the expression virgo is present only in three Latin manuscripts of the Revelations, and exclusively in the incipit and/or explicit formulae together with the name of the Virgin Mary—so it can simply be a corruption of the text. Furthermore, Barrat and McNamer underrate the fact that two manuscripts also call her a member of the Franciscan Third Order, which evidently could not be true for the Dominican Elizabeth of Töss, but it is compatible with the hagiographic dossier of Elizabeth of Hungary. Barrat and McNamer argue that the name of Elizabeth of Töss was quickly mixed up with that of Elizabeth of Hungary. In my view this is a circular argument, because with the same logic one could easily say that even the attribute “Hungarian princess” (which is the basis of the whole hypothesis) stemmed from Elizabeth of Hungary’s cult. To be sure, calling her a princess can simply be a hagiographic topos: as we know from André Vauchez, when a person venerated as a saint lacked a reliable biography, he or she was almost automatically represented in hagi31

Legende des lebens der hochwirdigen junckfrawen swester Elsbethen. For its modern edition, see Robert. H. Oehninger, Der Schleier der Prinzessin: Die Legende von der Prinzessin Elisabeth von Ungarn (Winterthur: Vogel, 2000). 32 Barrat and McNamer also argued that some stylistic elements in the text of the Revelations are closer to the Life of Elizabeth of Töss, than to the Libellus of Elizabeth of Hungary, which is a plausible but not a decisive point. 33 Falvay, “Le rivelazioni;” and idem, “A Szent Erzsébetnek tulajdonított Mária-revelációk és itáliai kontextusuk” (The revelations of the Virgin attributed to Saint Elizabeth and their Italian context) (PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2005).

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ography as having aristocratic or royal background.34 And being a Hungarian prince or princess in particular is a widely diffused motif in Western (mainly Romance) literature, featuring, among others, Saint Martin, King of Tours represented as a Hungarian prince or the King of Hungary, or a holy Hungarian princess called Bertha.35 Also in many versions of the so-called Legend of the Accused Queen from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century the protagonist is a Hungarian queen or princess,36 and while the story often appears with different names, the Hungarian royal origin is a stable element in all variants. It must be considered as well that, on a Biblical basis, Elizabeth is the most evident name to be associated with a woman in dialogue with the Holy Virgin. As to the mysticism of the Revelations, we know from the comparative studies of Gábor Klaniczay that in Italian hagiography it was quite common to attach new, mystical elements to the cult of Hungarian saints.37 There are also strictly philological arguments that make almost impossible the attribution of the Revelations to Elizabeth of Töss. If we accept that the Revelations was written originally in Middle-High German (as Barrat and McNamer do), and that the only text about Elizabeth of Töss is from the period between her death and 1360 (the death of her presumable biographer), as well as that the first Latin and Italian versions of the Revelations appear in this period,38 mainly in Italian Franciscan manuscripts, 34

“[L]orsque on ne savait rien sur la vie d’un personnage qui faisait l’objet d’un culte et qu’on éprouvait le besoin de le doter d’une biographie, on lui attribuait presque toujours dans les légendes une ascendance illustre, voire même royale.” André Vauchez, Saints, prophètes, et visionnaires: Le pouvoir surnaturel au Moyen Age (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 68n2. Vauchez’s example is the case of Sebaldus of Nürnberg (eleventh century) who is called “stirpe regali natus” in a fourteenth-century source, while another text from 1380 calls him a Danish princess. 35 Ilona Király, Szent Márton magyar király legendája: A magyar bencések árpádkori francia kapcsolatai; A Berta-monda magyar vonatkozásai (The legend of Saint Martin, Hungarian king: French connections of the Hungarian Benedictines in the Arpadian period; Hungarian relations of the Berta-saga) (Budapest: Eggenberger, 1929); Alexandre Eckhardt, “Les Sept Dormants, Berthe aux grands pieds et la Manekien,” in De Sicambria à Sans-Souci: Histoires et légendes Franco-Hongroises (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1943). 36 Nancy B. Black, Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003). 37 Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 367–394; and idem, “I modelli,” 106. See also Dávid Falvay, “Memory and Hagiography: The Formation of the Memory of Three Thirteenth-Century Female Saints,” In The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Lucie Doležalová, Later Medieval Europe 4 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 347–364. 38 A stable terminus ante quem for the Latin text is 1381, while at least three Italian MSS can be dated to the mid-fourteenth century.


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then we have to suppose that the text arrived from modern-day Switzerland to Central Italy, from a Dominican to a Franciscan ambience, and it was translated from German to Latin, and from Latin to Italian in merely a few years or decades of time. This is hardly plausible. Furthermore, we know also a number of exemplars of the Meditationes Vitae Christi from the mid-fourteenth century which contain the quotation from Elizabeth’s Revelations, and not only in Latin but also in Italian.39 Consequently there is no reason to accept that Elizabeth of Töss would be the author/protagonist of the Revelations. I have argued elsewhere that the Revelations was written in Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century; originally it was anonymous, but from the mid-fourteenth century it was attached to the cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.40 If, then, Elizabeth of Töss is not accepted anymore as the author/protagonist of the Revelations, there is no reason to date the Meditationes Vitae Christi to post 1336 either. Thus we can retain the traditional date: the beginning of the fourteenth century. This new/old date is much more convincing also for the textual tradition of the Meditations, and in this case we do not have to rethink the entire relationship between the Meditationes Vitae Christi and 39

There are at least three Italian MSS of the Meditations containing the quotation from the Revelations which can be dated to the middle of fourteenth century: (1) Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Ital. 115 (n. 155); for its English translation with the reproduction of the original illustrations, see Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, eds., Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). (2) BNCF, N.A. 350; see Bertelli, ed., I manoscritti, no. 102, p. 149. And (3) Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1269, the work of a copyist who produced two other MSS in the second decade of the fourteenth century; see Tommaso Gramigni, “I manoscritti della lettaratura italiana delle origini conservati nella Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze: Analisi paleografica e codicologica” (master’s thesis, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2003–2004), 147–149; and Sandro Bertelli, “Il copista del Novellino,” Studi di filologia italiana 56 (1998): 31–45, on pp. 39–40. I am especially grateful to Tommaso Gramigni (University of Florence, Archive of Arezzo) for his help and suggestions concerning the Italian MSS of the Meditations, for offering me his unpublished master’s thesis (see above) for consultation, and for calling my attention to some important works of secondary literature. We are working on a joint publication about the Italian MSS of the Meditations. Tobias A. Kemper also criticizes McNamer’s hypothesis in his recent monograph, and argues for the traditional dating (ca. 1300), by providing new evidence about the reception of the Revelations in a treatise entitled Vitae Christi from the mid-fourteenth century; see Tobias A. Kemper, Die Kreuzigung Christi: Motivengeschichtliche Studien zu lateinischen und deutschen Passionstraktaten des Spätmittelalters (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006), 98–107. I owe this reference to Péter Tóth. 40 Falvay, “Le rivelazioni.”

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the Trecento painting,41 and we can get rid of other philological problems as well. A further and direct argument against 1336 as a terminus post quem is the fact that a chapter of the Meditations is quoted in a sermon by Michael de Massa, who died in 1337. In this text, with an obscure indication of its source as Liber de vita Christi by a certain Jacobus frater domini, we can read an episode from the Meditations. In a recent article written together with Péter Tóth we have argued that this indication may have derived from a fourteenth-century Italian manuscript of the Meditations, attributed to a certain frate Iacopo (identified as Giacomo di Cordone or di San Gigmignano). Specifying the source of Michael de Massa’s quotation in the Italian manuscripts of the Meditations attributed to friar James could complete the philological reconsideration of the Meditations and, by the same token, the fourteenth-century development of the cult of St. Elizabeth in Italy. But this is already the task of another study.42

41

Two recent examples from the field of art history which argue for an earlier date of the Meditations: Isa Ragusa, “La particolarità del testo;” and Emma Simi Varanelli, “Le Meditationes Vitae Nostri Domini Jesu Christi nell’arte del Duecento italiano,” Arte Medievale, 2nd ser., 6, no. 2 (1992): 137–148. 42 Péter Tóth and Dávid Falvay, “Jakab apostoltól Szent Bonaventuráig: Egy ál-apokrif a Sermones dominicales passiós beszédében” (From James the Apostle to St. Bonaventure: Pseudo-apocrypha in the passion sermon of the Sermones dominicales), Magistrae discipuli: Tanulmányok Madas Edit tiszteletére, ed. Előd Nemerkényi, A Magyar Könyvszemle és a Mokka-R Egyesület füzetei 2 (Budapest: Argumentum, 2009), 313–340 (with and English abstract on p. 340). We are preparing a longer English version of this article with a text-edition. For Michael de Massa, see Péter Tóth, “Pseudo-Apocryphal Dialogue as a Tool for the Memorization of Scholastic Wisdom: The Farewell of Christ to Mary and the Liber de vita Christi by Jacobus,” in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, 161–198.

Division and Reintegration of the Body of St. Stanislaus A Political Analogy in Sermons? Stanislava KUZMOVÁ

The legend of St. Stanislaus of Cracow tells how he was martyred by King Boleslaus II of Poland, how his body was cut to pieces, and how it was found miraculously reintegrated. The story was enriched with new details in the course of time and acquired various meanings. This study provides an overview of the motif in medieval sources, with a special focus on sermons about St. Stanislaus in manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.1 The division and reintegration of St. Stanislaus is usually known as an analogy of the renovatio regni Poloniae, although this was not its only context. Did the preachers recall it as a simile about the partition and restoration of the kingdom? What was the significance of the division and reintegration in their sermons? The miracle of reintegration appears for the first time in the Chronica Polonorum by Master Vincent, the first hagiographer of Bishop Stanislaus at the turn of the thirteenth century. The legend of Stanislaus’ sanctity was quite modest then: it consisted of his martyrdom in 1079 and the miraculous reintegration of his body. Master Vincent related that after the bishop’s death, his body was cut to pieces and the remains were shining and four eagles guarded them against the beasts during the night. When pious men wanted to collect the pieces on the other day, they found the body incorrupt and restored without any wound (“corpus integerrimum, etiam sine cicatricum notamine reperiunt”). Then the body of St. Stanislaus was buried, and light was radiating from his sepulcher until his trans1

An overview of 80 medieval sermons on St. Stanislaus in 86 different manuscript codices is to be found in my recently defended PhD dissertation: “Preaching Saint Stanislaus: Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Cracow and Their Role in the Construction of His Image and Cult,” Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, Budapest, supervised by Gábor Klaniczay. Full bibliographic references to the issues discussed in the present article are given in the dissertation. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine.

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lation.2 Historians have often discussed the origin and the authenticity of Master Vincent’s account, and its relation with the first extant record of the conflict between the bishop and the king in the anonymous Gesta principum Polonorum (1110–1114), which only mentioned a truncatio membrorum.3 The events described by Master Vincent became constant motifs in later hagiographic works about St. Stanislaus. His thirteenth-century Life (Vita maior) by Vincent of Kielcza4 and his Legend (Vita minor),5 not to mention other minor sources, describe the scene following Master Vincent, and sometimes adding new details as well. Jan Długosz (1415–1480) summarized the tradition about St. Stanislaus, including these events, in considerable length, pathos and detail in his Vita sanctissimi Stanislai and in the Annals with the help of earlier sources.6 The narrative in the Vita maior set the tone for iconographic and liturgical works, and served as the main re2

Magister Vincentius, Chronica Polonorum, ed. Marian Plezia, MPH, n.s., 11 (Cracow: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, 1994), 57–58 (ch. 20). For a recent analysis and further bibliography, see Agnieszka Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae: The Cult of Saint Stanislaus and the Patronage of Polish Kings 1200–1455 (Cracow: Unum, 2008), 52–54. 3 Gesta Principum Polonorum: The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, transl. Paul W. Knoll and Frank Schaer (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2003), 96–99 (reprint of the edition with English translation). For the interpretation of the act of dismemberment and the relationship of the two accounts, see Marian Plezia, Dookoła sprawy świętego Stanisława: Studium źródłoznawcze (On the affair of St. Stanislaus: A study of the sources) (Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Homini, 1999), 92–97, 126, 184–185; Gerard Labuda, Święty Stanisław: Biskup krakowski, patron polski; Śladami zabójstwa—męczeństwa—kanonizacji (Saint Stanislaus: Bishop of Cracow, patron of Poland; Murder—martyrdom—canonization) (Poznań: Instytut historii Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza, 2000), 146–165; Maria Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu: Relikwie w kulturze religijnej na ziemiach polskich w średniowieczu (The life of saints after life: Relics in the religious culture of Polish Lands in the Middle Ages) (Warsaw: DiG, 2008), 479–480. 4 Vita sancti Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis (Vita maior), ed. Wojciech Kętrzyński, MPH 4 (Lviv: Nakładem Akademii Umiejętności w Krakowie, 1884), 319–438 (hereafter: Vita maior), in chs. 19–20 and 25, pp. 387–391. 5 Vita sancti Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis (Vita minor), ed. Wojciech Kętrzyński, MPH 4, 238–285 (hereafter: Vita minor), ch. 32, p. 281. 6 Joannes Dlugossius, Vita sanctissimi Stanislai episcopi Cracoviensis, in Joannis Dlugossii Opera omnia, vol. 1, ed. Ignacy Polkowski and Żegota Pauli (Cracow: Typographia Ephemeridum “Czas” F. Kluczycki, 1887), chs. 10–13, pp. 62–92; Joannis Dlugossii, Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae 3–4, ed. Danuta Turkowska et al. (Warsaw: PWN, 1969), bk. 3, pp. 135–144 (hereafter: Annales). In around 1483, an Observant Franciscan, Master Stanislaus, reworked Długosz’s Vita and compiled a life of Saint Stanislaus (“vita et sermo”) in 12 chapters and in a structure similar to sermons; Cracow, Biblioteka Jagiellońska (hereafter: BJ), MS. 4915, esp. f. 359r–v, chs. 6–8).

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source for this motif. It was not a prominent theme, but liturgical prayers of the mass formulary for the feasts of St. Stanislaus (a collect and a postcommunion)7 and numerous sequences8 recounted the scene of reintegration, and the events were also summarized in the breviaries—in some variants of the lections9 as well as in a few passages of the rhymed office attributed to Vincent of Kielcza.10 The miraculous restoration of the body of St. Stanislaus was a popular motif in his early iconography, for instance, on pilgrim badges issued in Cracow, on the occasion of the festivities in 1254, to commemorate the canonization celebrated in the previous year or on the tympanum of the Church of St. Stanislaus at Stary Zamek dated to the 1260s.11 Depictions of the scenes of division and reintegration appeared in later periods as well, for example on a fourteenth-century fresco in the Lower Basilica in Assisi,12 or in the Hungarian Angevin Legendary.13 The factual historical circumstances of the bishop’s death were intertwined with a hagiographical topos based on common medieval beliefs. The supernatural events marked the martyr’s transition from temporal life 7

Jerzy Józef Kopeć, “Św. Stanisław, biskup krakowski, Pater Patriae, w tekstach liturgii średniowiecznej” (St. Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow, Pater Patriae, in medieval liturgical texts), in Św. Stanisław w życiu kościoła w Polsce. 750-lecie kanonizacji, ed. Stanisław C. Napiórkowski (Cracow: Skałka, 2003), 192; Wacław Schenk, Kult liturgiczny św. Stanisława biskupa na Śląsku w świetle średniowiecznych rękopisów liturgicznych (The liturgical cult of Saint Stanislaus in Silesia in the light of medieval liturgical manuscripts) (Lublin: Nakładem Towarzystwa naukowego Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1959), 67 and n. 116; Stanisław Dziwisz, Kult św. Stanisława biskupa w Krakowie do Soboru Trydenckiego (The cult of St. Stanislaus in Cracow until the Council of Trent) (Cracow: Papieski Wydział Teologiczny w Krakowie, 1979), 43n97, 47n109. 8 Cantica medii aevi Polono-Latina, vol. 1: Sequentiae, ed. Henryk Kowalewicz (Warsaw: PWN, 1964), nos. 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 39, 41, 43, 78, 85. 9 Not in all variants of the set of breviary lessons for both feasts from Cracow chapter manuscripts, based on Vita maior; see Dziwisz, Kult św. Stanisława, 163–164, 166, 172. 10 Stanzas no. 4 and 5 of the hymn Gaude Mater Polonia (Dziwisz, Kult św. Stanisława, 74); third nocturn: 7th and 8th responsory; lauds: antiphons 3 and 5 (Dziwisz, Kult św. Stanisława, 85–88; Schenk, Kult liturgiczny, 96–98). 11 See Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae, 87–95 (for the pilgrim badges), 95–103 (for the tympanum), with a bibliography of previous studies. 12 M. Kochanowska-Reiche, “Ikonografia kanonizacyjna sw. Stanisława biskupa” (The Canonization Iconography of St. Stanislaus the Bishop), Biuletyn Historii Sztuki i Kultury 49, nos. 1–2 (1987): 78–83. 13 Scenes no. 4 and 5. For the legendary, see, most recently, Béla Zsolt Szakács, A Magyar Anjou Legendárium képi rendszerei (The pictorial systems of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary) (Budapest: Balassi, 2006), esp. 98–99.

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to heavenly glory.14 In Christian tradition the saints were rewarded by God with virtus—a supernatural power—which reflected the state of their soul and manifested itself through their bodies (or relics) by physiological signs, such as incorruptibility or luminous phenomena.15 The incorrupt bodies of saints prefigured the resurrected bodies at the end of times, and the reassemblage and reintegration symbolized the bodily renewal in resurrection. Incorruptibility was a frequent topos in hagiography. Its special case, the reintegration of several or multiple body parts, however, was rather exceptional (unlike the reassemblage of specific body parts of martyrs).16 The “whole” (integrum) did not necessarily mean reintegrated but was often a synonym of “incorrupt.”17 Still, Master Vincent’s integerrimum was, in later sources at least, undoubtedly understood as rejoined. There are merely few examples of this motif: St. Herculan, Bishop of Perugia, in the Dialogues of Pope Gregory, St. Leodegar, Bishop of Autun, in the seventh-century Passio Leudegarii18 or, on a smaller scale, the rejoining of an ear or finger of St. Wenceslas,19 and—at almost the same period as for St. Stanislaus, perhaps a bit later—in the hagiographic dossier of St. Adalbert in the legend Tempore illo.20

14

For an anthropological interpretation of the events as a rite de passage, see Tomasz Węclawowicz, “Transitus sancti Stanislai,” in Magistro et Amico: Amici discipulique Lechowi Kalinowskiemu w osiemdziesięciolecie urodzin (Cracow: Wydawnictwo UJ, 2002), 73–86. 15 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 425, 427ff; Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 86–105. For the topos of luminous phenomena and birds above the saint’s body, see Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu, 443–452, 460–465. 16 Arnold Angenendt, “Corpus incorruptum: Eine Leitidee der mittelalterlichen Reliquienverehrung,” Saeculum 42 (1991): 320–348; Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 210ff and passim. Starnawska (Świętych życie po życiu, 480n184) reminded that the bodies of saints were easily claimed to be incorrupta. 17 Angenendt, Corpus incorruptum, 320–321. 18 Ibid., 323, 331, 336; according to Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu, 473n158, the case of St. Herculan is doubtful, he was probably obtruncatus only. 19 Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu, 473–474. Wenceslas was probably not a model for Polish legends. An analogy with the legend of Stanislaus is mentioned by Plezia, Dookoła sprawy, 127. 20 De sancto Adalberto, in MPH 4, ed. W. Kętrzyński, 219–221. For the dating and relative chronology of the accounts, see Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu, 473–481, esp. 479–480.


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A Special Meaning: Political Simile Later hagiographic works, annals, chronicles, and also sermons and legends in sermon collections brought in some new motifs and versions of the miracle of reintegration, among them a political simile. Master Vincent Kadłubek closed his didactic narrative about King Boleslaus II with the lesson that the evil is always punished. Not only was the murderer punished for his bad morals and deeds by his quick death in exile, but so was, by extension, tota Boleslai domus as well—his son Mieszko died at a young age.21 Vincent of Kielcza paraphrased the words of Master Vincent’s Chronicle, and enriched the idea of retribution with that of disintegration: “like he [Boleslaus] cut the body of the martyr into many pieces and dispersed them into the wind, the Lord divided his [Boleslaus’] kingdom and permitted many princes to rule there, and gave that kingdom, which was divided in itself, to devastation.”22 However, the author of the Vita maior anticipated a change for the better in the well-known simile about the reunification of the Polish Kingdom: But in the same way as the Divine Power has reintegrated the body of the most blessed prelate and martyr without any visible wound and has declared his sanctity with signs and wonders, so it will come about that He restores the divided kingdom into its former state thanks to his [the saint’s] merits, reinforces it with justice and judgment, and crowns it with glory and honor.23

To this Vincent of Kielcza added a version of the Pope’s legendary refusal to grant a crown to the Poles, to Mieszko I, because they did not live as Christians should. The Pope was allegedly urged to do so in a dream, by an angel who proposed to give it to the Hungarians instead, but he promised to the Poles that they would gain it once, three or four generations later when their sins would have been vindicated.24 Several thirteenth-century sources 21

“Sic tota Boleslai domus sancto poenas Stanislao exsolvit: quia sicut nullum bonum irremuneratum, sic nullum malum impunitum.” Magister Vincentius, Chronica, 59; cf. Vita maior, 390–391 (ch. 25: “De morte et eventu regis Boleslai”). For the development of the tradition about King Boleslaus, who either died in sin or repented in a monastery, what is not our focus here, see esp. Jacek Banaszkiewicz, “Czarna i biała legenda Bolesława Śmiałego” (Black and White Legend of Boleslaus the Bold), Kwartalnik Historyczny 88, no. 2 (1981): 353–390. 22 Vita maior, 391 (ch. 26: “De amissione corone Polonie”). 23 Ibid., 391 (ch. 27: “De restauracione regni Polonie”). 24 Ibid., 392–393.

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expressed their disapproval of the unfavorable status quo in the Polish lands, tried to explain its causes, and put forward some ideas about the restoration of the kingdom; one of them was the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, which could be the source of the story about the abnegation of the crown and the description of the bad situation of the country for Vincent of Kielcza, although the chronicle did not speak about Boleslaus II in this connection.25 Vincent of Kielcza also recorded that the coronation insignia were kept in Cracow Cathedral, waiting for their new owner (another Aaron).26 The Vita maior developed a whole political program around the parallel fates of St. Stanislaus, the Piast dynasty, and the Kingdom of Poland. The Vita minor, designed as a preaching aid, omitted the simile together with the Vita maior’s long historical excursus. It was not recalled in the liturgical hymns and sequences either.27 The concept of restoration was repeated in the Vita Tradunt, a redaction of the Vita maior from the first half of the fourteenth century, with some small differences,28 and was reiterated by Długosz.29 The Chronicle of Greater Poland too recorded the prophecy about the reintegration of the Polish Kingdom, which “was revealed to 25

Chronica Hungaro-Polonica, pars I, ed. B. Karácsonyi, Acta Historica Universitatis Szegediensis 26 (1969): 28–32. See also Ryszard Grzesik, Kronika węgiersko-polska: Z dziejów polsko-węgierskich kontaktów kulturalnych w średniowieczu (The HungarianPolish Chronicle: Studies in Polish-Hungarian cultural relations in the Middle Ages) (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 1999), 98–125, 136–145. For the concept of loss and restoration of the kingdom in various sources, see, e.g., Jacek Banaszkiewicz, “Sicut corpus sancti Stanislai Deus reintegravit...,” Novum 21 (1979), 207—221, on pp. 213–218. Unfortunately I could not read the article of Piotr Węcowski—“Strata korony królewskiej po śmierci św. Stanisława w opinii pisarzy późnego średniowiecza” (The loss of the royal crown after the death of St. Stanislaus in the opinion of late medieval writers), in Christianitas Romana: Studia ofiarowane Profesorowi Romanowi Michałowskiemu, ed. Krzysztof Skwierczyński (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2009), 274–299—before the completion of the present article. 26 “[U]sque dum ille veniat, qui vocatus est a Deo tamquam Aaron, cui sunt hec reposita.” Vita maior, 392–393. 27 Maria Starnawska, “Relikwie jako fundament ideowy wspólnoty w tradycji polskich przekazów średniowiecznych (Św. św. Wojciech, Florian, Stanisław, Drzewo Krzyża Św. na Łyścu) (Relics as ideological foundations of the community in the tradition of medieval polish sources: Sts. Adalbert, Florian, Stanislaus, Holy Cross in Łysiec), in Sacrum. Obraz i funkcja w społeczeństwie średniowiecznym, ed. Aneta Pieniądz-Skrzypczak, Jerzy Pysiak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2005), 265–266. 28 Edited in Martini Galli chronicon ... denuo recensuit ... vitamque sancti Stanislai..., ed. Jan Wincenty Bandtkie (Warsaw: Collegium Scholarum Piarum, 1824), 354–355, 376– 380 (chs. 16–17, and the prophecy in ch. 32). 29 Dlugossius, Vita, 77–92 (chs. 12–13); Annales, 140–144.


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some pious men who led a holy life.”30 Historians’ opinion differ on the point whether the visual representations of the fragmentation and reintegration, such as on the pilgrim badges, were conceived as devotional only or whether they had political implications for the unification struggle.31 The legend of the reintegration of the martyr’s body is presented as an analogy of the future renovation of the Polish Kingdom, which was divided after 1138 into several principalities under the rule of various branches of the Piast dynasty and lost its former prestige and political power. The destiny of a saint’s body, the destruction, theft or other misfortune of his relics, are often described in medieval sources as bound with the fate of a community, in this case Poland.32 In addition, the body symbolized various institutions in the Middle Ages: apart from the Church, Christ’s mystical body, it was a metaphor of the community and the kingdom in political life, for example, in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury and in other works of political theory.33 In the Polish case, however, it was not the “king’s body” which was paralleled with the body politic of the Kingdom of Poland, but the body of the martyr-bishop killed by a king. And St. Stanislaus, being the guardian of the Polish crown, also assumed the role that was played in the neighboring countries by their holy rulers.34 It may have been the meeting of princes and prelates from all parts of the divided country in Cracow in 1254, during the commemoration of the canonization ceremony and the distribution of the saint’s relics, that inspired Vincent of Kielcza to compare the destiny of Stanis30

Kronika wielkopolska, ed. Brigyda Kürbis, MPH, s.n., 8 (Warsaw: PWN, 1970), 23. E.g., Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae, 94; Zenon Piech, “Święty Stanisław szafarzem korony Królestwa Polskiego: Ze studiów nad średniowieczną sfragistyką miasta Krakowa” (St. Stanislaus as the guardian of the crown of the Polish Kingdom: Studies on medieval sigillography of the City of Cracow), Rocznik Krakowski 57 (1991): 5–16. 32 Starnawska, “Relikwie,” 261–279; eadem, Świętych życie po życiu, 567. 33 Banaszkiewicz, Sicut corpus, 219–220; Jacques Le Goff, “Body and Ideology in the Medieval West,” in The Medieval Imagination (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 83–85; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 194ff; RożnowskaSadraei, Pater Patriae, 70–71. 34 Marcin R. Pauk, “Kult św. Stanisława na tle innych kultow politycznych Europy Środkowej w średniowieczu” (The cult of St. Stanislaus among other political cults in medieval Central Europe), in Kult św. Stanisława na Śląsku, ed. Anna Pobóg-Lenartowicz, (Opole: Wydawnictwo Wydziału Teologicznego Uniwersytetu Opolskiego, 2004), 31– 47. For the cults of dynastic saints in neighbouring countries, see Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 31

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laus’ body to the body politic of the Polish communitas terrae35—with the interests of Cracow bishops or possibly of Duke Boleslaus the Shy of Cracow or even Duke Wladislaus of Opole (1246–1281)36 in mind. The first efforts for the realization of the program appeared in the late thirteenth century, with the initiative coming from various places, including the Silesian Duke, Henry IV Probus (allegedly inspired by the Vita maior), and Przemyśl II of Greater Poland. The simile in the Vita maior connected the cult of Stanislaus with the idea of the unification of the kingdom and the restoration of its power under the hegemony of Cracovian Piasts.37 The program was realized when Wladislaus Łokietek was crowned in Cracow in 1320.38 A Political Metaphor in Sermons? The story of the reintegration of the saint’s body often appeared in sermon manuscripts (in the sermons themselves or in legends appended to them) as a brief summary of events on the basis of the saint’s vitae, occasionally with quotations from liturgical works as well, but without a political or any other interpretation. Preachers sometimes commented on the events, interpreted them, and explained their religious or non-religious significance. The events were mentioned, if only briefly, in around one third of the eighty sermon materials on St. Stanislaus that I collected. The motif rarely acquired the above-discussed political coloring in sermons. Works with literary or historiographical ambitions, like the Vita maior with its long historical excursus, the Life written by Długosz, or chronicles, con35

Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae, 72. For the celebration of 1254, see, e.g., Dlugossius, Vita, 148–149. 36 Wojciech Dominiak, “Rola kultu świętego Stanisława w polityce zjednoczeniowej książąt polskich” (The role of the cult of St. Stanislaus in the unification policy of Polish princes), in Kult św. Stanisława na Śląsku, 49–60. 37 Acknowledged in numerous works, e.g., Wojciech Mrozowicz, “Die politische Rolle des Kultes des hl. Adalbert, Stanislaus und der hl. Hedwig im Polen des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Fonctions sociales et politiques du culte des saints dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin au Moyen Âge et à l’epoque moderne: Approche comparative, ed. Marek Derwich and Michel Dmitriev (Wrocław: LAHRCOR, 1999), 111–125; František Graus, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980), 67–73; Aleksander Gieysztor, “Politische Heilige im hochmittelalterlichen Polen und Böhmen,” in Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter, ed. Jürgen Petersohn (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1994), 336–337; Wojciech Mrozowicz, “Święty Stanisław w średniowiecznym dziejopisarstwie śląskim” (Saint Stanislaus in Silesian medieval historiography), in Kult świętego Stanisława na Śląsku, 119–121. 38 Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae, 165, 220.


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tained the political simile more often than works of pastoral character, including liturgical compositions and sermons in manuscript form. Surely, preachers could bring up the analogy, which was an important connotation of this miracle for those who knew the Vita maior, in their actual sermon delivery, even when it is not found in the written text, but there are no traces documenting that they would have done so regularly. Another reason why the motif did not have political implications so often in the fifteenth century could be that it had become anachronistic, once the Kingdom was restored.39 If sermons dealt with it, they favored other, perhaps more religious, aspects of the reintegration motif. Still, sometimes preachers chose to speak about the political implications of the saint’s dismemberment, depending on the occasion and the audience. Some preachers did not recall the analogy between the saint’s body and the kingdom, but only mentioned that King Boleslaus who finished his life in exile was punished for his sin, just like his lineage and the kingdom.40 An Observant Franciscan preacher compared St. Stanislaus to Prophet Samuel in relation with King Saul (1 Kings 15:23 and 18). He had allegedly foretold the destruction of the kingdom to King Boleslaus, which did happen when he was expelled to Hungary.41 One anonymous sermon for the translation feast mentioned the simile about the reintegration of the Kingdom when speaking about the intercession of the patron saint. The preacher stated: Indeed, we anticipate the future hope that, thanks to the prayers of this martyr, our kingdom will be restored to the state in which it used to be before. For when Pope Leo heard, at the occasion of his canonization, about the reintegration of the saint’s body from the thousand parts into which it had been cut, he uttered this prophecy: In the same way the Kingdom of Poland, divided until now, awaits integrity.42 39

I was inspired by the hypothesis formulated by Piech, in a different context, about the iconography and attributes of St. Stanislaus; see Zenon Piech, “Darstellungen des heiligen Stanislaus als Schutzheiligen des Herrschers, des Staates und der Dynastie der Jagiellonen,” in Fonctions sociales et politiques du culte des saints, 130–131. 40 E.g., BJ, 1626, f. 153r; Biblioteka Kórnicka PAN (hereafter: Kórnik), MS. 1122 edited in Jerzy Zathey, “Nowe źródło do dziejów legendy o Bolesławie Śmiałym (Z rękopisu Biblioteki Kórnickiej 1122)” (A new source of the legend of Boleslaus the Bold from Kórnik Library Manuscript 1122), Roczniki biblioteczne 5 (1961), 376; BJ, 1609, f. 186v–187r (legend, in several copies); BJ, 4915, f. 361v–362v. 41 Zathey, “Nowe źródło,” 376: “ita beatus Stanislaus regi Boleslao predixit excidium regni, quod sic evenit, quia expulsus de suo regno in Ungariam fuit, ut dicit Cronica Polonorum …” 42 Wrocław University Library (hereafter BUWr), I F 520, f. 388v: “Ymmo ad preces huius martiris futuram spem expectamus nostrum regnum restaurari, ut ante fuit. Audi-

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The author mixed up several events. He ascribed the prophecy to Pope Leo, like the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle and other sources of the legend about the refusal of the crown to the Poles around year 1000, but he connected the event with St. Stanislaus and his martyrdom in 1079. The author of this sermon wrongly dated Pope Leo’s prediction into the period of the canonization of Stanislaus, when the miracle of dismemberment and reintegration was presented to the Holy See. The martyr was canonized by Pope Innocent IV only in 1253. Thus, the preacher connected the prophecy about the crown with the legend of Stanislaus much less skillfully than Vincent of Kielcza did. Nevertheless, it is important that he saw such a connection. Another text which mentioned the political symbolism of the division and reintegration of the body of St. Stanislaus was the sermon material “De sancto Stanislao Polonorum seu Sarmatarum alumno” in a collection of materia predicabilis on saints attributed to Stanislaus of Skarbimiria (ca. 1360–1431): the so-called Passionale Stanislai de Skarbimiria cum optimis doctrinis popularibus from around 1430.43 The preacher, who clearly had some historiographical interests as well, recalled that King Boleslaus II and his posterity had lost the kingdom after he had killed Stanislaus. The punishment in the form of the kingdom’s decline lasted for 200 years, during which time the principalities and the nobility were divided and fighting among themselves, because “they did not have either a lord or a king until the king of good memory, Wladislaus, the father of Casimir, the present king,”44 who was the foretold restorer of the kingdom—at least from the retrospective standpoint of posterity. The simile about the fate of the kingdom came after a description of the scenes of cutting, scattering, and rejoining of the body, and after a discussion of the retribution for the murder and the destiny of King Boleslaus and his henchmen: “When the king had reens enim Leo papa circa canonisacionem huius sancti mirabilem corporis in mille partes secti reintegracionem, prophecio ait spiritu: Sic regnum Polonie sectum aduc expectet integritatem.” 43 Cracow, Biblioteka Czartoryskich (hereafter: BCzart), MS. 3413 III, f. 79v–87r. Roman M. Zawadzki, Spuścizna pisarska Stanisława ze Skarbimierza: Studium żródłoznawcze (Written heritage of Stanislaus of Skarbimiria: A study of the sources) (Cracow: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, 1979), 24–26. 44 Cracow, BCzart, MS. 3413 III, f. 80r: “... deiectio ... ducentis annis integris perduravit, terris et nobilibus contra se scissis et pugnantibus, diversis tyrrannicis in eo multiplicatis, non habentes dominum neque regem usque ad regem bone memorie Wladislaum patrem Kazimiri presentis et moderni scilicet Wladislai predecessoris...” Similarly, also a legend appended to another sermon, BUWr, I F 520, f. 331r: “usque ad tempora Vladislai regis dicti Loketek legimus Polonos non habuisse.”


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treated from the kingdom, robberies became more frequent, the kingdom [regnum – secular power] got divided in itself, the spiritual power [sacerdocium] was oppressed, and all order was ruined.”45 The author said again that the partition and destruction had lasted for 200 years before the Lord had restored the unity of the kingdom as he had done to the body of his saint. The preacher maintained that the order had been restored due to the merits of St. Stanislaus. Other Meanings in Sermons46 The story of division and reintegration acquired more frequently connotations other than political in preachers’ manuscripts. Numerous sermons presented the bodily reintegration as the manifestation of sanctity provided by God, like the most widespread model sermon on St. Stanislaus on the thema Talis decebat ut esset nobis pontifex (Heb. 7:26) by the Dominican Peregrinus of Opole (ca. 1260–1333).47 The integrity of the saint’s body was often understood as a sign of his holy life, more precisely, of his moral integrity and chastity.48 A preacher who was inspired by Peregrinus contrasted the dismemberment of Stanislaus’ dead body to those who share their bodies with many prostitutes.49 The division of the martyr’s body did not last long because it did not correspond to the state of his soul. Wholeness was good, fragmentation was sinful and evil.50 A 45

Cracow, BCzart, MS. 3413 III, f. 81r: “Recedente igitur rege de regno, latrocinia committuntur, regnum in seipsum dividitur ‘rosztargalo,’ sacerdocium conculcatur, et omnis ordo confuditur.” 46 This topic is discussed at much greater length in my dissertation; here I only mention a few examples. 47 In festo sancti Stanislai episcopi et martyris, in Peregrini de Opole, Sermones de tempore et de sanctis, ed. Ryszard Tatarzyński (Warsaw: Institutum Thomisticum PP. Dominicanorum, 1997), 588, lines 73–84. See also my article “Recepcja kazania Peregryna z Opola o św. Stanisławie w kazaniach autorów późnego średniowiecza” (The reception of the sermon on St. Stanislaus by Peregrinus of Opole in sermons of late medieval authors), in Mendykanci w średniowiecznym Krakowie. Zbior studiów, ed. Krzysztof Ożóg, Tomasz Gałuszka, and Anna Zajchowska (Cracow: Esprit, 2008), 425–458. 48 E.g., Cracow PAN/PAU Library, MS. 1707, f. 263r (Vidi alterum angelum Apoc. 6:2); BUWr, I F 520, f. 327v; Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek, C 383, f. 126r (Vidi alterum angelum). 49 BJ, 1635, f. 94r: “Sanctum enim ostendit Deus corpus eius sectum potenter reintegrando. Dignus [!] enim fuit, quod ille, qui divisum cor non habuit, quod nec corpus divisum haberet. Multi sunt divisi corde, Osee X, [2]: ‘Divisum est cor eius’ et plures divise corpore, qui corpus multis meretricibus diviserunt.” 50 Bynum, Resurrection, 118ff, 305ff.

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sermon on the translation of Stanislaus in a de sanctis collection attributed to Jan of Słupca (1408–1488), a cathedral preacher in Cracow affiliated with the university, maintained that the miracle of reintegration represented the bishop’s firm belief, and the unity and integrity of the Catholic faith.51 The story was a prefiguration of bodily resurrection which would be granted to all, even if their bodies were mutilated in such a cruel way, which some preachers described in detail, presenting Stanislaus increasingly as another vir dolorum, the follower of Christ’s suffering, tortured in the whole body.52 One of the preachers reminded his audience that “if a hair of your head shall not perish, much less would a limb, as it was clearly shown in that holy martyr,” paraphrasing Luke 21:18.53 The rejoined body resembled the resurrected body by, for instance, preserving no wound except for a scar on the neck as a sign of the martyr’s merit,54 or by having four dotes (dowries, qualities) of the resurrected body.55 A new motif, a metonymic miracle about the saint’s finger thrown into a water pool, swallowed by a fish and found incorrupt, was seen as a proof of the efficacity of partial relics, and had Eucharistic connotations.56

51

BJ, Acc. 67/54, f. 149r–v: “Per hoc designabatur, quantum fidei catholice dilexerit unitatem et integritatem pater noster et patronus.” 52 E.g., a sermon by Nicolaus of Kozłow in BJ, 1614, f. 79v (Ego sum pastor bonus, John 10:11) ; a sermon by Stanislaus of Skarbimiria in BJ, 190, f. 315r–317r (Statuit ei Dominus testamentum pacis, Eccles. 45:30). 53 BUWr I F 650, f. 133v: “Si ergo capillus de capite sanctorum non periit, multo minus aliquid membrum, sicut in hoc sancto martire euidenter est ostensum.” Likewise BUWr I O 123, f. 106r–107v, referring to a sermon of St. Augustine on martyrs, in PL 38, cols. 1467–1468 (Sermo 334). 54 E.g., sermons in Bratislava, Slovenský Národný Archív, Fond Kapitulná knižnica (Slovak National Archives, Fund Chapter Library) MS. 64, f. 327v; BJ, 1619, f. 313r (Scitote quoniam Dominus sanctum suum mirificavit, Ps. 4:4). Cf. Bynum, Resurrection, 254, referring to Bonaventure. 55 A sermon by Grzegorz of Mysłowice or Zawada (d. after 1460) (Probauit me quasi aurum, quod per ignem transit Job 23:10) in BJ, 1357, f. 693r. For dotes, see Bynum, Resurrection, 235ff. 56 Dlugossius, Vita, 73–74. For the motif, see Rożnowska-Sadraei, Pater Patriae, 365ff; Starnawska, Świętych życie po życiu, 93–96. For metonymy miracles and their meaning, see Bynum, Resurrection, 200–209, 319–324. For the motif in sermons—e.g., in a sermon by Nicolaus of Kozłow from the Council of Basel in BJ, 1614, f. 79v–80r, or in an anonymous one in BUWr, I F 520, f. 328v—see my dissertation for details.


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Conclusion The narrative about the division and reintegration of the body of St. Stanislaus was not the main topic of medieval sermons on him; in a number of them it appeared only in passing, as a distinctio. While in the early period of the saint’s cult the martyrdom and the reintegration miracle were the only elements of his legend, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries preachers had a wide repertory of hagiographical motifs—the saint’s virtuous life and many miracles accomplished through him—to choose from. Martyrdom as a form of sainthood, encapsulated in the story of the cutting and rejoining of the bishop’s body, was increasingly giving way to other facets of Stanislaus’ sanctity. Although the story of division and reintegration is known in historiography as an analogy of the partition and restoration of the Polish Kingdom, no more than three sermons mentioned it in this connection. More frequently preachers emphasized other meanings of the story, such as the manifestation of the saint’s virtues, especially his chastity and integrity of life, the cruel mutilation of another vir dolorum, the power of the saint’s relics and the prefiguration of resurrection. Stanislaus, although cut into pieces by his adversary and seemingly defeated and perished in the world, by God’s intervention reintegrates, becomes whole again and overcomes his adversary as he defeats death.

Saints, Names, and Identities The Case of Charles IV of Luxemburg Balázs NAGY

Charles IV of Luxemburg1 at his birth inherited from his ancestors a very heterogeneous complex of different influences and in his youth he was confronted with diverse historical traditions and experiences. Among these, his ancestry was the determining factor. His father, John of Luxemburg, ascended the throne of Bohemia in 1310 only six years before the birth of his son and even then he had to confront with rival challenges. Wenceslas III (1289–1306), the last ruler of Bohemia from the Přemyslid dynasty, died in 1306. He did not have any offspring, thus the husbands of his two sisters had a claim to the throne of Bohemia. The older sister, Anne of Přemysl, married Henry of Carinthia, who thereby acquired a right to the crown of St. Wenceslas. The younger sister, Elizabeth, married John of Luxemburg in 1310. As a consequence of these marriages there were two resolute pretenders to the Kingdom of Bohemia. Neither of them had a stronger dynastical legitimacy than the other, but John of Luxemburg had one significant advantage. His father was Henry VII, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, he had another relative who could give him important support in his efforts to become king of Bohemia. Balduin of Luxemburg was the younger brother of Emperor Henry and at that time the archbishop of Trier and simultaneously a prince1

For more references, see the earlier works of the author on Charles IV: “Memories of the Self: The ‘Autobiography’ of Charles IV in Search of Medieval Memories,” in Culture of Memory in East Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages (1000–1600), ed. Rafał Wojcik (Poznań: Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, 2008), 161–166; “Eltérő hagyományrendszerek együttélése: Luxemburgi IV. Károly és a dinasztikus uralom legitimációs lehetőségei” (Cohabitation of differing systems of tradition: Charles IV of Luxemburg and the possibilities of legitimizing dynastic power), in Hatalom, legitimáció, ideológia, ed. Éva Gedő and Emőke Horváth (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2007), 111–119; “Luxemburgi IV. Károly neveltetése,” (Education of Charles IV of Luxemburg), in „az élet tanítómestere:” Ünnepi tanulmányok Gyapay Gábor 80. születésnapjára, ed. Balázs Nagy, Zsuzsanna Szálka, and Katalin Szende (Budapest: Fazekas Öregdiákok Társasága, 2004), 93–100.

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elector to the Holy Roman Emperor. Thus through his marriage with Elizabeth of Přemysl, John of Luxemburg acquired influential supporters in his efforts to be crowned as king of Bohemia. These allies could help him in his aspirations to the throne of Bohemia, but after his coronation he had to defend his position against Henry of Carinthia and consolidate his power. His first children were born in the next years, first two daughters, Margaret (1313) and Jutta / Guta (1315), and then in 1316 his eldest son. This son was baptized Wenceslas, but later become known as Charles. He was to become the future king of Bohemia and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.2 The choice of the name Wenceslas has interesting historical references. John of Luxemburg gave his first-born son the name of the patron saint of Bohemia, Saint Wenceslas, who died in 929/935. The same name was borne by the new-born baby’s maternal grandfather, Wenceslas II of Bohemia. As ruler of Bohemia, John had neither deep connections nor experience with the country. He could not speak the Czech language, and was confronted with a rival pretender. As his rule in Bohemia was contested, he preferred to stay abroad for long periods. These factors might have influenced his decision when he chose the name of his first born son, as a compensation for the missing ties to Bohemian traditions. Wenceslas was a “telling name” with multiple meanings in early fourteenth-century Bohemia. By this choice John tried to emphasize the significance of Bohemian historical traditions and to place his son and possible successor in the line and sequence of Bohemian rulers.3 The name Wenceslas was used by other members of the Luxemburg family as well, whereby its significance further increased. John of Luxemburg baptized his last son, born in 1337, with the same name. Thus a very special situation emerged when the same father had two sons alive at the same time, both of them baptized with the same name. (In practice, the older son, known as Charles, was using a different name already by that time.) Charles IV also gave the name to his first-born son in 1350. This Wenceslas died in the next year, but in 1361 when the next son of Charles was born he was also named Wenceslas. This Wenceslas became later the 2

Generally, see Reinhard Schneider, “Karolus, qui et Wenceslaus,” in Festschrift für Helmut Beumann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Kurt-Ulrich Jäschke and Reinhard Wenskus (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1977), 365–387. 3 On John of Luxemburg, see King John of Luxemburg (1296–1346) and the Art of his Era, ed. Klára Benešovská (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 1998).

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successor of Charles IV on the German and Bohemian thrones. Thus between 1316 and 1361 the name Wenceslas was used four times in two generations. This very much suggests that the members of the Luxemburg dynasty, who lacked local roots in Bohemia, endeavored to strengthen their legitimacy by using this historical Czech name. A very special historical source has survived, namely the autobiography of Charles IV, which reflects the first thirty years of Charles’ life from his birth until his accession to the throne.4 This text, divided into twenty chapters, is an at least partly authentic account of the course of his life during these years. The text is a heterogeneous narrative. Five chapters are very different from the rest of the text. Chapters 1–2 and 11–13 are not autobiographical, but contain sermon-like meditations or reflections connected to Biblical verses. The other fifteen chapters vary in length and were apparently not written at the same time. These chapters reflect the events of Charles’ life from his birth until his election as king of the Romans (i.e., 1316–1346).5 4

For the critical edition of the autobiography, see Karoli IV Imp. Rom. Vita ab eo ipso conscripta, ed. Kurt Pfisterer and Walther Bulst, Heidelberger Ausgaben zur Geistesund Kulturgeschichte des Abendlandes 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1950); LatinGerman bi-lingual edition: Vita Caroli Quarti—Die Autobiographie Karls IV, ed. Eugen Hillenbrand (Stuttgart: Fleischhauer & Spohn, 1979); Latin-English bi-lingual edition: Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita ab eo Ipso Conscripta et Hystoria Nova de Sancto Wenceslao Martyre— Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and his Legend of St. Wenceslas, ed. Balázs Nagy and Frank Schaer, CEMT 2 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001). 5 On the autobiography of Charles IV in the recent literature, see Hans-Joachim Behr, “Herrschaftsverständnis im Spiegel der Literatur: Die ‘Vita Caroli Quarti’,” in Literatur im Umkreis des Prager Hofs der Luxemburger: Schweinfurter Kolloquium, 1992, ed. Joachim Heinzle, L. Peter Johnson, and Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Wolfram Studien 13 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1994), 81–91; Wolfgang Eggert, “...einen Sohn namens Wenceslaus: Beobachtungen zur Selbsbiographie Karls IV,” in Karl IV.: Politik und Ideologie im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Evamaria Engel (Weimar: Böhlau, 1982), 171–178; Sigelinde Hartmann, “Die ‘Autobiographie’ Karls IV.: ‘Politische Rechtfertigungsschrift’ oder ‘Heiligenvita’?” in Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft 4 (1986–1987): 67–79; Eugen Hillenbrand, “Die Autobiographie Karls IV.: Entstehung und Funktion,” in Kaiser Karl IV. 1316–1378: Forschungen über Kaiser und Reich, ed. Hans Patze (Neustadt/Aisch: Schmidt, 1978), 39–72; Walther Lammers, “Unwahres oder Verfälschtes in der Autobiographie Karls IV.?” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16–19. September 1986, 6 vols., Schriften der MGH 33 (Hanover: Hahn, 1988–1990), 1:339–376; Fidel Rädle, “Karl IV. als lateinischer Autor,” in Kaiser Karl IV: Staatsmann und Mäzen, ed. Ferdinand Seibt (Munich: Prestel, 1978), 253–260.

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The life of Charles was eventful already in his youth.6 He was barely seven years old when he left Bohemia and travelled to France. We can assume that this accorded with the wishes and intentions of his father. Thereafter his education was directed by his aunt, Mary of Luxemburg, who as wife of Charles IV the Fair was queen of France. So Charles spent a good part of his youth in the French royal court, an environment which he reflects in his autobiography in an idealized form.7 It was here that the young prince from Bohemia—until then still called Wenceslas—was given a new name by the king of France. At his confirmation he set aside his former name and from that time he used the name Charles. This was not a unique event, but certainly an unusual one. Most name changes in the Middle Ages were not connected to the rite of confirmation. The adoption of a new name was usual in the case of papal elections from the sixth century. Pope John II (533–535) was the first who took a new name after his election since previously he had had a pagan name, Mercurius. After the turn of the tenth-eleventh centuries almost all the popes adopted a new name after their election. Most of the other examples of name-changes in the Middle Ages refer to cases when somebody adopted a new name after conversion to Christianity, or on entering a monastic community. We have parallels for a name change after confirmation also. One well-known example is also connected to medieval Bohemia. Vojtěch (956?–997) from the Slavník family adopted the name Adalbert after his confirmation by Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg. In this case the connection of the new name is evident. Vojtěch, who was born into a ducal family of Bohemia, studied in Magdeburg and was confirmed by the prelate of that town. The circumstances were more complex in the case of Charles. As he wrote in his autobiography: “The king of the French had me confirmed by his bishop and bestowed upon me his own name, that is, Charles.”8 According to this account the name Charles was given to him at his confirmation by his patron, Charles IV, king of France. One might assume that this change reflects a fading of his Czech traditions and ancestry, since as 6

Jaroslaw Mezník, “Berichte der französischen königlichen Rechnungen über den Aufenthalt des jungen Karl IV. in Frankreich,” Mediaevalia Bohemica 1 (1969): 291–295. 7 “Rex autem predictus non erat avarus pecunie et utebatur bono consilio, et curia ipsius resplendebat senum principum tam spiritualium quam secularium congregacione.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 24–25. 8 “… fecitque me dictus rex Francorum per pontificem confirmari et imposuit michi nomen suum equivocum videlicet Karolus.” Ibid., 22–23. Cf. Mezník, “Berichte der französischen königlichen Rechnungen;” Emil Werunsky, Geschichte Kaiser Karls IV und seiner Zeit, 2 vols. (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1892) 1:11n4.


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a member of the Luxemburg family originating in the county of Luxemburg he accepted a name frequently used in Western Europe. In weighing the background and connotations of the name Charles, the reference to Charlemagne cannot be overlooked. It is obvious in the case of a young prince whose grandfather, Henry VII, was an emperor and who later himself had strong and clear ambitions to become an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It is even more telling if we take into account the special cult of Charlemagne supported by Charles IV after his accession to the throne.9 Charles stayed away from Bohemia for ten years. When he returned to Prague he was already 17 years old. For him this was a period of new challenges and confrontations. Among his first tasks was to re-learn the Czech language. As he reports in his autobiography: “In addition we had completely forgotten the Czech language, which we have since relearned so that we speak it and understand it like any other Bohemian. By divine grace therefore we know how to speak, write, and read not only Czech, but French, Italian, German, and Latin so that we are able to write, read, speak, and understand any one of these languages as well as another.”10 His ability to speak several languages clearly belonged to his identity, which was reflected also by the Golden Bull of 1356, composed by him to regulate the election of the future emperors and their education. In this he required that princes between the ages of 7 and 14 receive instruction in the languages most necessary to the Empire, namely Latin, Italian, and Slavic.11 9

Franz Machilek, “Karl IV. und Karl der Große,” Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 104–105 (2002–2003): 113–146. 10 “Idioma quoque Boemicum ex toto oblivioni tradideramus; quod post redidicimus, ita ut loqueremur et intelligeremus ut alter Boemus. Ex divina autem gracia non solum Boemicum, sed Gallicum, Lombardicum,Teutunicum et Latinum ita loqui, scribere et legere scivimus, ut una lingua istarum sicut altera ad scribendum, legendum, loquendum, et intelligendum nobis erat apta.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 68–69. 11 Cf. ch. 31 of Charles’s Golden Bull: “...quod electores principes, ipsius imperii columpne et latera, diversorum ydiomatum et linguarum differenciis instruantur, ut plures intelligant et intelligantur a pluribus, qui plurimorum necessitatibus relevandis cesaree sublimitati assistunt in partem sollicitudinis constituti. Quapropter statuimus, ut illustrium principum ... filii vel heredes et successores, cum verisimiliter Theutonicum ydioma sibi naturaliter inditum scire presumantur et ab infancia didicisse, incipiendo a septimo etatis sue anno in gramatica, Italica ac Slavica lingwis instruantur, ita quod infra quartum decimum etatis annum existant in talibus iuxta datam sibi a deo graciam eruditi. Cum illud non solum utile, ymmo ex causis premissis summe necessarium habeatur, eo

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Another aspect of the autobiography brings the reader closer to Charles’ cult of the saints. As is usual in medieval texts the author used the feasts of saints for dating various events he describes. The first perplexing characteristic of the autobiography from this aspect is that very few saints were mentioned by Charles—altogether only five besides the Holy Virgin. Charles’ personal veneration of Mary is clearly reflected in the autobiography. In Chapter 3 the author mentions that as soon as he learned the alphabet he started to read the book of hours of the Holy Virgin.12 In the same chapter he refers also to the day of the Purification of the Virgin (Candlemas, February 2),13 when the French king, Charles IV, died in 1328.14 One other feast of the Virgin Mary marks a significant event in the personal formation of Charles. On the day of Assumption of the Holy Virgin (August 15) in 1333 Charles had a vision during an overnight stay in a tiny village, Terenzo, which lay between Lucca and Parma in Italy.15 In his vision an angel of the Lord appeared to him and took him in the air with him above a siege of a castle, where it happened that a relative of Charles was castrated by an angel armed with a fiery sword “because of the sin of debauchery,” as the angel told Charles in the dream.16 The angel explained to Charles that it was the dauphin of Vienne who had been thus struck down, and he warned Charles and his father to avoid the same sins as the dauphin. It turned out in the next days that Guigo VIII of Vienne had been killed in a quod ille lingue ut plurimum ad usum et necessitatem sacri Romani imperii frequentari sint solite et in hiis plus ardua ipsius imperii negocia ventillentur.” Die goldene Bulle Kaiser Karls IV. vom Jahre 1356, ed. Wolfgang D. Fritz, MGH Fontes iuris 11 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1972), 90. 12 “Et ex hoc didici legere horas beate Marie virginis gloriose, et eas aliquantulum intelligens cottidie temporibus mee puericie libencius legi, quia preceptum erat custodibus meis regis ex parte, ut me ad hoc instigarent.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 24. 13 “Eodem quoque anno in purificacione beate Marie obiit Karolus, Francorum rex, relicta uxore pregnante, que peperit filiam.” Ibid., 26. 14 Charles IV the Fair died on February 1, 1328. 15 Otakar Odložilik, “The Terenzo Dream of Charles IV: Critical Examination of the Available Sources,” in Orbis Mediaevalis: Festgabe für Anton Blaschka zum 75. Geburtstag am 7. Oktober 1967, ed. Horst Gericke, Manfred Lemmer, and Walter Zöllner (Weimar: Böhlau, 1970), 163–173; Balázs Nagy “A terenzói látomás” (The vision of Terenzo), in A középkor szeretete: Történeti tanulmányok Sz. Jónás Ilona tiszteletére, ed. Gábor Klaniczay and Balázs Nagy (Budapest: ELTE BTK Közép- és Koraújkori Egyetemes Történeti Tanszék, 1999), 131–139. 16 “[P]ropter peccatum luxurie.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 60.


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siege a couple of days before Charles had the vision. The vision left a very deep impression on Charles. In his autobiography describing his deeds in the year 1340 Charles returned to his adventures seven years before.17 While in Avignon visiting Pope Benedict XII he “confessed to the pope the vision described above which had taken place while we were in Italy—the one about the dauphin of Vienne.”18 Shortly thereafter in the same year he recalled his memories of the same vision: “While I was spending a whole day going through the valley called Gerlos, I thought about the miracle or the vision which had come to me on the day of the Holy Virgin, the Assumption of Mary, when I was in Terenzo in the diocese of Parma. From that day on, I resolved in her honor to institute daily hymns of supplication to the Glorious Virgin in the church of Prague, so that every day a new legend about the deeds and miracles of her life should be read. Afterwards, this was done, as will be described below.”19 The importance of the cult of the Virgin Mary for Charles was highlighted in different fields of his activity.20 Besides paying tribute to her in his autobiography, Charles’ veneration of her was also reflected in his ecclesiastical foundations.21 In addition to the Holy Virgin five other saints were mentioned in the autobiography. The feasts of Saint George the Martyr and Saint Michael are mentioned simply en passant for the dating of particular events.22 17

Barbara Brauer, “The Prague Hours and Bohemian Manuscript Painting of the Late 14th Century,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 52, no. 4 (1989): 499–521. 18 “Et ibi nobis existentibus confessi fuimus eidem pape de visione nobis facta de Delphino Vyenensi, cum fueramus in Ytalia, que superius memoratur.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 142. 19 “Et cum tota die transirem per vallem que dicitur Gerlos, recordatus sum de miraculo, seu visione, quod in die beate virginis, in assumpcione sancte Marie, in Tharunso Parmensis diocesis michi contigerat. Et ab eodem tempore concepi ad eius honorem gloriose virginis horas cottidie decantandas in Pragensi ecclesia ordinare, ita ut de ipsius vite gestis et miraculis cottidie nova legenda legeretur. Quod postea factum est, prout inferius describetur.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 144. 20 David C. Mengel, “A Holy and Faithful Fellowship: Royal Saints in Fourteenth-century Prague,” in Evropa a Čechy na konci středověku: Sborník příspěvků věnovaných Františku Šmahelovi, ed. Eva Doležalová, Robert Novotný, and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Filosofia, 2004), 145–158. 21 David Charles Mengel, “Bones, Stones, and Brothels: Religion and Topography in Prague under Emperor Charles IV (1346–78)”(PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2003), passim, esp. 68. Franz Machilek, “Privatfrömmigkeit und Staatsfrömmigkeit,” in Kaiser Karl IV.: Staatsman und Mäzen, 87–101. 22 “In crastino beati Georgii martiris fugavit pater noster Ottonem, ducem Austrie, ultra Danubium et acquisivit multa castra in Austria.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Im-

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Since the cults of both were widely known throughout the Christian world, their use in dating was obvious. Both saints are mentioned just once in the autobiography.23 The situation is somewhat different in the case of St. Catherine of Alexandria.24 She is mentioned several times in different parts of the autobiography. Charles’ first real military enterprise was the siege of the fortress of San Felice in Italy. He arrived at the battlefield on November 25, 1332, and soon thereafter he realized that his troops were nearly overcome by the coalition force of his enemies: “From both sides almost all the war-horses were killed, along with a number of other horses, and we were nearly defeated. Even the war-horse on which we were seated was killed. When we regained our feet with help from our retainers and looked around, we recognized that we were almost overcome and we felt close to despair. But lo, in that same hour, our enemies began to flee, taking their standards with them, first the Mantuans, after whom many others of them followed. And thus by the grace of God we obtained victory over our enemies.”25 On the day after the battle Charles received the dignity of knighthood. St. Catherine of Alexandria was venerated as patron of knights, and after his victory on his feast Charles IV took her as his favorite saint.26 Several years later, in 1340, Charles gained a military victory against Luchino Visconti of Milan with the conquest of the castle Penede. This fortress (close to Lake Garda) was captured by Charles also on the day of Saint Catherine.27 peratoris Romanorum Vita, 84. “Post hec circa festum Michaelis tractata fuit concordia inter patrem nostrum et ducem Austrie.” Ibid., 88. 23 For Saint George, see Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437, ed. Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiři Fajt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 160–162. 24 Barbara Drake Boehm, “Charles IV: The Realm of Faith,” ibid., 23–33, esp. 26–28. 25 “Et ex utraque parte fuerunt interfecti quasi omnes dextrarii et aliqui equi, et eramus quasi devicti, et dextrarius, in quo residebamus, eciam interfectus est. Et relevati a nostris, sic stando et respiciendo quod eramus quasi superati, iamque pene in desperacione positi aspeximus. Et ecce eadem hora inimici fugere inceperunt cum vexillis eorum, et primo Mantuani, demum plures eos sunt secuti. Et sic per dei graciam victoriam obtinuimus de inimicis nostris...” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 44. 26 Machilek, “Privatfrömmigkeit,” 88. 27 “Quos congregato exercitu secrete cum episcopo Tridentino abinde fugavi, et in die beate Katherine castrum in meas manus fuit resignatum, ipsumque contuli ecclesie Tridentine.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 150.


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Also, Charles made clear his special reverence to Saint Catherine by baptizing his second daughter in her name.28 Two characteristically Bohemian saints are mentioned in the autobiography for the purpose of dating. One was St. Procopius of Sázava. Procopius (1004–1053) was abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Sázava where he introduced the use of the Slavic liturgy. He died on May 25, 1053, and was canonized on July 4, 1204. It was on his feast-day in 1337 that Charles besieged and seized the town of Belluno in Italy.29 The other saint from Bohemia who was mentioned in the text is— unsurprisingly—St. Wenceslas.30 Charles connects two events in his autobiography to the feast of St. Wenceslas (September 28). His mother, Elizabeth of Přemysl, died on that day in the year 1330.31 And on a military enterprise in Italy he won a victory on that day when he seized the castle of Mel.32 Besides this, there is the Legend of St. Wenceslas, written by Charles IV himself,33 and a good number of other indications of Charles’ special and personal veneration of the saint.34 There is no need to recapitulate all of them here, since the matter has been discussed and analyzed at length in the scholarly literature.35 28

Catherina of Luxemburg, born in 1342; see further Ellen Widder, Itinerar und Politik: Studien zur Reiseherrschaft Karls IV. südlich der Alpen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993), 40n78. Machilek, “Privatfrömmigkeit,” 88. 29 “Qui letanter apperuerunt portas, putantes amicos esse. Et ego intravi portas in die beati Procopii, quarta die mensis Julii.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 98. 30 Marie Bláhová, “Der Kult des Heiligen Wenzel in der Ideologie Karls IV,” in Fonctions sociales et politiques du culte des saints dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin au Moyen Age et à l'époque moderne: Approche comparative, ed. Marek Derwich and Michel Dmitrev, Institutum Historicum Universitatis Wratislaviensis: Opera ad historiam monasticam spectantia, ser. 1, colloquia 3 (Wrocław: Larchor, 1999), 227–236. 31 “Et illo tempore mortua est mater mea in die beati Wenceslai martiris in Praga.” Nagy and Schaer, eds., Karoli IV Imperatoris Romanorum Vita, 34. 32 “[N]octurno tempore intravi in suburbium castri fortissimi Jumellarum in vigilia beati Wenceslai martyris, et sic obsidione facta ipsum obtinui.” Ibid., 148. 33 Karoli IV imperatoris Romanorum [Hystoria nova de sancto Wenceslao martyre], ibid., 184–208. 34 On the architectural concept of the St. Wenceslas chapel in the Saint Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague, see Barbara Baumüller, Der Chor des Veitsdomes in Prag: Die Königskirche Kaiser Karls IV. (Berlin: Mann, 1994), 41–45. 35 For that, see especially Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 327–331.

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The autobiography of Charles IV offers an interesting demonstration of what Gábor Klaniczay states in his work on the dynastic cults of saints in medieval Central Europe, namely that “the cult of national and dynastic saints acquired unprecedented prominence under the Luxemburgs.”36

36

Ibid., 327.

Saints at Home and Abroad Some Observations on the Creation of Iconographic Types in Hungary in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Ernő MAROSI

The world of saints is a main subject of the history of medieval art, just like of the history of medieval religion, literature, or other branches of medieval studies. This world is populated by a number of holy persons, including the protagonists of biblical stories—like the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, or the twelve apostles—and those saints of ancient and medieval Christianity, such as the evangelists, Church fathers, martyrs, and confessors, who were venerated everywhere. But this population of representatives of the Christian heaven was far from being constant and unchanging: old cults were forgotten or were given new interpretations and the celestial army was enlarged from time to time through canonizations. Medieval society was always mirrored quite accurately by a heavenly one in liturgy and also in popular beliefs, in hagiographic literature as well as in images covering church walls and furniture, and it was embodied by cult objects. The following observations deal with the invention and diffusion of new types of images which were necessary because of the rise of new saints and because of the requirements of their identification. In principle, emerging cults were bound to definite places of worship, to the burial site of the saints and to the place where their relics were conserved. The creation of their image meant primarily the choice of a visual type indicating their position among the saints and the nature of their virtues, and identifying them by sex, age and attributes. In the late Middle Ages these were more and more individual traits of portraiture. As a simple vehicle of spreading his cult, the image of a new saint could transmit the way he was represented in the center of his veneration to other places immediately after his canonization. Nevertheless, the situation was usually not as simple as this; cults were transmitted not so much visually but through the

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mediation of hagiographical texts. Consequently, the diffusion of new iconographic types was complicated by textual interpretation. An art historical approach to late medieval iconographic types has therefore to count with these two ways of iconographic transfer. As domestic creation in iconography has become an indicator of “national” creativity since the nineteenth century, the complications originating from the dual way of transmission are also related to this problem. Our examples, taken from different images of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in addition to the nature of the iconographic transfer, also demonstrate the role of domestic (“national”) invention in iconography. There can hardly be a straightforward solution to these problems. I put forward here some observations that as an art historian I have collected over the years. As Professor Gábor Klaniczay belongs to the rare species of historians who have a sense of images and who can use them in argumentation,1 I hope that he will take pleasure in these remarks and the questions brought up from the point of view of art historians. 1. The first example is the image of St. Louis of Toulouse in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle. The starting date, 1358, of the redaction, which was based on earlier texts and left unfinished after the narration of the events of 1331, is written in red letters on the first page of the manuscript. Undoubtedly, the missing part was to recount the last years of the reign of the Angevin King, Charles I, and the first years on the throne of his son, Louis I (“the Great”). Louis, that is the commissioner of the codex, is only represented at the top of the frontispiece, whereas his queen mother, Elizabeth, is commemorated on page 140, as part of a cycle depicting the dynastic history of Hungarian Angevins and covering two facing pages—this arrangement was reserved for historical episodes of major importance. The praise of Queen Elizabeth is joined here with that of the birth of King Louis the Great. On the top of the two text columns, there are two initials, and at the bottom of the page two square vignettes are dedicated to a subject of primary political importance, the matter of his legal succession. In the first initial, Queen Elizabeth is represented with her five children, what illustrates the chapter about the second marriage of King Charles I, and it is preceded by the scene of his wedding with Eliza1

Gábor Klaniczay, Az uralkodók szentsége a középkorban: Magyar dinasztikus szentkultuszok és európai modellek (The sanctity of rulers in the middle ages: Hungarian dynastic cults and European models) (Budapest: Balassi, 2000); idem, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); see also his foregoing publications in the bibliography of the latter volume (p. 464).

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beth on page 139. Among Elizabeth’s children we see her two crowned sons, Louis I of Hungary and Andrew of Naples (a visual declaration of the Hungarian point of view in the Neapolitan quarrel over succession), another boy wearing a ducal hat (duke Stephen), and two girls. In the order of the text a short chapter follows about the foundation of a Franciscan convent dedicated to St. Louis of Toulouse in Lippa (Lipova)—illustrated by a donation scene in the first vignette and by the figure of the Angevin saint in the second initial (fig. 1)—whose cult was introduced into Hungary by this foundation. The second vignette at the bottom with the scene of the birth of Louis the Great belongs to the chapter about the corresponding event. It is striking about this page that the illuminator used iconographic patterns full of allusions: that of the Virgin with the cloak for the figure of the Queen, a solemn donation type for the foundation, and that of the Birth of the Virgin for the birth scene.

Fig. 1: St. Louis of Toulouse. Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, MS Lat. 1, p. 140

The standing figure of St. Louis seems to be based on a Neapolitan image. Its model, of course, was not the panel painted by Simone Martini for the Church of Santa Chiara in 1317, with its “monarchical rather than episcopal” character and its being “a political document” of an act that

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Fig. 2: Saint Louis of Anjou flanked by King Robert and King Sancia. Panel painting attributed to Master of Giovanni Barrile, Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence. Photo by the author


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deeply hurt the interests of the Hungarian Angevins.2 On the contrary, the image in the Illuminated Chronicle stresses the religious character of the saint. He is characterized by episcopal ornaments worn over the habit of a Franciscan friar, and his abdication of the throne (the cause of the dynastic quarrel) is only indicated by the crown set down on the earth. In this way the Chronicle accentuated his humility. In addition, by the coat-of-arms corresponding to the Hungarian Angevin usage, he was marked as belonging to this family (though the striped champ on the heraldic right of the shield is applied everywhere in the manuscript, in contrast to Neapolitan heraldry). The model used for his image in the codex initial may have been a standing friar with episcopal ornaments, similar to the figure represented between the kneeling donors, King Robert of Naples and Queen Sancia, in Aix-en-Provence, now attributed to the Master of Giovanni Barrile (fig. 2).3 The panel was perhaps made around 1335 for the Franciscan church in Marseille, which was founded by Robert and Sancia in 1326, a year later than the foundation of the convent of Lippa. The presumable Neapolitan model was quite accurately followed in the Hungarian chronicle, except, naturally, for the motif of the coronation with the bishop’s mitre assisted by flying angels. This motif goes back to the Santa Chiara-panel by Simone Martini and it was utilized similarly, as a sign of the divine origin of the king’s power, in another part of the Chronicle, in the scene of the angelic coronation of King St. Ladislas on page 92 (fig. 3). Contrary to the rather adventurous interpretations of this motif in the literature on the iconography of St. Ladislas,4 I regard it as a compositional element belonging to the illuminator’s stock of Neapolitan origin. The reduced iconography of St. Louis of Toulouse in the Hungarian Illu-

2

Julian Gardner, “Saint Louis of Toulouse, Robert of Anjou, and Simone Martini,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39 (1976): 12–33, on p. 24. 3 Federico Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266–1414 (Rome: Bozzi, 1969), 211–212; Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli angioina (Florence: Cantini, 1986), 414; idem, “La peinture à Naples de Charles Ier à Robert d’Anjou,” in L’Europe des Anjou: Aventure des princes Angevins du XIIIe au XVe siècle, exhibition catalogue, Fontevraud 2001 (Paris: Somogy, 2001), 105–121, on p. 117, and cat. no. 41, p. 297. 4 Péter Váczy, “Merseburgi Thietmar a magyar királykoronázásról” (Thietmar of Merseburg on the crowning of kings in Hungary), Történelmi Szemle 28 (1985): 628–642, on pp. 638ff; János Bak, Königtum und Stände in Ungarn im 13–16. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973), 16–17; Terézia Kerny, “Az angyali koronázás motívuma Szent István ikonográfiájában” (The motif of the angelic coronation in St. Stephen’s iconography), Ars Hungarica 31 (2003): 5–30, on pp. 6–7.

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minated Chronicle seems to be similar to his figure in the almost contemporary Viennese Book of Hours of Queen Joanna I.5

Fig. 3: The angelic coronation of St. Ladislas. Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, MS Lat 1, p. 92

This reception of the iconographic type of the saint from a source close to the court of Naples seems to have been motivated by the Neapolitan origin of the illuminator of the Chronicle as well as by the profound knowledge of Neapolitan court culture after the military expeditions of Louis the Great in the late forties. But it was limited to this single case and remained without further influence on later representations of St. Louis in Hungary. These other images of the saint—such as a fresco in the choir of the former Franciscan church in Keszthely (ca. 1400),6 a panel from a 5

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1921, fol. 223v; Bologna, I pittori, fig. 83; cf. Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese, “L’enluminure à Naples au temps des Anjou (1266–1350),” in L’Europe des Anjou, 123–133, on p. 130, and cat. no. 59, pp. 310–311 (Eva Irblich). The image is also reproduced in Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, as fig. 77; cf. ibid., 355–365. 6 Mária Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós újonnan feltárt gótikus falképei” (The recently discovered Gothic wall paintings in Keszthely and Siklós), Ars Hungarica 23 (1995): 155–167, on p. 156.


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series from Galgóc (Hlohovec, ca. 1430),7 or a painted wing of the high altar of the provostry church in Szepeshely (Spišská Kapitula, Zipser Kapitel)8—fit into the general type of bishop figures with insignia of their dignity. As a consequence of the adoption of general iconographic formulas, the identifications can only be uncertain and/or arbitrary if they are not supported by further hints (such as the prevailing Franciscan context and the attribute of the crown put on the ground in Keszthely, or the heraldic lilies covering the mantle of the Szepeshely figure).

Fig. 4: St. Ladislas. Panel painting by Simone Martini, Museo Civico di S. Maria della Consolazione, Altomonte. Photo Archives of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

2. Another case, Simone Martini’s St. Ladislas panel from the Church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Altomonte (fig. 4), also connected to Hungarian Angevin court art, raises the question of the location of icono7

Ernő Marosi, ed., Magyarországi művészet 1300–1470 körül (Art in Hungary around 1300–1470), 2 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1987), vol. 2, fig. 1746. He is identified as Saint Adalbert in Dušan Buran, ed., Dejiny Slovenského výtvarného umenia: Gotika (The history of fine arts in Slovakia: Gothic art) (Bratislava: Slovenská národná galéria, 2003), cat. no. 4.20, p. 699 (Milena Bartlová); and in Ivan Gerát, Stredoveké obrazové témy na Slovensku: Osoby a príbehy (Medieval pictorial themes in Slovakia: Persons and stories) (Bratislava: VEDA, 2001), 138. He also appears (together with Saint Francis) on a wing panel of the Saint Anthony-altar of Kassa (Košíce, Kaschau); see Dénes Radocsay, A középkori Magyarország táblaképei (Panel paintings of medieval Hungary) (Budapest: MTA, 1955), 341–342; Gerát, Stredoveké, 172. 8 Buran, ed., Gotika, 401–402 (Jiří Fajt).

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graphic innovation. Although the attribution of the panel seems to be generally accepted, the opinions about its dating—and, consequently, about the occasion of its commission—are remarkably different. In spite of the opinion of Joseph Polzer, who regarded the Altomonte Saint Ladislas as the latest painting by Simone,9 its early dating seems to prevail in the recent monographic literature.10 Polzer’s hypothesis was mainly based on stylistic comparisons with works by Simone made during his stay in Avignon, the most convincing of which is the parallel between the face of the Altomonte panel and that of the standing soldier in the frontispiece scene of the Virgil commentary in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. From this dating results the hypothesis that the panel was commissioned in Avignon for Filippo di Sangineto, an influential member of the regency council after the death of King Robert the Wise of Naples. Polzer’s argument was meant to modify the hypothesis of Giovanni Paccagnini, formulated in the time of the discovery of the Altomonte panel, according to which Filippo di Sangineto received the painting in Florence in 1327/1328, during his service in the entourage of Duke Charles of Calabria. In Polzer’s opinion, the work was commissioned by Queen Mother Elizabeth, widow of Charles I of Hungary, on a diplomatic journey to Italy in 1343/1344, when she made efforts to promote the crowning of her son, Andrew, the designated King of Naples, who was married to Joanna I. The queen spent a lot of money to attain her goal both in Italy and in Avignon, where the Hungarian Angevin diplomacy worked hard to win the support of Pope Clement VI. Andrew was finally murdered in 1345, immediately after his mother had returned to Hungary. Among the works she donated in relation to her campaign, an already lost embroidered dossal for the main altar of the old San Pietro is recorded in the 1361 inventory of the Vatican church. On the basis of its description, it displayed the Hungarian Angevin dynasty’s claim to legitimacy through the heritage of saintly precursors and ancestors, because in addition to the apostle-princes 9 10

Joseph Polzer, “L’ultimo dipinto di Simone Martini,” Antichità viva 19, no. 6 (1980): 7–16. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi, eds., Simone Martini e „chompagni,” exhibition catalogue, Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, 1985 (Florence: Centro Di, 1985), cat. no. 8, pp. 73ff. (F. Bologna) dates it to 1326; Andrew Martindale, “Innovazioni in Simone Martini: I problemi di interpretazione,” in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno, Siena, 27– 29 marzo 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence: Centro Di, 1988), 233–237. Cf. the remarks of Miklós Boskovits on the role of subjectivity in the chronology of the works by Simone Martini due to the lack of well-documented works of his middle period: Miklós Boskovits, “A Dismembered Polyptych: Lippo Vanni and Simone Martini,” Burlington Magazine 116 (1974): 367–376, on pp. 367ff.


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Fig. 5: Frontispiece with the Legend of St. Stephen— the three holy kings of Hungary on the column separating the legend scenes. Decretales of Miklós Vásári, Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, A. 24. Photo Archives of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Peter and Paul, it also represented King St. Stephen, Duke St. Emeric, and St. Louis of Toulouse on the right side, and King St. Ladislas, St. Elizabeth, and Princess St. Margaret (also filia regis Ungarie and qualified as sancta though she was not canonized yet) on the left.11 This is the first record of the image type which represented the “Holy Kings of Hungary” (sancti Hungarie reges, as they are often mentioned in royal documents since the thirteenth century).12 Besides the lost embroidered parament, 11

Eugène Müntz and Arthur L. Frothingham, “Il tesoro della Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano dal XIII al XV secolo con una scelta d’inventari inediti,” Archivio della Società romana di storia patria 6 (1883): 1–137, on p. 14. 12 Ernő Marosi, “Der Heilige Ladislaus als ungarischer Nationalheiliger: Bemerkungen zu seiner Ikonographie im 14.–15. Jh.,” Acta Historiae Artium 33 (1987–1988): 211–256, on pp. 232–234. Cf. Terézia Kerny, “A magyar szent királyok tisztelete és ikonográfiája a XIV. század közepéig” (Veneration and iconography of the holy kings of Hungary until the middle of the fourteenth century), in Szent Imre 1000 éve: Tanulmányok Szent

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there is also a coeval and extant example of this image type, dating from the beginning of the queen’s diplomatic journey, in one of the Decretales manuscripts illuminated in Bologna, in the workshop of Niccolò di Giacomo, for Nicholas Vásári. Vásári—then a clerk in the queen’s entourage, who certainly accompanied her to Avignon—ordered two volumes of canon law in the town of his former studies in 1343, but most likely never received them. Through various intermediary possessors, the codices finally came into the possession of the Chapter Library of Padua. The scenes from the Legend of St. Stephen of Hungary on the frontispiece pose the problem of possible models of Hungarian origin as do the figures of the three holy kings on the column separating the narrative scenes (fig. 5), but the determining role of the Bolognese master (or of the illuminator’s workshop) in their stylistic formulation is unquestionable. They can only be paralleled by the creative role of Simone Martini, who gave a character to St. Ladislas that could not have been possible in Hungary. On the basis of considering the Altomonte panel as a work of the young Simone Martini from the period between 1315 and 1520—that is, by extending the original proposition of Paccagnini for its dating to ca. 1326—one can even suppose that St. Ladislas’ Neapolitan iconography originated in the circle of Queen Mary of Naples, daughter of the Hungarian king, Stephen V. This hypothesis contradicts the one about the role of the Hungarian Angevin court.13 Implicitly, the suggestion about the role of Queen Mary fits the hypothesis that she could keep alive a Hungarian iconographic tradition of the thirteenth century—what, in the lack of supporting evidence, cannot be proved. Attempts to create an iconography of the holy rulers of Hungary in, for example, the Santa Maria Donna Regina in Naples, are more likely bound to an older Neapolitan stylistic tradition initiated in the first place by Pietro Cavallini and his workshop which, certainly, could not lead to Simone’s iconographic innovation.14 However, Imre tiszteletére születésének ezredik évfordulója alkalmából, ed. András Smohay and Terézia Kerny (Székesfehérvár: Székesfehérvári Egyházmegyei Múzeum, 2007), 73–82. About the importance of the collective cult of the triade of Hungarian saintly rulers, see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 339–340. 13 Mária Prokopp, “Simone Martini Szent László képe Altomonte-ben” (Simone Martini’s painting of St. Ladislas in Altomonte), in Szent László és Somogyvár: Tanulmányok a 900 éves somogyvári bencés apátság emlékezetére (Kaposvár: Somogy Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 1992), 137–144. Cf. Kerny, “A magyar szent királyok,” 77–78. 14 Terézia Kerny, “Középkori Szent László-emlékek nyomában Nápolyban” (On the traces of medieval relics of St. Ladislas in Naples), Ars Hungarica 26 (1998): 52–53; Mária Prokopp, “Magyar szentek az itáliai tercento festészetben” (Hungarian saints in Italian


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Queen Mary’s role in guarding the traditions and the relics of the Arpadian dynasty, and their spread mainly through her dynastic gifts and especially by her testament, is supported by various written sources.15

Fig. 6: St. Ladislas. Golden florin coin, Photo Archives of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Trecento painting), in Magyar szentek tisztelete és ereklyéi, exhibition catalogue, ed. Pál Cséfalvay and Ildikó Kontsek (Esztergom: Keresztény Múzeum, 2000), 25–35. See also Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, fig. 60; and ibid., 313–316. 15 See the account of 1326 about the execution of the last will of Queen Mary in the Registri Angioini, no. B. 263: Magyar diplomácziai emlékek az Anjou-korból, ed. Gusztáv Wenzel, vol. 1 (Budapest: MTA, 1874), no. 287, pp. 229ff. About a plenarium … ymaginem beati Ladislai in se continens bequested (together with two other icons) by Queen Elizabeth to King Louis the Great in her last will of 1380, see György Fejér, ed., Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis, 11 tomes, 43 vols. (Buda, 1829–1844), tome 9, vol. 5, no. 214, p. 400. It is remarkable that this plenarium, mentioned in the third place, was preceded by another one, a gift received from Queen Sancia of Naples (secundum per dominam Sanctiam reginam Sicilie nobis datum). Thus, the St. Ladislas icon evidently did not originate from Neapolitan court circles; instead, it might be a painting (possibly even a replica of Simone’s panel) acquired by Queen Elizabeth during her 1343–1344 stay in Italy or later. The same is the case of the lost icon of the Virgin venerated as a work by Saint Luke and donated in 1380 to the convent of the Poor Claires in Óbuda. Cf. Ernő Marosi, “Mariazell und die Kunst Ungarns im Mittelalter,” in Ungarn in Mariazell—Mariazell in Ungarn. Geschichte und Erinnerung, exhibition catalogue, ed. Péter Farbaky and Szabolcs Serfőző (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2004), 32–34.

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Fig. 7: King Béla II. Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, Országos Szécsényi Könyvtár, MS Lat. 1, p. 114

Fig. 8: King Béla IV. Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, Budapest, Országos Szécsényi Könyvtár, MS Lat. 1, p. 126


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On the other hand, the supposed role of Queen Mother Elizabeth in the transmission of the iconographic and stylistic innovation witnessed by the Altomonte panel—and, by the same token, its timeliness around and immediately after the middle of the fourteenth century—can be supported by further observations. Joseph Polzer already argued with the image of St. Ladislas on a version of the golden florins introduced under King Louis the Great in 1358 (fig. 6). Here the correspondence with the Altomonte figure is complete and goes beyond the costume and attitude up to the rendering of the contrapposto of his feet. Polzer thought of an earlier, lost Hungarian prototype which may have also been reflected in the figure of St. Ladislas on page 93 of the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle.16 I must remark that contrary to Polzer’s hypothesis, the St. Ladislas image of the Chronicle is not to be compared with the figure vested in chlamys and cloak on the florin coin CNH no. 6, but rather with the armored one on the coin CNH no. 64B.17 This armored figure was followed in the numismatic iconography of the saint until the end of the Middle Ages. In the illuminations of the Chronicle, however, there are two direct proofs of the familiarity with the figure type created by Simone on the Altomonte panel: the image of King Béla II on page 114 (fig. 7) and that of Béla IV on page 126 (fig. 8). They prove that the type of the Altomonte St. Ladislas— which was either brought to Hungary by the illuminator himself trained in the circles of the Neapolitan court, or it was present in the form of a cult image—remained influential here until the end of the sixth decade of the fourteenth century. 3. Parallel to the indisputable reception of the modern artistic inventions of the Italian Trecento in Hungary, there was a reciprocal connection between Hungarian Angevin court art and the early production of artworks in Bohemia under the rule of Emperor Charles IV. The friendly relationship between Louis I of Hungary and Charles IV flourished mainly in the 1350s and reached its climax in the double wedding ceremony in Buda in 1353. On this occasion Charles married his second wife, Anne of Schweidnitz (Świdnica), educated by her aunt, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, and Louis took the Serbian princess Elizabeth (the Younger) Kotromanić as his wife. According to my hypothesis, the representations of emperors in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle were modeled on the 16 17

Polzer, “L’ultimo dipinto,” 13. CNH = Corpus Nummorum Hungariae, ed. László Réthy, vol. 2 (Budapest: MTA, 1907); the two types are illustrated in Marosi, ed., Magyarországi művészet, vol. 2, figs. 305/6–7.

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likeness of Charles IV, and this substantiates not only the awareness of his appearance but possibly also the presence of early portrait paintings in the Hungarian court.18 The insertion of Hungarian saints into the image cycles covering the walls of the Holy Cross Chapel in Karlstein Castle is the reverse of this artistic and cultural relationship. Although here we face a phenomenon accompanying the cult of relics (and, in fact, the inventory of the Cathedral of Prague refer to a number of relics of Hungarian saints as well as other Hungarian donations),19 as attested by the presence of holes in the picture frames made to contain them, the images of the saints were integrated into a systematic representation of the Christian universe both in a theological and in a political sense. This interpretation of the decoration of the Holy Cross Chapel seen as a whole was evident from the beginning of its historiography, and modern iconographic literature traces it back to the tradition of representations of the Celestial Hierarchy in All Saints pictures, mainly of the type which was characterized by Panofsky as belonging to the “Old Style.”20 The cycle on the altar wall of the Chapel representing the Savior among his apostles clearly dominates the accompanying cycles of saints, which are arranged in a rather complicated space, fundamentally divided into choir and nave, according to the Heavenly Hierarchy including angels, patriarchs, prophets and very accurately distinguished categories of saints. These categories are the martyrs of the early Christian Church, bishops and priests, holy virgins and widows, and the patron saints of Bohemia. The nave walls seem to have been decorated 18

Ernő Marosi, “Zu den böhmischen Beziehungen der Miniaturen in der Ungarischen Bilderchronik,” in Podlug nieba i zwyczaju polskiego: Studia z historii architektury sztuki i kultury ofiarowane Adamowi Miłobędzkiemu (Warsaw: PWN, 1988), 195–202; and idem, Kép és hasonmás: Művészet és valóság a 14–15. századi Magyarországon (Image and likeness: Art and reality in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Hungary) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1995), 42–45. 19 Antonín Podlaha and Eduard Šittler, Chrámový poklad u sv. Vita v Praze: Jeho dejíny a popis (The church treasury of St. Vitus in Prague: Its past and description) (Prague: Nákladem dědictví Sv. Prokopa, 1903), II. Staré inventáře chrámu Svatovitského, p. v (before 1354, no. 21); pp. xv, xix (before 1355, nos. 92, 234); pp. xxv–xxvi (before 1365, nos. 243, 316), pp. xxvii–xxviii (before 1368). 20 For the historiography, see Jiří Fajt and Jan Rojt, “The Pictorial Decoration of the Great Tower at Karlštejn Castle: Ecclesia Triumphans,” in Magister Theodericus, Court Painter to Emperor Charles IV: The Pictorial Decoration of the Shrines at Karlštejn Castle, ed. Jiří Fajt (Prague: National Gallery, 1998), 107–205, on pp. 108–122 (“Karlštejn in the Specialist Literature”); see also the section “Splendor Imperii—The Great Tower,” ibid, 152–205. For Panofsky’s opinion, see his Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, 2 vols. (1953, repr. New York: Icon, 1971), 1:212–213. Cf. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 349.


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with images of the models of spiritual and of secular life. The walls of the eastern side bay of the nave are covered with images of holy knights. In this context—always in the first horizontal row, immediately above the socle wall—a series of holy rulers was arranged on the western and southern walls of the Chapel as supporters of the Church, which is represented by a series of holy bishops and popes in the second row from below.21 Some of these rulers can be identified on the basis of the coats-ofarms on their shields. Two holy emperors identified by their doubleheaded eagles (Charlemagne in the middle and Henry II—or Constantine the Great?22—on his right) and another by an eagle sign (on Charlemagne’s left—Henry II?)23 occupy the centre of the western wall, and are flanked by two pairs of holy rulers. Two of them on Charlemagne’s left (and other two kings on the southern wall) bear shields with three crowns on a silver ground; they have recently been identified, hypothetically, with old Anglo-Saxon kings, followers of King Arthur.24 There is also a young king with three blue leopards on his gilded shield—that is, a Danish holy king (probably Canute)25—in the middle of the left side of the southern wall, where also his pendant, St. Louis of France can be identified. A survey of holy rulers of Europe was, therefore, represented on the Karlstein nave walls—with a strong emphasis on Anglo-Saxon rulers, should all the shields with the three crowns be in reality the heraldic signs of English kings instead of designating in part Scandinavian ones, which would otherwise be missing from this series. No one ever determined the significance that can be attributed in the Emperor’s mystical-political thought to this cycle of illustrious holy inhabitants of the City of God, emphatically and exceptionally identified by their heraldic signs. They surely formed an 21

For the arrangement of the images, see Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter, 301 and 303. 22 The authors of Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter seem to avoid uncertain identifications of persons represented in the Karlstein cycles; for the two emperors, see ibid. 344–345 and 420. The only serious attempt at a heraldic identification of the rulers represented in the cycle was made by František Skřivánek, “Heraldika auf den Bildern des Meisters Theoderik auf der Burg Karlstein,” Jahrbuch der Heraldisch-Genealogischen Gesellschaft „Adler,” 3rd ser., 13 (1986–1987): 27–53; for Constantine, see ibid., 35–36. 23 Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter, 421; cf. Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 45–46. 24 Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 47–50. The three golden crowns in a blue champ in a shield écartelé (champs 2 and 3, while golden leopards in a red champ in champs 1 and 4) are represented by Johann Siebmacher even in 1605 in the coat-of-arms of England: Johann Siebmachers Wappenbuch von 1605, ed. Horst Appuhn (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1994), 22. 25 Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 51; cf. Siebmachers Wappenbuch, 22.

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actualized counterpart to the historically arranged series of the lost Luxemburg Genealogy of Karlstein Castle. Thus František Skřivánek’s hypothesis, according to which the image of a young ruler, whose shield is missing, can be identified with St. Sigismund, the old Burgundian martyr, highly venerated by Charles IV, seems to be quite reasonable.26

Fig. 9: King St. Stephen. Holy Cross Chapel, Karlstein Castle

26

Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 51–52.


Fig. 10: St. Emeric. Holy Cross Chapel, Karlstein Castle

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Fig. 11: St. Ladislas. Holy Cross Chapel, Karlstein Castle

One of the holy Kings of Hungary, Saint Stephen, on the right of the group of the three emperors on the western wall—whose original position is attested to by identical position marks both on the panel and the wall—


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has been identified unanimously on the basis of the double-armed cross on his shield (fig. 9). However, the colors of the Hungarian double-armed cross in a silvery (instead of red) shield are not correct, and the same mistake (silver replaced by gold) is made with the striped Hungarian shield in two other cases as well. Despite all these mistakes, the authenticity of the Hungarian coat-of-arms is increased by the lower ending of the cross in a thorn, which is an older form (visible, for example, on the reverse of the 1331 double seal of Charles I), replaced by the trilobic support (“triple hill”) since the times of Louis the Great.27 Therefore one can suppose that its model had not been rendered in colors (it could be a seal, for example, or more likely a combination of older and newer models). The technical analysis of the panel has proved the coherence of the shield’s painting with that of the figure.28 This very lively and expressive portrait is the closest to the circle of Magister Theodericus from the three figures that create a group of the three Holy Kings of Hungary. The second, turning towards St. Stephen, a bearded male saint, was visibly intended to be his pendant (fig. 10). Originally it was marked with a silvered and red striped shield, which has later been covered with a gold layer, consequently its identification as the striped coat-of-arms of Hungary cannot be doubted. Skřivánek has identified the saint with St. Emeric, what makes it rather exceptional in that time, since in the Hungarian iconographic documents he had already been consistently represented as a youthful duke.29 He also proposed the identification of St. Ladislas with the figure placed at the right end in the kings’ row of the southern wall, bearing a real shield of a warrior instead of the heraldic ones of the other rulers (fig. 11). The shield is striped with blue on a silver ground, but the technical analysis could demonstrate a primary red layer on the silver foil. As the position marks show, the panel has certainly kept its original place.30 Thus, the presence of the Hungarian kings in the Karlstein cycle is very plausible. The adoption of the trinitary iconography of the royal 27

Cf. András Hegedűs, ed., Megpecsételt történelem: Középkori pecsétek Esztergomból (History sealed: Medieval seals from Esztergom), exhibition catalogue (Esztergom: Prímási Levéltár, 2000), cat. no. 20, p. 41 and cat. nos 22–23, pp. 44–45 respectively. 28 Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter, 386–387; Magister Theodericus: Restored Panel Paintings from the Chapel of the Holy Rood in Karlštejn Castle, exhibition catalogue (Prague: National Gallery, 1992), 40–41. 29 Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter, 418; Magister Theodericus: Restored Panel Paintings, 38–39; cf. Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 47. 30 Fajt, ed., Magister Theodericus, Court Painter, 425; Magister Theodericus: Restored Panel Paintings, 36–37; cf. Skřivánek, “Heraldika,” 47.

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saints of Hungary created and also propagated in the Angevin court in its early phase was undoubtedly motivated by the friendly contacts of the two dynasties until about 1360, and also in the more problematic political situation of the 1360s, perhaps by pretensions of the Luxemburg dynasty. These pretensions were expressed by means of iconography and in forms of the—unquestionably sincere—cult of country patrons. In later times we meet a similar expression of wishes in the liturgical manuscripts with rubrics and images of the patrons of Hungary, made for the King and future Emperor, Frederick III, as well as in their insertion into the program of the altarpiece of Wiener Neustadt. The art historical interpretation of the Frederick-altarpiece stressed the kinship of its iconographical concept with that of the Karlstein Holy Cross Chapel.31 The transmission of the iconography of the holy kings of Hungary to Karlstein was certainly not a loan of visual formulas but it was rather of a verbal nature. The age, virtues, and character of the kings followed from the favorite types of Magister Theodericus. St. Stephen corresponds to the type of a strong and majestic man with a very intensive expression. He looks middle-aged and active, without any traces of age—at variance with the Hungarian tradition of representing the three kings in three different ages, where Emeric is also distinguished by his youth. For Saint Ladislas the type of the knight was utilized. Such arbitrary iconographic innovations are not alien to the paintings of Theodericus—their best example is perhaps the image of St. George being a rather corpulent warrior with blond hair, beard, and blue eyes, in harsh contrast to the tradition of representing him as an archangel. There is also a uniformity of attributes (halo, scepter, and globe) in the series of rulers. It is remarkable that the painter was apparently familiar with the attribute of the war-axe, the main attribute of St. Ladislas, since it is held in a similar position by one of the saintly knights, certainly related to the portraits of the three Hungarian rulers, on the eastern nave wall. 4. Not all medieval artists reached the quality of Magister Theodericus. If they were not able to create personages of their own, they provided their figures with pre-existing stylistic forms. Even the painters of small rural churches balanced between widespread types and their own artistic creations. Although the extent of intimacy and emotional spontaneity, consid31

Ingrid Flor, “Ikonographische Überlegungen zu den Malereien des Wiener Neustädter Retabels zu Sankt Stephan in Wien,” in Der Wiener Neustädter Altar und der ‘Friedrichs-Meister,’ exhibition catalogue, ed. Arthur Saliger (Vienna, 1999), 7–32; on the Hungarian saints see ibid., 8–9, 25.


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ered as important factors in the reception of medieval works, depended on the aptitude of the painter, if the individual qualities were missing or weak, they could be substituted by the characteristics of generally spread figure types. These schematic types corresponded to general categories of social status and rank. As the outward appearance of figures also stood for character and emotions, elements of dress and fashion had an immense role in medieval art. Fashion was not something essential, but it constituted an easily intelligible form of expression. In our case, for the representation of the patron saints of different countries and nations, different simple types were given, depending on whether the virtues of these saints were of a military or of a “civilian” nature, and also on their age. A very restricted number of characteristics were sufficient for the identification of a saint whose identity corresponded, for example, to the type of “the vigorous knightly king of mature age:” a masculine appearance, an armor in the fashion of the era, and further hints at his specific identity by personal attributes, heraldic elements or inscriptions. Fashion is always a general factor, and the knightly armor around 1400 is perhaps the first technical means in the Middle Ages to conceal individual traits. Rendering the most sophisticated forms of splendid armors was widespread even on the walls of small rural churches, whose lords were surely not rich enough to finance expensive warriors’ equipment, because it corresponded to ethical ideals. Consequently, not only the holy kings (mainly St. Stephen and St. Ladislas) but also the models of the warriors, such as St. George and the archangel St. Michael, had a rather uniform look, determined by the early form of late Gothic armor.32 Nevertheless, this uniformity also minimizes the individual significance of the image. The appearance of the warrior saints marks their importance, which can be similar to that of others. The iconography of the knightly royal saints in Hungary seems to have been enriched by the introduction of the cult of the dynastic saint of the Luxemburg house, St. Sigismund, in the times of King Sigismund. The inscription of the recently discovered choir cycle in the former parish church of Lónya, with the date 1413, fits well into the spread of the new cult.33 The Sigismund 32 33

Marosi, “Der Heilige Ladislaus,” 237–238. József Lángi, “Előzetes beszámoló a lónyai református templom falképeinek kutatásáról, feltárásáról” (Preliminary report on the research and exploration of the wall-paintings of the Calvinist church of Lónya), Műemlékvédelem 48 (2004): 357–374; Zsombor Jékely and József Lángi, Falfestészeti emlékek a középkori Magyarország északkeleti megyéi-

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provostry church near Buda Castle, depending on the royal chapel, was built in the same period on the initiative of King Sigismund. In Lónya, where St. Stephen and St. Ladislas were represented on the choir walls in the usual type of knightly saints, St. Sigismund was also painted on the southern pilaster of the triumphal arch, possibly in the same type, but only his crown and the inscription above it have been conserved. Another example for the spread of St. Sigismund’s iconography has also been discovered recently, in the former parish church of the Transylvanian village Bádok (Bădeşti). The armored figure of the saint belongs to a series together with Catherine and Helene on the northern nave wall, and with the Madonna and St. John the Baptist above the neighboring side altar. This series was dated by its first publisher to some time after 1387, the crowning of Sigismund of Luxemburg.34 In fact, connecting it with the foundation of the Buda St. Sigismund church, almost a quarter of a century later, would give a better explanation for its style. There is, however, a slight difference in this respect: the body of the Bádok St. Sigismund is covered entirely by a full iron armor, while the outward appearance of St. Stephen and St. Ladislas on the Lónya choir wall (St. Sigismund’s figure being totally destroyed) seem to be out of fashion—it evidently reaches back to the figure of the florin coin CNH no. 64B of Louis the Great, the type of which was preserved also in Sigismund’s times.35

ből (Monuments of wall painting from the north-eastern counties of medieval Hungary) (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2009), 184–213; signature: ibid., 187; Sigismundus-fragment: ibid., 211. For a further representation in Csetnek (Štitnik), a wall painting, see Gerát, Stredoveké obrazové témy, 166. See also Ernő Marosi, “Fünfzig Jahre Herrschaft Sigismunds in der Kunstgeschichte,” in Sigismund von Luxemburg: Ein Kaiser in Europa; Tagungsband des internationalen historischen und kunsthistorischen Kongresses in Luxemburg, 8.–10. Juni 2005, ed. Michel Pauly and François Reinert (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006), 237; and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Saints of the Knights—Knights of the Saints: Patterns and Patronage at the Court of Sigismund,” ibid., 319–330. 34 Lóránd Kiss, “A bádoki református templom falképei” (Wall paintings of the Calvinist church of Bádok), Műemlékvédelem 52 (2008): 30–34; Zsombor Jékely and Lóránd Kiss, Középkori falképek Erdélyben (Medieval wall paintings in Transylvania) (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2008), fig. on p. 15 and pp. 8–10. 35 CNH, nos. 118, 119; cf. Imre Takács, ed., Sigismundus rex et imperator: Művészet és kultúra Luxemburgi Zsigmond korában, 1387–1437 (Sigismundus rex et imperator: Art and Culture in the time of Sigismund of Luxemburg, 1387–1437), exhibition catalogue (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006), cat. no. 3.24–25, p. 191; cf. Csaba Tóth, “Luxemburgi Zsigmond magyar pénzverése”(The coinage of Sigismund of Luxemburg in Hungary), ibid., 170–172.


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Fig. 12: St. Stephen and St. Ladislas. Drawing. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

The identification of the figures and the fact that they could be easily confused with other ones, posed problems not only in the rural milieu, but on a higher social and qualitative level as well. The case of the Munich drawing from the first quarter of the fifteenth century can be seen as characteristic of this problem (fig. 12). The figures of two armored kings with royal insignia (out of which the crosses on their globes were added only later, the flower from the scepter of the figure on the left is missing, their crowns are merely indicated, and the war-axe of the figure on the right was adapted to the form of a halberd) were treated in such a way that seems to indicate that the drawing was made to be a sketch model for

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sculptures. This hypothesis can be supported by the comparison with other drawings of the “beautiful style,” showing more pictorial qualities. The figure with the halberd can be inserted into the iconography of St. Olaf or of St. Ladislas, and the fact that he is paired with an elderly king like St. Stephen makes probable the latter possibility. Thus, the Hungarian iconographic relations of the drawing—or its stylistic specificity—point towards Hungary. Nevertheless, two later inscriptions added by an almost coeval hand identify the figures as St. Wenceslas and St. Sigismund, that is insert them into Bohemian cultural milieu.36 The ambiguity of the interpretation of this figure type cannot be better expressed. Bertalan Kéry’s most important contribution to our knowledge of the art of the early fifteenth century was his ability to prove, by investigating Emperor Sigismund’s iconography, that he was identified with his patron saint and consequently—and even more importantly—his iconography crossed the borderline between the sacred and the profane, between the spheres of religious piety and personal representation. Soon after the publication of Kéry’s monograph in 1972, the finding of the sculpture fragments from Sigismund’s Buda castle brought to light a new evidence his case—and perhaps also supported the attribution of the Munich drawing to an artistic activity related to Hungary. From the first moment on, there was a temptation to consider the core group of the Buda statues as pieces destined for a cycle of saintly rulers and knights, what in my view means no less than the narrowing of the gap between the sacral and the profane image. One more example for this change is provided by a frescoed retable from the first quarter of the fifteenth century on the southern nave altar of the parish church in Cserény (Čerín). It is quite clear that the fresco depicts one of the members of the local noble family as a page holding the sword of his lord. The saint remains unknown, since even if he is crowned, armored and holds a scepter, he is not distinguished by any further attribute. We can only guess at his identity. Once it was supposed that the donor represented as a page in the service of the saintly king could be a certain Stephen from the local noble family, whose tombstone from 1433 is still in the church. He was documented as a miles et familiaris at the court of Sigismund.37 If we accept that he was the donator, then the holy king could be St. Stephen. But now it seems that the figure could also be St. Ladislas or St. Sigismund or any other model of Christian knights in general. 36

Bertalan Kéry, Kaiser Sigismund: Ikonographie (Vienna and Munich: Schroll, 1972), 42–43; Marosi, “Der Heilige Ladislaus,” 238; idem, Kép és hasonmás, 73–74. 37 Marosi, “Der Heilige Ladislaus,” 245.


Fig. 13: St. Ladislas and St. Leonard. Fresco (first layer), castle chapel, Siklós. Photo by the author

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Fig. 14: St. Ladislas and St. Leonard. Fresco (second layer), castle chapel, Siklós. Photo by the author

5. A surviving detail of the fresco decoration in the castle chapel of the mighty Garai family at Siklós gives us insight into the mechanism of how new iconographic types spread and, perhaps, into the high appreciation of artistic models for rare or never-seen images, as well. The chapel was built after the donation of Siklós Castle to Nicholas II Garai, later palatine of King Sigismund, as it is suggested by his coats-of-arms on the consoles of the western entrance to the chapel, belonging undoubtedly to its first period. The original building of a single nave was enlarged on both sides by recesses in the form of vaulted niches having altar-like constructions on their eastern side—an arrangement known from side oratories for privileged persons in medieval private chapels. From the supposed painted


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decoration of Siklós chapel only the wall-paintings of the two oratories survived in a very fragmentary state of conservation. The walls of the southern oratory were covered with two layers of fresco painting, the second layer of which was removed after its discovery in 1962 and transferred on canvas; it is shown separately in the chapel ever since.38 Recently, the new efforts of conservation of the strongly deteriorated wallpaintings from the second period gave occasion for their critical analysis.39 It has turned out, curiously enough, that these murals have nothing to do with the fresco decoration that has since been discovered in the choir of the neighboring former Augustinian church, dating also from the Garai period, after 1408. The niche—the frescoes of which were also partly transferred on an artificial support for the reason of protecting them from humidity—is decorated by paintings from the first period: with the Apocalyptic Lamb on the ceiling, with a Man of Sorrows above the altar and with the figures of St. Leonard and of St. Ladislas on the rear wall (fig. 13). They were evidently covered with plaster in the second period, and the same saints were repeated on it in a reverse order (fig. 14). The most recent overview of the state of research about the wall-paintings in question has clarified the successive phases of their making. The questions of its dating and the hypotheses concerning the occasion of their commission were also examined. The lengthy discussion of the vague conjecture—refused by the author for good reasons—that the presence of St. Leonard could perhaps commemorate the fact that King Sigismund was kept in prison in the same castle in 1401, appears to be totally superfluous—if not supporting the author’s hypothesis about a presumed hidden symbolism in the rendering of St. Ladislas. The small shawl bound around the forehead of the saintly king under his crown is mistakenly identified here with the ensign of the Bohemian Order of the Veil of King Wenceslas IV,40 given to Nicholas 38

János Illés, “A siklósi várkápolna falfestményeinek helyreállítása” (The restoration of the wall paintings of Siklós Castle chapel), Magyar Műemlékvédelem 1963–1966 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1969), 69–88. 39 Ildikó Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd freskói a siklósi várkápolna kegyúri fülkéjében” (The frescoes of St. Ladislas and St. Leonard in the patron’s niche of the Castle Chapel of Siklós), Magyar Műemlékvédelem 14 (2007): 73–86. 40 Cf. Milada Studničková, “Drehknoten und Drachen: Die Orden Wenzels IV. und Sigismunds von Luxemburg und die Polysemantik ihrer Zeichen,” in Kunst als Herrschaftsinstrument: Böhmen und das Heilige Römische Reich unter den Luxemburgern im Europäischen Kontext, ed. Jiří Fajt and Andrea Langer (Berlin and Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009), 377–387.

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Garai in 1401. The association of veils often represented on the heads of figures by motives of fashion around 1400 (among others, on head fragments of the Buda statues), or of the veil on representations of the Mocking of Christ used to blindfold him (one of the Arma Christi), with the ensign of the order is a typical case of overinterpretation.41 The figure of St. Ladislas fits well into his widespread iconography at the beginning of the fifteenth century, also with respect to the double cross as a heraldic sign of the country replacing the usual cross of warrior saints.42 On the other hand, the image of St. Leonard is rather unusual,43 and it is quite likely that his representation was motivated by the liberation of John Garai, the younger brother of the palatine, Nicholas, II from captivity.44 Namely, in 1415 he was defeated and taken captive by the rebellious Duke Hervoja of Spalato in Bosnia. The attribute of the shackles held by the saint evoke both the liberation of John Garai and their deposition in Báta abbey. For the members of the Garai-family, who were familiar with the history of Sigismund’s defeat in Nicopolis, the cult of St. Leonard as a liberator from captivity could also be known from the example of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy.45 So, the stylistically also plausible dating of the wall-painting to ca. 1420 seems to be confirmed. Conjectures in the earlier literature about the role of John’s nephew, Ladislas (d. 1459) in the commissioning of the frescoes—and the relevance of the name of Ladislas’ son, Job (d. 1481), the last member of the lineage, for the Job scene on the rear wall of the northern oratory—can be neglected.46 Fehér has 41

Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd,” 77–80. See Marosi, “Der Heilige Ladislaus,” 244; idem, Kép és hasonmás, 82. 43 For its contemporary parallel in the cycle of the wall-paintings in Csetnek (Štitnik), see Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd,” fig. 17, p. 80. See also the wall-painting in Zseliz (Želiazovce) in Gerát, Stredoveké obrazové témy, fig. 63, p. 151; and the altar in Kassa (Košíce) in Radocsay, A középkori Magyarország táblaképei, 341; and in Gerát, Stredoveke obrazove temy, 172. 44 Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd,” 81–82. 45 About his personal cult of St. Leonard cf. Bertrand Schnerb, “Piété et dévotion des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Hardi et Jean sans Peur,” L’art à la cour de Bourgogne, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), 72–73 and fig. 4 (Saint Leonhard in the book of hours of John the Fearless). 46 Dénes Radocsay, Falképek a középkori Magyarországon (Wall paintings in medieval Hungary) (Budapest: Corvina, 1977), 161; Marosi, ed., Magyarországi művészet, 1:214– 215 (Tünde Wehly); Cf. Pál Engel, “Zsigmond bárói, rövid életrajzok” (The magnates of Sigismund, short biographies), in Művészet Zsigmond király korában, 1387–1437, ed. László Beke, Ernő Marosi, and Tünde Wehli, 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutató Csoport, 1987) 2: 416–420 (Palatine Nicholas II. Garai), 420–421 (Hervoja 42


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also overemphasized the role of the Báta abbey in the history of Siklós castle, when she attributed the repainting of the murals to the transfer of the Holy Blood relic from the abbey to the castle under its later owners, the Perényis. Her hypothesis about the origin of the second layer from between 1512–151647 corresponds neither to the style nor to the fact that the original iconography of the fresco with St. Leonard and St. Ladislaus could not have any significance after the extinction of the Garai-family in 1481. The late Gothic painter of the second layer inverted the order of the saints on the rear wall of the niche. It seems that he made quite an exact copy of the figure of St. Leonard, who was not as much known in Hungary as that of the very popular holy king. He could also preserve the original as a model for his copy, later covered it with plaster and drew his own St. Ladislas, completely independent from the former one.48 6. Our last example, the series of the Hungarian patron saints in parallel with saints of other dynasties on the wings of the high altar retable of the Szepeshely (Spišská Kapitula, Zipser Kapitel) provostry church, seems to be almost contemporary with the latest possible date of the second layer of the Siklós murals. The consecration of the St. Martin high altar in 1478 is well documented. While the retable itself was destroyed and replaced by a Neogothic one in the course of the nineteenth-century restoration, the painted wings are well conserved. They show the best quality of the first phase of late Gothic painting of the last quarter of the fifteenth century; the extent of its having been influenced by Netherlandish painting has led to the recent discussion of whether its style was of courtly origin or it was transmitted through towns.49 On the left wing, the traditional series of the holy kings of Hungary is represented, following the tradition of differentiating them by their age, in luxurious armor and clothes, with their traditional attributes and with the uniform coats-of-arms of Hungary placed on their right next to their feet (fig. 15). Their pendants are also identified on the basis of the coats-ofarms they are depicted with (fig. 16): St. Oswald of England with the raDuke of Spalato), 454 (geneological table of the Garai). Pál Engel, Magyarország világi archontológiája, 1301–1457 (Secular archontology of Hungary, 1301–1457), 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Int., 1996), 2:80–81. 47 Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd,” 84. 48 The line separating the two giornate cannot any more be distinguished on the transferred painting which is in a very bad state of conservation, and Fehér, “Szent László és Szent Lénárd,” 75 expressedly excludes the possibility that the first painting could be seen by the second painter. 49 See note 7.

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ven, St. Louis of Toulouse with his bishop’s insignia and the lilies on a blue ground on both his coat and shield, corresponding to the semée figure of the Angevins, and finally, St. Louis of France as a knight with the shield of the Capetians. The outstanding elegance according to the latest fashion—and mainly the variations in the uniform shape of the armor— demonstrate the efforts of the painter to create the highest possible variety and individual characterization of his personages on the basis of very scanty information (except for the appearance of the Hungarian saints).50

Fig. 15: St. Stephen, St. Ladislas, and St. Emeric. High altar retable, Church of St. Martin, Szepeshely (Spišská Kapitula). Photo by Gyula Czimbal 50

Györgyi Poszler, “Az Árpád-házi királyok a magyar középkor századaiban” (The Kings of the Árpád Dynasty in the centuries of the Hungarian Middle Ages), in Történelem— kép: Szemelvények múlt és művészet kapcsolatából Magyarországon / Geschichte— Geschichtsbild: Die Beziehung von Vergangenheit und Kunst in Ungarn, exhibition catalogue, ed. Árpád Mikó and Katalin Sinkó (Budapest: Nemzeti Galéria, 2000), 170– 187, on pp. 180–181; Terézia Kerny, “A szepeshelyi főoltár magyar szent királyokat ábrázoló táblaképe” (The panel representing Hungarian Kings of the high altar of Szepeshely), in Szent Imre 1000 éve, 99–105; Ernő Marosi, ed., On the Stage of Europe: The millennial contribution of Hungary to the idea of European Community (Budapest: Balassi, 2009), 72–74 (E. Marosi).


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Fig. 16: St. Oswald, St. Louis of Toulouse, and St. Louis of France. High altar retable, Church of St. Martin, Szepeshely (Spišská Kapitula). Photo by Gyula Czimbal

The interpretation of the parallel of the Hungarian trinity and the three representatives of foreign countries has always been discussed in the art historical literature. There are two kings and a duke who renounced to rule in favor of a chaste life (a feature used for the comparison of St. Emeric with St. Louis of Toulouse). Two of the kings introduced Christianity in their countries (St. Stephen and St. Oswald) and two of them are warrior kings (St. Ladislas and St. Louis of France). The figures of both series are represented as belonging to three different ages. Instead of looking for eventual historical relations or for actual or fictive allusions with possible cryptoportraits (mainly with that of the contemporary Matthias Corvinus), I can propose another solution for the iconographic question. According to my hypothesis, a sermon by Pelbartus of Temesvár (written in 1489/1498) about the spiritual evolution of St. Ladislas could provide us a key for the parallel representation of good Christian rulers. He speaks about the good holy kings as opposed to modern tyrants: instead of plundering and de-

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stroying as the latter do, the former constructed churches and endowed them “as King Saint Ladislas and Saint Stephen did in Hungary, Saint Wenceslas in Bohemia and Saint Henry in Bavaria.”51 The meaning of this parallel representation was not a political one, but a spiritually motivated criticism of the attitude of contemporary rulers. This intention was a big task for the painter, who evidently was not informed about the details of the iconography of the saints to be represented, but arrived at a splendid solution.

51

Pelbartus de Themeswar, Sermones Pomerii de sanctis: Pars aestivalis, sermon 17 (Hagenau, 1499), edited in Edit Madas, Sermones de Sancto Ladislao / Középkori prédikációk Szent László királyról (Debrecen, 2004), 194–209, quotation: 206; cf. Marosi, Kép és hasonmás, 83.

Palatine Lackfi and His Saints Frescos in the Franciscan Church of Keszthely Béla Zsolt SZAKÁCS

On February 22, 1397, the former palatine of Hungary, István Lackfi, was invited to a meeting with other barons of the country. Although at that time he supported another aspirant for the Hungarian throne, he accepted King Sigismund’s promise that he would not be hurt. But the promise notwithstanding, he was massacred crudely together with his nephew, István of Simontornya, and their properties were confiscated and partially donated to the rival barons participating in the act. His remains were buried in the Franciscan church of Keszthely, where his red marble tombstone is still kept. The sanctuary of the church preserves one of the richest mural decorations of medieval Hungary including thirty standing figures of saints (fig. 1). In the following, I wish to demonstrate the connections between this collection of saints and the donor, István Lackfi, one of the most influential politicians of his age. The wall-paintings were discovered as late as 1974 during the renovation of the church. First the local house-painters removed the uppermost, early-twentieth-century layer together with some parts of the medieval plaster below it. Only after two months was a professional restorer involved, Ferenc Rády, who carried out the immense work of restoring the entire cycle.1 Although the restoration was finished in 1983, its detailed publication appeared only in 2007.2 Nevertheless, art historical reports have been dedicated to the fresco cycle right from the period of its restoration onward. Mária Prokopp returned to it several times describing its 1

Ferenc Rády, “A keszthelyi falképek helyreállítási munkálatairól” (On the restoration works of the wall-paintings at Keszthely), Művészet 19, no. 4 (1978): 29. 2 Ferenc Rády, “A keszthelyi ferences templom falfestményeinek restaurálásáról— évtizedek távlatában” (The restoration of the frescos in the Franciscan Church of Keszthely), Magyar Műemlékvédelem, 14 (2007): 63–72; even the documentation was lost for a few decades and became available only recently in the Hungarian National Office of Cultural Heritage (ÁMRK A/146, no. 141, Ferenc Rády, 1984).

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program and defining its stylistic connections.3 Later scholarship basically followed her investigations.4

Fig. 1: Interior of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

3

Mária Prokopp, “A keszthelyi plébániatemplom gótikus falképei” (The Gothic murals of the parish church at Keszthely), Művészet 19, no. 4 (1978): 24–28 (hereafter: Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1978”); eadem, “Freskenschmuck der Pfarrkirche (ehem. Franziskanerkirche) zu Keszthely,” in Die Parler und der schöne Stil 1350–1400: Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgen, ed. Anton Legner (Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum, 1978), 457; eadem, “A keszthelyi plébániatemplom gótikus falképei” (The Gothic murals of the parish church at Keszthely), Építés-Építészettudomány 12 (1980): 367–385 (hereafter: Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980”); eadem, Italian Trecento Influence on Murals in East Central Europe particularly Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1983), 107 and 158–159; Ernő Marosi, ed., Magyarországi művészet 1300–1470 körül (Art in Hungary around 1300– 1470) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1987), 597–598 (Prokopp Mária) (hereafter: Magyarországi művészet); eadem, “Keszthely és Siklós újonnan feltárt gótikus falképei” (The recently discovered Gothic wall-paintings of Keszthely and Siklós), Ars Hungarica 23 (1995): 155–167. 4 Judit M. Anda, Keszthely, Fő téri plébániatemplom (Kesztely, Parish church on Fő tér) (Budapest: Tájak—Korok—Múzeumok Egyesület, 1986); Zsombor Jékely, “Keszthely, ehemalige Franziskanerkirche,” in Sigismundus rex et imperator, ed. Imre Takács (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006): 420–421.

Palatine Lackfi and his Saints

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The analysis of the wall-paintings is far from being so simple. Big portions of the wall surfaces are damaged and many of the compositions are very fragmented. Consequently their identification is often extremely problematic.5 Furthermore, the uppermost row of the cycle is very dark and hard to see because of the great distance from the viewer. Probably this is why its correct identification was not possible. In this part of the sanctuary the story of Joachim and Anne and the early life of the Holy Virgin were depicted. In the centre, on the east wall, the birth of the Virgin can be recognized, while her presentation in the temple and her marriage covered the south wall.6 Below this cycle, on the north wall, scenes from the Passion of Christ are preserved in fragmented state. The upper part of the Volto Santo is visible on the east wall below the window corbel, with medallions of apostles on the northern and prophets on the southern side. On the window jambs characteristic human heads are represented without halos, while the narrow walls between the windows are decorated with standing figures of saints. This later part of the decoration is unusually rich. In three rows, on both sides of five windows, altogether thirty saints were represented. The series starts on the northeast wall, and it continues on the southeast and south ones (the east wall is too narrow to be decorated with figural motifs). The first person in the lower row, next to the Passion of Christ, is St. Helena, who is represented with the True Cross. The empress wears a crown and a red coat with ermine at the bottom (unfortunately the middle part of the figure is missing). At the feet of the empress a fragment of another figure is represented, which can be the dead man of the legend, who was resuscitated when touched by the True Cross. On the other side of the northwest window, the ascension of Mary Magdalene is represented. Her body is covered by her long hair. Her praying figure is lifted to the Heaven in a mandorla by four angels. The series of women saints is continued on the southeast wall. On the left side of the window, St. Margaret of Antioch (fig. 2) is represented, turning to the right, holding in her 5

No detailed description has been published so far, and neither is a satisfying photo documentation available. I am grateful to the Hungarian National Office of Cultural Heritage for the research permission as well as to Attila Mudrák, Tibor Kollár and Zsombor Jékely for making their photo archives available for me. 6 Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Mária születése a keszthelyi ferences templomban” (The Birth of the Virgin in the Franciscan Church of Keszthely), in Omnis creatura significans: Tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára, ed. Anna Tüskés (Budapest: Centrart Egyesület, 2009), 123–128; idem, “The Fresco Cycle of the Holy Virgin in the Franciscan Church of Keszthely,” in IKON 3 (2010): 261–270.

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left hand her attribute, the dragon. She has long brown hair and a crown. Opposite to her, another young crowned lady, St. Dorothea is turning to the left, holding a drapery in her right hand and a casket in her left hand. Beside the next window, which is the eastern one on the south side, the left figure is St. Catherine of Alexandria, holding her attribute, the wheel. She also has a crown and long, blond hair. On the other side of the window the standing lady turning to the left is St. Barbara with her tower7 and crown.

Fig. 2: St. Margaret of Antioch in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

7

The lower part of this tower has been destroyed and, during the restoration, the tower was depicted relatively small; originally, it might have been somewhat longer.


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The next four saints in this row are more problematic to identify and analyze. In the middle part of the south wall, the left figure is a woman from the Order of Poor Clares. No attribute is known, however, she is often identified with St. Clare.8 On the right, also turning to the left (i.e., to the east, towards the altar) is a young lady, dressed in rich secular vestment. Probably she was holding something in her hands, but it is not visible. Although she has no crown, in this Franciscan context she can be St. Elisabeth of Hungary, as it was proposed by Mária Prokopp.9 In the last, westernmost section of the south wall, two male saints are represented in Franciscan habit; they are turning towards each other, holding a book and a cross in their hands. Their identification is not easy.10 The left one has no beard and there is a corpus on his cross. They were identified by Prokopp with Anthony of Padua and Bonaventure,11 later with Anthony and Francis of Assisi.12 But which is which? Since Francis is frequently represented with a cross, and often with a corpus, the left one was sometimes regarded as him.13 As one of the attributes of St. Anthony is the cross, another one is the book, he can be the other Franciscan. On the other hand, we should note that both of them were represented also in Almakerék (Mălâncrav) in Transylvania around 1400. They stand side-byside, in similar habit. The right one receives the stigmata so he is Francis, while the left one has as a book but no further attribute. Anca Gogâltan argued that this beardless friar is Anthony.14 Since in Keszthely the beardless, younger figure is the one on the left, whereas the one on the right is 8

Prokopp, “Freskenschmuck,” 457; Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980,” 371; Magyarországi művészet, 597; Prokopp, Italian Trecento, 158; Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156; Anda, Keszthely, 12, Jékely, “Keszthely,” 421; no identification: Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1978,” 25. 9 Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1978,” 25; Prokopp, “Freskenschmuck,” 457; Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980,” 371; Magyarországi művészet, 597; Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156; accepted by Anda, Keszthely, 12 and Jékely, “Keszthely,” 421. Only in Prokopp, Italian Trecento, 158 she is described as a “woman saint tuning to the left with a kerchief, characteristic to the fourteenth century.” 10 Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1978,” 25; Prokopp, “Freskenschmuck,” 457. Prokopp, Italian Trecento, 159, and Magyarországi művészet, 597, simply mentions two Franciscans. 11 Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980,” 371, accepted by Anda, Keszthely, 12. 12 Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156; Jékely, “Keszthely,” 421 mentions only Francis. 13 E.g., Magyarországi művészet, vol. 2, fig. 1281; Anca Gogâltan, “Patronage and artistic production in Transylvania: The Apafis and the church in Mălâncrav (fourteenthfifteenth centuries)” (PhD Diss., Central European University, Budapest, 2003), plate 103. 14 Gogâltan, “Patronage,” 83–86.

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somewhat older and bearded, the proposal of Prokopp with Francis on the right and Anthony on the left seems to be acceptable, although the opposite order is also possible. In a winged altarpiece at Brulya (Bruiu) in Transylvania from 1520, the stigmatized Francis was represented holding the cross with a corpus and Anthony with a stab and a fish.15 Both of them are beardless. However, since none of them are represented with the stigmata at Keszthely, the presence of Francis is not certain.

Fig. 3: St. Louis of Toulouse in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

15

Gisela Richter and Otmar Richter, Siebenbürgische Flügelaltäre (Thaur bei Innsbruck: Wort und Welt, 1992), 127, fig. XXVII. See also the Imareal Database, http:// tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7015902.jpg


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Fig. 4: St. Erasmus in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

In comparison to the lower row, the second one is much more fragmented. Here the first, the seventh and the eighth figure is practically lost, and the last two are in a very bad condition as well. The best image is on the southeast wall, left to the window. Here the bishop saint, holding a book in his left hand, can be identified with St. Louis of Toulouse because of the crown at his feet (fig. 3). Another bishop saint can be recognized on the eastern section of the south wall. On the right side of the window, a standing figure is depicted with hands held up (fig. 4). His headgear is much damaged but it is probably a mitre. His red vestment is also badly visible, and the lower part of the figure is missing. However, his gesture and his left hand with arrows at the end of his fingers is enough to define

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him. Mária Prokopp has already identified the saint with Erasmus,16 what seems to be correct if we take into consideration the representations of this saint in the Gömör region. In Ochtina (Ochtiná, Slovakia) the saint is standing frontally, wearing a red chasuble, and lifting his hands with arrows under his finger- and toe-nails. This fresco is more-or-less contemporaneous with the one at Keszthely.17 Another example from the same region is in Csetnek (Štítnik, Slovakia) from the fifteenth century: here the saint is standing in a similar frontal position with lifted hands, in red chasuble. Here only his finger-nails are tortured with arrows, his feet are not visible; while another small figure is curving a wheel with the bowels of the saint.18 Erasmus is similarly represented in the church of Vornbach in Bavaria around 1420–1430.19 Thus, not only the hardly visible arrows but the identical position and vestment of the saint at Keszthely make the identification acceptable. Three further saints in this row belong clearly to the bishops but we have not enough information for their identification. The one standing on the right side of the northeast window (the left one is destroyed) is represented with a mitre, yellow chasuble and a book in his left hand. He probably held his attribute in his right hand but it has been so much damaged that it cannot be recognized. The bishop opposite to St. Louis of Toulouse is an elder, bearded man in red chasuble, holding a mitre and a book. No specific attribute is recognizable in the image. The third one, next to Louis on the south wall, is turning towards the spectator, wearing a mitre and yellow chasuble (fig. 5). In his right hand he has a book. What is more relevant is the left hand, holding something like a short, thin stick. Unfortunately, the two ends of it are destroyed, but it cannot be a crosier because it is not long enough. It resembles an arrow, which can be the attribute of St. Lambert of Maastricht. He was not really popular in 16

Only in Prokopp, “Freskenschmuck,” 457; Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980,” 371–372; Magyarországi művészet, 597; and Prokopp “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156. Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1978,” Prokopp, Italian Trecento, Anda and Jékely do not mention Erasmus. 17 Mária Prokopp, Középkori freskók Gömörben (Medieval Frescos in Gömör County) (Somorja: Méry Ratio, 2002), 50, plate 42, dating to the early fifteenth century. Cf. the Imareal Database, http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7013304.jpg, with a dating of 1375–1385. See also Vlasta Dvořáková, Josef Krása, and Karel Stejskal, Středovĕká nástĕnná mal’ba na Slovensku (Medieval wall-paintings in Slovakia) (Prague and Bratislava: Odeon / Tatran, 1978), 128–129, first quarter of the fifteenth century. 18 Dvořáková et al., Středovĕká, 157; Prokopp, Középkori, 34, plate 23, dates it to the 1460s. See also the Imareal Database, http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/ 7013278.jpg, with a dating of 1420–1430. 19 http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7018433.jpg.


Fig. 5: St. Blaise (?) in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

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Hungary, although the earliest Benedictine nunnery was consecrated to him at Somlóvásárhely,20 not far from Keszthely. His representations in Central Europe applied the spear as an attribute, as on a panel painting in Sankt Lambrecht in Austria.21 There he is represented together with St. Blaise, who is holding a candle in his hand. This is a thin object and if the upper, burning end would be missing, it would be quite similar to the object held by the bishop at Keszthely.22 Therefore it is possible that the saint next to Erasmus on the left is Blaise, who was a more popular saint in Hungary.23 The third, uppermost row of saints consists of holy rulers. Here the attributes are all missing. The left figure in the northwest wall is totally destroyed. The next one, on the right, is better preserved. The bearded middle-aged man, turning to the left, is wearing a crown, a yellow mantle, and holding an orb in his left hand. His right hand is unfortunately damaged so his attribute is not visible. The next one, on the southeast wall, is somewhat older, having longer brown beard and hair and dressed in a red, furred mantle. He has no special attribute, except the crown, the orb is his right hand and the scepter in his left. He is usually identified with St. Stephen of Hungary24 what is possible, although cannot be proven (fig. 6). The hypothesis is partially based on the neighborhood of the next figure (fig. 7). He, standing on the right side of the same wall, is also a king

20

Levente F. Hervay, “A bencések és apátságaik története a középkori Magyarországon” (The history of the Benedictines and their abbeys in medieval Hungary), in Paradisum plantavit, ed. Imre Takács (Pannonhalma: Pannonhalmi Bencés Főapátság, 2001), 528– 529; András Mező, Patrocíniumok a középkori Magyarországon (Church dedications in medieval Hungary) (Budapest: METEM, 2003), 211. For his cult in Hungary, see Sándor Bálint, Ünnepi kalendárium (Calendar of feasts), 2 vols. (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1977), 2:286–287. 21 St. Lambrecht, Schloßkapelle, 1495–1505. See Othmar Wonisch, Österreichische Kunsttopographie, vol. 31: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Benediktinerstiftes St. Lambrecht (Vienna: Schroll, 1951), 140; http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7002448. jpg. 22 Blaise is similarly represented in Hungary at Szepeshely (Spišska Kapitula, Slovakia), 1470–1478, http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7012342.jpg; Kisszeben (Sabinov, Slovakia), 1515–1525, http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/ 7012189.jpg and Ludrova (Slovakia), 1510–1520—here together with St. Erasmus, http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7012973.jpg. 23 Bálint, Ünnepi, 1:200; Mező, Patrocíniumok, 51–52. 24 Prokopp, “Keszthely 1978,” 25; Prokopp, “Freskenschmuck,”457; Prokopp, “Keszthelyi 1980,” 372; Magyarországi művészet, 597; Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156; accepted by Anda, Keszthely, 12. Not mentioned in Prokopp, Italian Trecento, 159.


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Fig. 6: St. Stephen of Hungary in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely

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Fig. 7: St. Ladislas in the sanctuary of the Franciscan church at Keszthely


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(having a crown and an orb), but his face is damaged. What is characteristic is his armor under the coat. Thus he is a knight, too, what is typical for St. Ladislas. He has a stick in his right hand, which is certainly not a scepter. Unfortunately, the upper part of it next to his face is damaged so the object cannot be identified, but it is possible that is was a battle-ax, the attribute of Ladislas. So most probably the southeast wall was decorated by two of the Holy Kings of Hungary. Regrettably, the next figure is so damaged that his identity cannot be discerned. Its pair on the right side of the first section of the south wall, is also a king with a crown. He has a yellow coat, with a belt above it. He is holding his right hand on a red object which is probably a sword. Unfortunately, no more specific attribute is visible. As to the next four figures, they are even more damaged. The left one in the middle section has probably a crown and a sword, similarly to the previous saint. His pair on the right side is dressed in a red mantle. His head has been destroyed as well as his attribute in his right hand. In the next field we have only the outline of the figure, who is also dressed in a mantle and red shoes. The upper half of the last, westernmost figure is completely damaged; he had originally a red mantle and a green vestment under it. Thus, on the basis of the existing, identifiable saints, we can state that on the two sides of the windows royal saints were represented in the upper row, holy bishops in the middle, and saintly women and Franciscan saints in the lower part. This is certainly different from the usual scheme which kept this place for the apostles (e.g., in the former Augustinian church at Siklós).25 Although the number of represented saints is high (thirty altogether), only eight of them can be identified surely, and seven more with some probability. It is still the half of the original gallery. However, the system is clear and we can attempt to interpret their different groups. Being a Franciscan friary, it is not surprising that Franciscan saints form a group in the lower row on the south wall. Francis, Anthony of Padua, Clare and Elisabeth of Hungary are probably among them. Although the identifications of the single representations are ambiguous, their connection to the order is unquestionable. A further Franciscan saint, Louis of Toulouse, is depicted in another place, in the second row on the southeast wall, among the holy bishops. This location suggests that, in this case, other aspects of his person were more important. 25

See most recently Zsombor Jékely, “A siklósi volt ágostonos tempolom freskóinak stíluskapcsolatai” (The Style of the Frescos at the Augustinian Church of Siklós), in Omnis creatura significans, 129–136. At Keszthely, the apostles are represented in medallions as pairs of the prophets.

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In the neighborhood of Louis, two more bishops can be identified with some certainty: Erasmus and Blaise. They are often represented together in the group of holy bishops in Late Gothic altarpieces (e.g., the Altar of St. Anthony from 1440–1450 and the Assumption Altar from 1470–1480 in Kassa/Košice; the Altar of St. Michael from 1470–1475 in Szepeshely/Spišska Kapitula; the Altar of St. Nicholas from 1519 in Dubrava/Dúbrava; or the Calvary Altar, from ca. 1520 in Kisszeben/Sabinov).26 They also belong to the group of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whose cult flourished in Central Europe in the fifteenth century. Three of the holy women were also venerated as auxiliary saints: Catherine, Margaret, and Barbara. They, together with Dorothea, form also a group of virgines capitales, popular all over Europe, including Hungary, and frequently represented together on murals as well as on panel paintings.27 At Keszthely, as usual, all of them are represented with a crown. Here St. Helena and St. Elisabeth of Hungary also join them, forming a gallery of holy princesses (although Elisabeth is not represented with a crown). This emphasis on their royal affiliation points to the courtly character of the fresco cycle. The popularity of St. Catherine in the Angevin dynasty is a wellknown fact.28 On the frontispiece of the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle (after 1358), the king and the queen are kneeling in front of St. Catherine; she is not only a personification of wisdom (and in this way fits the logic of the foreword of the chronicle) but also the titular saint of the burial chapel of the dynasty in the royal basilica of Székesfehérvár (according to Ernő Marosi, the Illuminated Chronicle might have been produced for this chapel).29 Furthermore, the eldest daughter of King Louis the Great was called Catherine (1370–1378). Another saint among the holy women, Mary Magdalene, was also a subject of much veneration in the Angevin dynasty. Beside her popularity 26

See Dénes Radocsay, A középkori Magyarország táblaképei (Panel paintings of medieval Hungary) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1955), 341, 342, 436, 298, 359; Anton C. Glatz, Gotické umenie v zbierkach Slovenskej Národnej Galérie (Gothic art in the collections of the Slovak National Gallery) (Bratislava: Slovenská Národná Galéria, 1983), 150– 152, no. 69. 27 Kristina Potučková, “Virginity, sanctity, and image: the virgines capitales in upper Hungarian altarpieces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries” (master’s thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2007). 28 Also mentined by Anda, Keszthely, 12. 29 Ernő Marosi, “Das Frontispiz der Ungarischen Bilderchronik,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 46–47 (1993–1994): 357–471, on p. 363.


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among the mendicants, especially the Franciscans,30 the discovery of her relics in 1279, in Saint Maximin, in Provence, was a consequence of the vision of the prince of Salerno, the future Charles II, king of Naples (1285–1309).31 Later as king, Charles remembered Mary Magdalene: in 1308 he commissioned Pietro Cavallini to make a fresco depicting the saint for the Brancaccio chapel of the S. Domenico Maggiore in Naples— a church that he had rededicated to Mary Magdalene in 1283.32 However, the most explicitly dynastic saint of the Angevins was Louis of Toulouse, the uncle of Charles I of Hungary. Canonized in 1317, he was venerated extensively not only by the Neapolitan branch of the dynasty but also by their Hungarian relatives, who founded a Franciscan friary dedicated to Louis in Lippa (Lipava), in 1325, as it has been depicted in the Illuminated Chronicle as well.33 Unquestionably, among these saints can be counted the Holy Kings of Hungary. Ladislas is identifiable with great certainty; the next one on the left side is probably Stephen, while Emeric should be among the unidentified rulers. The joint cult of Stephen, Ladislas, and Emeric as Holy Kings of Hungary34 may go back to the late Arpadian period (thirteenth century), as their first common representation, the Venetian private altar of King 30

Katherine L. Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants: The Preaching of Penance in the late Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995): 1–25; Daniel Russo, “Entre Christ et Marie: La Madeleine dans l’art italien des XIIIe–XVe siècles,” in Marie Madeleine dans la mystique, les arts et les lettres, ed. Eve Duperray (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), 173–190. 31 Victor Saxer, Le culte de Marie Madeleine en Occident dès origines à la fin du moyen âge (Auerre and Paris: Société des Fouilles Archéologiques et des Monuments Historiques de l’Yonne, 1959), 185–214; Ingrid Maisch, Maria Magdalena zwischen Verachtung und Verehrung (Freiburg: Herder, 1996); Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. 307–332. 32 The new title did not become popular; see Jansen, “Mary Magdalen,” 24–25n92. 33 Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 304–310, 326. 34 See Klaniczay, Holy rulers, esp. 322–326, 331–345; for the representations, see Terézia Kerny, “A magyar szent királyok tisztelete és ikonográfiája a XIV. század közepéig” (The veneration and iconography of the Holy Kings of Hungary until the middle of the fourteenth century) in Szent Imre 1000 éve, ed. Terézia Kerny (Székesfehérvár: Székesfehérvári Egyházmegyei Múzeum, 2007), 73–82; eadem, “A magyar szent királyok tisztelete és ikonográfiája a XIII. századtól a XVII. századig” (The veneration and iconography of the Holy Kings of Hungary from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century) in Az ezeréves ifjú, ed. Tamás Lőrincz (Székesfehérvár: Szent Imre-templom, 2007), 79– 123.

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Andrew III (Bern, Historisches Museum) suggests. Promoted by Mary of Hungary, the wife of Charles II of Naples through her commissions, their cult flourished under the Hungarian Angevins: Charles I, Louis the Great, and his mother, Queen Elisabeth the Elder. Miniatures (e.g., the Decretalis of Miklós Vásári, ordered in Bologna during his trip accompanying the queen to Naples in 1343) and murals from the late fourteenth to the early fifteenth century testify to the growing popularity of this group in the whole country.35 Needless to say, all of these saints preferred by the court (Louis, Magdalene, Catherine and the Holy Kings of Hungary) figure in the Hungarian Angevin Legendary, a luxurious manuscript commissioned by the Hungarian Angevins around 1340.36 However, in contrast to the Legendary, the frescos of Keszthely show distinctive features in the selection as well as in the arrangement. First, if the upper row consisted of ten royal saints, as it is probable, it presents one of the richest royal saint galleries of the period. The usual representations of royal saints in Hungary included Stephen, Emeric and Ladislas, and occasionally some other holy rulers like Sigismund (e.g., in Lónya37 and, probably, in Almakerék, in the early fifteenth century).38 The Keszthely cycle can be compared only to such ambitious commissions as that of Charles IV at Karlštejn, where Charlemagne, Louis of France, Sigismund, and Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Hungarian royal saints were represented beside St. Wenceslas.39 Second, the order of the saints is quite strange at Keszthely. It follows neither the calendar, nor the ecclesiastical hierarchy (according to which the Hungarian Angevin Legendary presented, in descending order, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors and the holy women and virgins). 35

Dragoş-Gheorghe Năstăsoiu, “Sancti reges Hungariae in Mural Painting of Late Medieval Hungary” (master’s thesis, Central European University, Budapest, 2009). 36 See Gábor Klaniczay, Tamás Sajó, and Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Vinum vetus in utres novos: Conclusioni sull’edizione CD del Leggendario Ungherese Angioino,” in L’état angevin: Pouvoir, culture et societé entre XIIIe et XIVe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 1998), 301–315; Béla Zsolt Szakács, A Magyar Anjou Legendárium képi rendszerei (Pictorial systems of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary) (Budapest: Balassi, 2006). 37 József Lángi, “Előzetes beszámoló a lónyai református templom falképeinek kutatásáról, feltárásáról” (Preliminary report on the research and exploration of the wall-paintings of the Calvinist church of Lónya) Műemlékvédelem 48 (2004): 357–374. According to Lángi, Ladislas was probably also represented opposite to Sigismund, but not a single fragment of this work has survived; ibid., 370. 38 Gogâltan, “Patronage,” 86–89. 39 Klaniczay, Holy rulers, 349; see also Magister Theodoricus, ed. Jiří Fajt (Prague: Národní galerie, 1998).


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The Keszthely cycle starts with the kings, followed by the bishops and finished by the ladies and the friars. This order seems to follow a secular logic instead of the church hierarchy. The courtly character of the program of the Keszthely murals was certainly not unique. An interesting comparison can be made to the altar dedications of the Gilded Chapel of Our Lady in Pécs, founded by bishop Nicholas Neszmélyi. The papal letter of indulgence issued in 1355 enumerated the following altars: Ladislas, Stephen, Emeric, Martin, Livinus, Dorothea, Elisabeth and Mary Magdalene.40 Six of the eight saints were represented in Keszthely, and among the unidentified bishop saints one or two more might have been also present. Since bishop Nicholas had good relations with the king, the similarity of the two selections may go back to their common courtly sources. The link between Keszthely and the royal court is certainly the commissioner, István Lackfi. Although according to the latest research the Franciscans were already at Keszthely as early as 1368, when the town was still royal property (Lackfi ruled it from ca.1376),41 the representation of the Lackfi coat of arms in the keystone of the sanctuary as well as in the murals suggest that the building of the sanctuary and its pictorial decoration was ordered by István Lackfi and was finished before his massacre and the confiscation of his properties in 1397.42 Certainly, in the selection of saints personal reasons played an important role, too. Many of the identified saints—such as Stephen, Ladislas, or Catherine—and, possibly, many of the unidentified ones (Emeric?, Nicholas? Denis?),43 are related to the Lackfi family tree.44 A further allusion to 40

Klaniczay, Holy rulers, 339; Tamás Fedeles, “Eine Bishofsrezidenz in Südungarn im Mittelalter: Die Burg zu Fünfkirchen (Pécs),” Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 13 (2008): 206–207; Veronika Csikós, “Angevin Courtly Art as Reflected in the Gilded Chapel of Our Lady in Pécs,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 15 (2009): 113–130. 41 Gábor Szatlóczki, “Adalékok a keszthelyi ferences kolostor korai építéstörténetéhez” (Additions to the early building history of the Franciscan cloister of Keszthely) Castrum 4 (2006): 95–98; Hungary in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Pál Engel, CD-ROM edition (Budapest: Térinfo Bt. / MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 2001). See also János Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz rendjének története Magyarországon 1711-ig (The history of the order of St. Francis in Hungary until 1711), 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1923), 1:186. 42 See Sándor Tóth, “Keszthely, ehemalige Franziskanerkirche,” in Sigismundus rex et imperator, 420–421; Jékely, “Keszthely,” 421. 43 Proposed by Prokopp, “Keszthely és Siklós,” 156. 44 The Lackfi family, as its name suggests, originates from Lack (= Ladislas), and in the subsequent three generations the names Stephen, Emeric, Ladislas, Dionysius, Nicholas and Catherine regularly return, see János Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a XIV.

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the family can be found in the person of St. Anne. The wife of István Lackfi was called Anne, and her protector saint was represented above the standing saints, in the early life of the Holy Virgin: she is the central figure in the east wall, holding Mary as child, and also depicted in the southeast wall on the left side, behind the Virgin presented in the Temple. István Lackfi had a brilliant carrier under the Angevin rulers, Louis the Great (1342–1382) and Queen Mary (1382–1385, 1386–1395). He was Comes of the Szeklers (1367–1371) and several other counties (1369– 1397), Ban of Croatia (1371–1372, 1383–1384, 1385), and Voivode of Transylvania (1372–1376, 1385–1386), and served as Palatine of the country—supporting King Sigismund, the husband of Queen Mary— between 1387 and 1392, and as Master of the Horse between 1387 and 1395.45 He was the leader of the Hungarian troops in Italy in 1372–1373, and went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1376 when he lost his position in the court. He was usually on the side of the Angevin aspirants to the Hungarian throne: supported Charles II (1385–1386, also king of Naples 1381–1386), Queen Mary, and—after her death and Sigismund’s disastrous battle at Nicopolis (1396)—Ladislas of Naples (son of Charles II, king of Naples 1386–1414). That is why he was massacred on February 22, 1397.46 The loyalty of Palatine Lackfi to the Angevin dynasty is nicely paralleled by the program of the murals in the Franciscan friary at Keszthely. Moreover, in this rich gallery of saints, there is one axis which seems to be more personal. The most prestigious place is the left side of the southeast wall (since the east wall was not decorated by figures), on which in század közepéig (The Hungarian kindreds until the middle of the fourteenth century), 3 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1900–1904), 2:171; Pál Engel, Középkori magyar genealógia (Medieval Hungarian genealogy), CD-ROM edition (Budapest: Arcanum, 2001). 45 Pál Engel, Magyarország világi archontológiája, 1301–1457 (The secular archontology of Hungary, 1301–1457), 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Int., 1996), 1:41 and 2:139; cf. Karácsonyi, Magyar nemzetségek, 2:178–179. 46 For the biography of István Lackfi II of Csáktornya and his fate see: Antal Pór, “Az Anjouk kora” (The age of the Angevins), in A magyar nemzet története, ed. Sándor Szilágyi, 10 vols. (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1895), 3:359–360 et passim; Gyula Schönherr, “Az Anjou-ház örökösei” (Heirs of the Angevin dynasty), ibid., 414–415, 434–437; Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű, Magyar történet (Hungarian history), 8 vols. (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1928–1934), 3:203–206; Elemér Mályusz, Zsigmond király uralma Magyarországon (The rule of king Sigismund in Hungary) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1984), 36–38; Pál Engel, “A Lackfiak” (The Lackfis), in Művészet Zsigmond király korában, 1387–1437, ed. László Beke, Ernő Marosi and Tünde Wehli, 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutató Csoport, 1987), 1:427–428.


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the first row probably St. Stephen, the protector saint of István Lackfi was represented. Above him, in the scene of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, St. Anne, patron saint of Lackfi’s wife, was depicted. Below St. Stephen, Louis of Toulouse, the most important dynastic saint of the Angevins, can be identified. Finally, in the lower register, St. Margaret is visible with the dragon. Zsombor Jékely noted that Margaret was also represented in another foundation of Palatine Lackfi, at Csáktornya (Čakovec, Croatia), where her attribute is very similar to the dragon on the seals of the family.47 At Keszthely, the dragon of Margaret is closer to the one carved on Lackfi’s tombstone, still preserved in the church. Thus, the axis on the southeast wall is a kind of self-definition of the donor referring to his family, to his dynastic relations and to his own and his wife’s patron saints. After a splendid life and a tragic end, the remains of Palatine Lackfi were guarded by a group of saints, who can tell more about him and his intentions than any of the most eloquent chronicles. All photos: © Attila Mudrák

47

Zsombor Jékely, “A Lackfi-család pálos temploma Csáktornya mellett” (The Pauline church of the Lackfi family near Csáktornya) in Építészet a középkori DélMagyarországon, ed. Tibor Kollár (in preparation). I thank Zsombor Jékely for the opportunity to consult his manuscript. See also Pál Engel, Pál Lővei, and Lívia Varga, “Zsigmond-kori bárói síremlékeinkről” (On the tombstones of the barons of the Sigismund Era), Ars Hungarica 11 (1983): 21–48, on pp. 25–26; iidem, “Grabplatten von ungarischen Magnaten aus dem Zeitalter der Anjou-Könige und Sigismunds von Luxemburg,” Acta Historiae Artium 30 (1984): 33–63, on p. 46.

Late Medieval Saints and the Visual Representation of Rural Space Gerhard JARITZ

Religious messages should reach the audience they are meant for. To realize this aim their contents have to be mediated in a way and a language which are understood by their recipients and help them to identify with the messages and to learn from them. If one wants to reach women and men, or members of the elites and the lower classes of society with similar intensity and with the same success, it certainly means that these contents and languages must either be different or formulated in a generally comprehensible way that can be motivating for everybody. A variety of methods meet these goals in late medieval society especially. Images and sermons, in particular, were meant to come as close as possible to their beholders and audience by integrating the messages into familiar environments, settings and situations.1 Thus, the saints portrayed could almost become members of one’s own society, their lives and actions being easily recognizable and, in some respects, near to those of the beholders. This closeness might have concerned the outer appearance of the saintly persons, the background in front of which they acted, the chosen scenes that were presented from their vitae, and a sense of the recipients participating in the saints’ performance.2 1

See Gabriela Signori, “Wörter, Sachen und Bilder. Oder: die Mehrdeutigkeit des scheinbar Eindeutigen,” in Mundus in imagine: Bildersprache und Lebenswelten im Mittelalter; Festgabe für Klaus Schreiner, ed. Andrea Löther et al. (Munich: Fink, 1996), 11–33, on p. 26: “Jeder Ort—ob Chor, Langhaus, Kapelle, Wallfahrtskirche, Rathaus oder Stube— hat sein eigenes ‘Publikum,’ und jedes (ortsspezifische) Publikum wiederum seine eigenen Erwartungen, genauso wie jedes Bild seine eigenen (seinerseits ortsspezifischen) Intentionen zum Ausdruck bringt (als Kult-, Devotions-, Wunder-, Denk-, Merk- oder Propagandabilder etc.).” 2 See Gerhard Jaritz, “Nähe und Distanz als Gebrauchsfunktion spätmittelalterlicher religiöser Bilder,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle

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Gerhard JARITZ

Being aware of these phenomena and the influence that they exerted on the late medieval presentation of religious scenes, the question might be asked to what extent one can recognize uniformity in their presentation or how they led to differences of emphasis and relevance. One may try to investigate this question with the help of public visual sources, their references to different classes of society, and the particularities of these references. Analyzing visual evidence from late medieval Central Europe I would like to pick up this problem and concentrate on one class of society and one specific environment: peasants and rural space. To what extent were the peasantry and rural space seen as important enough to serve as the setting and environment in the visual representations of saints, their lives and actions? Were the depicted saints, that is, the producers of their images—patrons, donors—interested in peasant society, in any communication with them and with having an effective religious influence on the inhabitants of rural space? A general overview of the settings into which the late medieval visual representations of saints and narrations of their lives were integrated shows that one can clearly recognize representations of different social and spatial contexts that were considered relevant for the portrayal of saints and sainthood.3 Upper class or urban environments were chosen regularly as the settings for saintly lives, often portraying familiar types of exteriors or interiors, sometimes offering actual “beautiful portraits” of one’s own community, like, for instance, the well-known background depictions showing Vienna in panel paintings of the fifteenth century.4 In the context of other economically successful communities one also finds their “portraits” as important settings of saints’ lives, in mining areas in particular.5

Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich: Fink, 2002), 331– 346. 3 With regard to urban Italian communities, see recently Georg Traska, Die Gesellschaft der Räume. Laikale und bürgerliche Handlungsräume in der italienischen Malerei und Literatur um 1300 (Weimar: VDG, 2009). Regarding the general relevance of space and spatial theories in visual culture, art and art history, see Wolfgang Kemp, Die Räume der Maler: Zur Bilderzählung seit Giotto (Munich: Beck, 1996), esp. 9–14. 4 See Walther Brauneis, “Beitrag zur mittelalterlichen Topographie der Stadt Wien,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 27 (1973): 121–131. 5 See Gerhard Jaritz, “The Visual Representation of Late Medieval Work: Patterns of Context, People and Action,” in The Idea of Work in Europe from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Josef Ehmer and Catharina Lis (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 125–148, on pp. 128–132.

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The medieval images of peasants and rural space have been of interest to a number of researchers, especially with regard to the depictions of the Labors of the Months and calendar illustrations, the most popular late medieval topic of artistic representation referring to peasant life and rural work.6 They were produced for all classes of medieval society, as illuminations of manuscripts of the elites, for instance, on portals of urban churches and cathedrals, and in wall paintings of rural churches. Their message was valid for everyone; they showed the right work done by the right people at the right time in the right way.7 Another topic of images referring to life and work in rural society contained a message that was particularly meant for the members of this society. The “Sunday Christ,” found in Western and Central Europe mainly as a public wall painting on the outside of rural churches, showed the beholders which activities should not be done on Sundays or other Christian holidays.8 Further religious topics of images in which peasant life and rural space proved important are rare, except for representations of the Nativity, and do not occur regularly. Nevertheless, in some contexts they seem to have been relevant and follow specific patterns. This can be observed particu6

With regard to general aspects of the representation of peasants and rural space in medieval visual sources and the Labors of the Months, in particular, see the numerous publications by Perrine Mane, e. g., “Images de la vie des villageois,” in Villages et villageois au Moyen Age (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1992), 161–179; eadem, Le travail à la campagne au Moyen Age—étude iconographique (Paris: Picard, 2006). See also Marie Collins and Virginia Davis, A Medieval Book of Seasons (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991); Wilhelm Hansen, Kalenderminiaturen der Stundenbücher (Mittelalterliches Leben im Jahreslauf) (Munich: Callwey, 1984); Siegfried Epperlein, Bäuerliches Leben im Mittelalter: Schriftzeugnisse und Bildzeugnisse (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2003); see also the very early interest in the topic by Berthold Haendcke, “Der Bauer in der deutschen Malerei von ca. 1470 bis ca. 1550,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 35 (1912): 385–401. 7 See Gerhard Jaritz, “The Good and the Bad Example, or Making Use of Le Petit Peuple in Late Medieval Central Europe,” in Le petit people dans l’Occident medieval: Terminologies, perceptions, réalités, ed. Pierre Boglioni et al. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 83–96, on p. 87. 8 See especially Athene Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000); Robert Wildhaber, “Der ‘Feiertagschristus’ als ikonographischer Ausdruck der Sonntagsheiligung,” Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 16 (1956): 1–34; Gerhard Jaritz, “Zur Visualisierung des Arbeitsverbotes im Spätmittelalter,” in Wert und Bewertung von Arbeit im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Käthe Sonnleitner (Graz: Institut für Geschichte der Universität Graz, 1995), 185–193.

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larly with regard to a number of visual representations of saints and saints’ activities in which rural space played a role.

Fig. 1: The miraculous resuscitation of a child by the Virgin of Mariazell

The visual translations of miracle reports at places of pilgrimage started to take on an important function as a propaganda tool at the beginning of the sixteenth century. They show the power of the pilgrimage’s saint with regard to the needs of people who approached her or him seeking help. As in the miracle reports, in the images one also finds one overarching general message to the beholders: the pictures show that the power of the saint could help everyone, everywhere, in the context of any kind of need. The phenomenon of “all receiving help” seems to have been one of the most important aspects of any discourse about pilgrimages.


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This can, for instance, be seen well in examples of the power of the Virgin, which is represented in the miracle images at the famous Styrian pilgrimage place of Mariazell from the beginning of the sixteenth century.9 The Virgin of Mariazell was able to help members of the elites as well as lower class people from rural space. King Louis of Hungary was supported against the Turks, the lame Margrave Henry of Moravia and his wife were healed, but also stablemen were rescued10 and a child was resuscitated who had fallen into a brook and been killed by a mill wheel while its mother was doing the laundry there (fig. 1).11 A number of vitae and legends of saints show that the latter had communicated during their life with representatives of any social space and the members of all classes of society. In a number of cases this was taken over into their visual representations. Such contexts, which also included rural space can, for instance, be recognized in the late medieval images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,12 in two ways. Although rarely represented, one does find them in connection with the miracle by which he saved rural domestic animals from a disease by strewing salt for them (fig. 2).13 In the 9

Concerning the miracle images of the Virgin of Mariazell, see Walter Brunner, ed., „... da half Maria aus aller Not:” Der Große Mariazeller Wunderaltar aus der Zeit um 1520 (Graz: Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, 2002); Gerhard Jaritz, “Der Grosse Mariazeller Wunderaltar. Oder: Zeichen der ‘Allmacht’ der Gottesmutter,” in Mariazell und Ungarn: 650 Jahre religiöse Gemeinsamkeit, ed. Walter Brunner et al. (Graz and Esztergom: Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv, 2003), 61–68. Regarding a similar cycle of miracle images from the important Bavarian pilgrimage site of Altötting see Die Mirakelbilder der Hl. Kapelle in Altötting, ed. Altötting Bischöfliche Administration d. Hl. Kapelle (Altötting: Altöttinger Kunstverlag 2007). 10 See Jaritz, “The Good and the Bad Example,” 89. 11 Panel of the so-called “Großer Mariazeller Wunderaltar,” ca. 1520. Graz (Styria), Landesmuseum Joanneum. The caption says: “Ein mutter wuesch pei einem pach, do fiel ir kint in den pach, das fier jar alt ward und ran durch ain lauffend mulrad, do ward es gedot und zerstosen von dem wasser und rad, do habens vater und muter mit so schwer wax als das kind war gen Zell in irem grosen leid versprochen, do ward es lebendig und gen Zell pracht mit glaubirdigen zeugnus des abts von dem Heilgen Perg.” 12 For the development of the visual images of St. Bernard of Clairvaux see, generally, Gerhard Jaritz, “Religiöse Bildbotschaften und ihre Entwicklungsmuster im Mittelalter: Bernhard von Clairvaux im Kontext,” in Festschrift Gerhard Pferschy zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Gernot Peter Obersteiner et al. (Graz: Historische Landeskommission für Steiermark et al., 2000), 105–116. 13 Panel of a St. Bernard altarpiece, Jörg Breu the Older, ca. 1500. Zwettl (Lower Austria), abbey church. For the altarpiece and its iconographic program see Cäsar Menz, Das Frühwerk Jörg Breus des Älteren (Augsburg: Kommissionsverlag Bücher Seitz, 1982), 17–47.

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image, moreover, the relationship of monastic and rural space is emphasized in the background: on one side of the picture is the depiction of the monastery, on the other side is the representation of a peasant house. Another story from Saint Bernard’s legend that one finds in images more often shows that he wanted to implement the Ora et labora ideal by doing field work. Thus, he asked the Lord to provide him and his monks with the ability to harvest grain (fig. 3).14

Fig. 2: Saint Bernard rescues domestic animals from disease by strewing salt

14

Panel of a St. Bernard altarpiece, Jörg Breu the Older, ca. 1500. Zwettl (Lower Austria), abbey church.


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Fig. 3: Saint Bernard and his monastic community harvest grain

The toil of peasants’ work could also become a symbol for the diligence of saintly persons. In this respect, and in contrast to the Lazy Bishop on the other side, the Industrious Bishop in a South Tyrolean wall painting is represented as a ploughman who exerts himself in doing fieldwork which sanctifies him, as his halo indicates (fig. 4).15

15

The Industrious and the Lazy Bishop, wall painting, ca. 1420. Brixen/Bressanone (South Tyrol), cloister of the cathedral, tenth arcade. See Waltraud Kofler Engl, “Malerei von 1270 bis 1430,” in Kunst in Tirol, vol. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Renaissance, ed. Paul Naredi-Rainer and Lukas Madersbacher (Innsbruck and Vienna: Tyrolia, 2007), 330–332.

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. Fig. 4: The industrious bishop doing his sanctifying ploughing

Other saints also indicated a positive approach to rural work worth being made public in visual representations, for instance, the sixth-century Saint Wendelin of Trier. The legend tells that Wendelin was on a pilgrimage to the sanctuaries of Trier when he became hungry and approached a rich manorial lord, asking him for bread. The rich man answered that a young and strong fellow like Wendelin should not earn his bread by begging but with work, and thus he sent him to herd his animals. Wendelin became a capable herdsman and the drove grew rapidly, which made the other herdsmen jealous. After a number of problems and a translocation miracle, Wendelin was able to satisfy the manorial lord and bring the story to a favourable conclusion. This sacred context of pilgrimage and rural work then played a specific important role in the visual representations of the saint (fig. 5).16

16

Saint Wendelin of Trier Becoming a Herdsman, panel painting, beginning of the sixteenth century. Kremsmünster (Upper Austria), collections of the monastery. Concerning Saint Wendelin see Manfred Peter, Der heilige Wendelin—Die Geschichte eines faszinierenden Lebens (Otzenhausen: Burr, 2005).


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Fig. 5: The pilgrim Wendelin becomes a herdsman

The number of images in which saints or narratives from saints’ lives were put into rural settings without such an explicit connection with the legend is not high, but they can still be found. As urban settings have to be seen in the context of townspeople being the beholders and recipients of the pictures, the rural background may be conjoined with village people as the target audience. Sometimes the scenes were integrated into rural space alone, as in a Lower Austrian Wheel Miracle of Saint Catherine, for which the artist used an engraving (“On the Way to the Market”) by the Alsatian

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artist Martin Schongauer and copied it into the background of the scene (fig. 6).17

Fig. 6: A Lower Austrian Wheel Miracle of Saint Catherine in front of Schongauer’s rural space

One of the topics of images which shows a variety of possible settings of the scene and also a more common appearance of rural space is the Visitation (Luke 1:39–56). The background of Visitations that were produced for village churches often show a rural setting of the Virgin’s visit to Saint Elisabeth (fig. 7),18 while in images produced for town churches urban backgrounds prevail. 17

Wheel Miracle of Saint Catherine (detail), panel painting, Hans Egkel, 1470/80. Melk (Lower Austria), collections of the monastery. See Gerhard Jaritz, “The Material Culture of the Peasantry in the Late Middle Ages: ‘Image’ and ‘Reality’,” in Agriculture in the Middle Ages: Technology, Practice, and Representation, ed. Del Sweeney (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 163–188, on p. 181. 18 The Virgin Mary of a Visitation (detail: rural mill and village church in the background), panel painting, Andreas Haller, 1513. Innsbruck (Tyrol), Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Inv. 43.


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Fig. 7: A rural mill in the background of a Visitation

Sometimes, rural, urban, and noble spaces were combined to create a setting for the visual representation of saints; images of the Visitation are again good examples. One may assume that this refers to the intention, mentioned above, to show that the saints and their actions affected everyone, independent of origin and social status. The panels of a South Tyrolean Visitation from the 1460s are an interesting instance of this (fig. 8).19 The background shows views of a very particular landscape with a town, castles, peasant houses, and farm buildings (figs. 9–14), a kind of visual representation of the “whole world” affected by the Virgin’s visit. Rural 19

Visitation, panels from a winged altarpiece, master from Brixen/Bressanone, 1460/70. Innsbruck (Tyrol), Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Inv. 2 and 3. See Erich Egg, Gotik in Tirol: Die Flügelaltäre (Innsbruck: Haymon, 1985), 91.

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space, however, still plays the most important role in the number and quality of the details portrayed, indicating that village people were the target audience.

Fig. 8: Visitation, South Tyrol, 1460/70


Figs 9 and 10: Farm houses and a windmill in the background of the Visitation

Figs 11 and 12: A town and a castle in the background of the Visitation

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Figs 13 and 14: Barns and cultivated rural landscape in the background of the Visitation

A particular case of sainthood and rural space is the depiction of members of rural society participating in the activities of saints. The main examples showing this feature are the large fifteenth-century wall paintings representing the Journey of the Magi that can be found especially in today’s Southern Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. The participants of these Journeys are not only the Three Kings and their rich entourage, but often a large number of different other humans, among them peasants (fig. 15),20 hunters, jesters, and so on, and also animals. This was clearly meant to represent the situation that all living beings unto the lowest level of creatures21 were on their way to the Nativity to greet and adore the new-born Lord, from the Three Kings as worldly rulers to the members of the lowest groups of human society and even to animals. Again the emphasis is on all, of whom the peasants were an important part.

20

Journey of the Three Magi (detail: peasant), wall painting, John of Kastua, 1490. Hrastovlje (Slovenian Istria), church of the Holy Trinity. See Marijan Zadnikar, Hrastovlje: Romanska arhitektura in gotske freske (Ljubljana: Družina, 1988), 180. 21 Cf. Kemp, Die Räume der Maler, 51–56.


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Fig. 15: A peasant who has joined the Journey of the Magi

*** Images of saints, saints’ lives, and saints’ miracles in which the participation or concern of all members of human society needed to be stressed may thus be seen generally as one of the main contexts in which the reference was made to peasants and rural space in late medieval visual culture. Peasants also occur in similar roles in other themes of late medieval religious art like the Dance of Death or the Last Judgement. In both of the latter it was again most important to emphasize that all humans should be concerned with having to quit their earthly existence and having to

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justify themselves before God. Members of all classes and levels of human society were touched, from popes and worldly rulers to peasants and beggars, and this was made very clear in the images. Thus, for instance, a peasant woman, easily recognizable by her cone-shaped straw hat, was an important representative of the whole sinful part of humankind and a relevant participant in the journey towards the open Mouth of Hell at the Last Judgement (fig. 16).22

Fig. 16: The peasant woman, recognizable by her straw hat, was an indispensable member of the sinful part of the whole of humankind as they approach hell

This emphasis on peasants and rural space, portrayed as part of all humankind, appears beside the image of peasants and their toil as an ideal of industriousness, also applicable to saints and saintly figures, as the examples of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Wendelin, and the Industrious 22

Last Judgement, panel painting, end of the fifteenth century. Heidenreichstein (Lower Austria), Castle Museum. There are, however, further examples, in which one peasant alone stands for the sinners in visual representations of the Last Judgement. See, for instance, Jaritz, “The Good and the Bad Example,” 88 and 94, fig. 5.


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Bishop show. Moreover, rural space in images was used to strengthen the influence on the beholders who were themselves part of such spaces, just as setting the saints visually in towns or in front of towns was meant to influence an urban audience. Compared to urban references, the integration of rural space in late medieval visual representations of sainthood occurred more rarely, but one is still able to see that it could become a particular means of discourse in the actual and symbolic communication between humans and saints. Thereby, the performance space of the image confirmed itself as social (historical) space.23 All photos: © Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Krems/Donau

23

Cf. Traska, Die Gesellschaft der Räume, 198–199.

Sainthood in the Propaganda of Mendicant Orders The Case of the Dialogus contra fraticellos of James of the Marches György GALAMB

1. Already in the eleventh century, Ademarus Cabanensis, the French chronicler wrote on the heretics of his age: “Quasi monachi apparebant et castitatem simulabant.”1 Controversies on true sainthood and falsa sanctitas persisted with changing intensity throughout the high and late middle ages, in the context of different heretical groups. The two great mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, not only introduced new models of sanctity, but at the same time, in the service of the Papacy, wanted to define the limits of orthodox behaviour and the frames of orthodox sainthood. As it is well known, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, they obtained the canonization of a great number of their exponents. Moreover, they popularized certain models of sanctity (doctorsaints, preacher saints),2 and made efforts to control and to shape the forms of female sanctity. At the same time they aimed to marginalize suspected forms of popular devotion, declaring them heretical, and applying the charge of falsa sanctitas against them. Moreover, the rivalry between the two great mendicant orders—not to be treated in this paper— generated further conflicts on this matter. I will focus on three aspects of the religious conflicts that arose in this context. Firstly, the condemnation of certain “alternative” cults, which 1 2

Ademari S. Cibardi monachi Historiarum libri tres, III, 59, in PL, vol. 141, col. 63B. André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981), 243–256, 388–410, 455–478; Jean-Claude Schmitt, “La fabrique des saints,” Annales E.S.C. 39 (1984): 290–295; Roberto Rusconi, “Da Costanza al Laterano: La ‘calcolata devozione’ del ceto mercantile-borghese nell’ Italia del Quattrocento,” in Storia dell’Italia religiosa, vol. 1: L’Antichità e il Medioevo, ed. André Vauchez, (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1993), 514–515.

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emerged in ecclesiastical or lay milieus and were regarded as heretical; secondly, the use of miracles as a device of propaganda; and thirdly, the attempts to appropriate the role and to monopolize the tradition of the “true” Church and the “true” Order. These aspects are manifested clearly during the controversy between the Franciscan Observants and the fraticelli, taking place in the first half of the fifteenth century. I prefer to discuss them foremost on the basis of the evidence of Dialogus contra fraticellos of James of the Marches while touching upon the most important precedents and parallelisms. 2. Concerning the first aspect, from our point of view it is noteworthy that various cults spontaneously emerged in Italy around several laymen at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.3 In 1296 Armanno Pungilupo died at Ferrara. In his lifetime he performed numerous pious deeds. He was buried in the cathedral of the town, and immediately following the burial miraculous events occurred at his tomb. The increased popular devotion provoked an inquisitorial investigation which accused the late Armanno of having had a relation with the Cathars and other heretics, and of having denounced the Church for the death penalties inflicted on heretics. Thus Aldobrandino, the Dominican inquisitor, was ordered to exhume and to burn his body. Yet, the local chapter did not obey, and therefore Aldobrandino excommunicated them. The chapter appealed to the pope who decided in favor of the inquisitor in 1301.4 In Milan, at the end of the thirteenth century, a certain Guglielma was considered a member of the Bohemian royal dynasty, lived in poverty, and was credited with thaumaturgic gifts. A cult soon formed around her persona, not only among the people, but among the aristocratic women and the Cistercian monks of the cloister of Chiaravalle as well. When she died, in 1281 or 1282, she was buried and an altar was erected in her honor. Guglielma was venerated not only for her pious life and her miracles, but she was considered by many disciples the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, an idea she, however, refused. This opinion was spread first of all by her fellows, Andrea Saramita and Manfreda Pirovano, who believed that Guglielma would return from heaven in order to redeem mankind. In 1300 the mortal remains were exhumed upon the order of inquisitors, and 3

Vauchez, La sainteté, 272–286. Recently Janine Larmon Peterson has published a study on the concept of martyrdom commonly associated with heretics persecuted in late medieval Italy: Peterson, “Holy Heretics in Late Medieval Italy,” Past and Present 204 (2009): 3–31. 4 Grado G. Merlo, Eretici ed eresie medievali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), 107–111.

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her disciples were burned. In this case the beliefs developed into two directions: besides a local cult, which did not contain any kind of heterodoxy, there appeared the excessive opinion of Andrea and Manfreda on the Holy Spirit, which was obviously suitable to discredit all her disciples and Guglielma herself as well.5 Grado Merlo has drawn attention to the fact that in these cases we can see two concurrent cults: that of the local people and local ecclesiastical institutions, on the one hand, and that of the inquisitors, on the other. The chapter and the cloister were embedded in the local society and they did not find anything perilous in these cults, what was important for them was the saintly behaviour, the miracles, and the pious deeds. Alternatively, the inquisitors, representing the opinion of the mendicants in addition to the papal policy, emphasized the requirement of conformity with the doctrines, of being obedient and paying respect to the frontier lying between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and they opposed the cults and the persons who stepped over it. The ideas of voluntary poverty and the spirit of the gospels might be manifested only within these limits.6 Many scholars have dealt with different aspects of these cults. André Vauchez has fitted several other cases in the pattern of the local demand for sainthood which emerged in the North-Italian city-towns, and the protagonists of which were exclusively laymen. Furthermore, he has stressed the increasing control of the Papacy over the process of canonization.7 Larmon Peterson has examined, beyond those of Armanno and Guglielma, many other similar cults, for example, those of Meco del Sacco of Ascoli or Guido Lacha. She has studied, how the very processes and condemnations of the inquisition prompted the local population to venerate several laymen as saints and martyrs. Another important set of examples is constituted by Italian female saints from the thirteenth to fifteenth century, whose spiritual control was accomplished by mendicant confessors playing the role of biographers as well. But I am not going to go into the details of this subject, since it has 5

For Guglielma, see Merlo, ibid., 113–118; Luisa Muraro, Guglielma e Maifreda: Storia di un eresia femminista (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1985); Barbara Newman, “The Heretic Saint: Guglielma of Bohemia, Milan, and Brunate,” Church History 74 (2005): 1–38; André Vauchez, “Comparsa e affermazione di una religiosità laica,” in Storia dell’Italia religiosa, 1:423–424; Stephen E. Wessley: “The Thirteenth Century Guglielmites: Salvation throught Women,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 289–303. 6 Merlo, Eretici ed eresie, 108–110. 7 Vauchez, La sainteté, 39–67, 99–120.

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already been examined thoroughly by, among others, Rudolph Bell, Caroline W. Bynum and Gábor Klaniczay.8 As to the other side, that of the inquisitors, the Dominicans soon found a person who incarnated a different idea of holiness. Peter of Verona was born in a Cathar family, but he was converted and entered the Dominican order. After having become an inquisitor and preacher, he was murdered in 1252 by assassins hired by Cathars. His canonization took place very quickly, already in the next year. Nonetheless, his capacity as inquisitor became an important element in his hagiography only at the end of thirteenth century. Before then he was only represented as an anti-heretic preacher. His figure fitted the established patterns of sainthood, first of all, through the highlighting of his martyrdom. As Donald Prudlo has observed, according to the depiction of Jacobus de Voragine, the figure of the martyred inquisitor could be perceived as a New Christ killed by the Jews, while the conversion of heretics corresponds to redemption. He appears in the biographies with the attributes of martyrdom, even as an alter Christus,9 what expresses the rivalry with the Franciscans, since this association contested the qualification of their founder, St Francis himself. In Peter’s cult three important elements were linked: the martyrdom, the miracles and the preaching.10 It is noteworthy, that later, during the fifteenth century, when the prestige of preaching increased, many celebrated mendicant preachers obtained the fama sanctitatis, or the canonization itself.11 3. The pursuit of holiness was manifested also in the conflict between the Franciscan Observants and the fraticelli, who were often moved by similar aspirations. It is perhaps this conflict during the fourteenth and 8

Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Caroline W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987); Gabriella Zarri, Sante vive: Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ’400 e ’500 (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990); Gábor Klaniczay, “I modelli di santità femminile tra i secoli XIII e XIV in Europa centrale e in Italia,” in Spiritualità e lettere nella cultura italiana e ungherese del basso medioevo, ed. Sante Graciotti and Cesare Vasoli (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 75–109. Klaniczay confronted the cult of the Italian female saints with those established around the holy queens belonging to the Arpadian dynasty. 9 Stanislao da Campagnola, L’angelo del sesto sigillo e l’“alter Christus:” Genesi e sviluppo di due temi francescani nei secoli XIII–XIV (Rome: Laurentianum / Antonianum, 1971). 10 Donald Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 100–107. See also Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols. (Florence: SISMEL, 1998), 1:426–427. 11 Rusconi, “Da Costanza al Laterano,” 514–515; Vauchez, Sainteté, 89n44, 446–448.


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fifteenth centuries that indicates most clearly the attitudes of the Franciscan Observants vis-à-vis the manifestations of the “alternatives” of official sainthood, their efforts to exploit the possibilities inherent in the miracles, and the competition with the fraticelli for being recognized as the true repository of the institutional tradition of the Franciscan order. The details of the history of the fraticelli and their persecution, which begun at the times of Pope John XXII, are well known, due to a number of scholars’ work.12 From our point of view the more illuminating question is the relation between the Observants and the fraticelli, and its inherent ambivalence. In the first decades of the fourteenth century several groups sought to accomplish a religiosity and adopt a form of life corresponding to the ideal of poverty going back to St. Francis. The first communities of the Observance appeared and grew up in Tuscany, in Romagna, in Umbria and in the Marche, owing to Giovanni della Valle (in 1334), then to his disciple, Gentile da Spoleto (in 1350), and lastly to Paoluccio da Trinci (in 1368).13 The fraticelli emerged in the same area. In their case, however, the dissemination of the idea of poverty deriving from St. Francis entailed the denial of hierarchy, orthodox ecclesiology, and papal power. Aside from the persecution of the fraticelli and the differences between the two groups, their birth can be traced back to similar reasons and religious aspirations. This explains why they seemed hardly different in their appearance, their clothing and their practice of asceticism. 12

Henry Charles Lea, A History of Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (New York: Harper, 1888), 3:129–180; Franz Ehrle, “Die Spiritualen, ihr Verhältnis zum Franciscanerorden und zu den Fraticellen,” Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 1 (1885): 509–569; 2 (1886): 106–164, 249–336; 3 (1887): 553–623; 4 (1888): 1–190; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250–1450, 2 vols. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967), 1:230–255; John. R. H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 453–456; Livario Oliger, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Spiritualen, Fratizellen und Clarener in Mittelitalien,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 45 (1926): 215–242. This author has also published documents concerning the fraticelli: “Documenta inedita ad historiam fraticellorum spectantia,” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 3 (1910): 253–279, 505–529, 680–699; 4 (1911): 3–23, 688–712; 5 (1912): 74–84; 6 (1913): 67–290, 515–530, 710–747. 13 Eugenio Dupré Theseider, “Sul ‘Dialogo contro i fraticelli’ di S. Giacomo della Marca,” in Miscellanea Gilles Gerard Meerseman, Italia Sacra 15–16 (Padova: Antenore, 1970), 603; For the early Observant groups in detail, see Mario Sensi, Le osservanze francescane nell’Italia centrale (secoli XIV–XV) (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1985). In the beginning there were some fraticelli, who, accepting the subordination to episcopal power, did not turn against the Church, see Sensi, Le osservanze francescane, 14–17.

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During the Avignon Papacy the ecclesiastical power was not forceful enough to persecute them systematically. In the fourteenth century we can see only a few instances. The best-known one took place in Florence, initiated against Michele da Calci, and concluding with a capital sentence in 1389. His anonymous biographer, who narrates the process and the execution, compiled his work on the basis of hagiographic patterns, stressing the theme of martyrdom.14 In the second half of the fourteenth century, among the various groups that arose within the Franciscan movement and its peripheries, the fraticelli were not inevitably reckoned as heretics. They were linked with other groups, which they could easily penetrate. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the Augustinian hermits were in good relationship with the fraticelli of Spoleto. At the beginning there were no conflicts even with the Observants, whose convent in Brogliano seems to have been in contact with the fraticelli from its foundation in 1334 onwards, just like one of the first leaders of the Observants, Paoluccio da Trinci.15 The privileges, that Pope Clement VI gave them in 1343, were revoked by Pope Innocent VI as a result of the inquiries of cardinal Albornoz (1355) precisely for the infiltration of persons suspected of heterodoxy in the Observant communities, although they themselves were not regarded as heretics.16 Tommaso da Frignano, who was elected general of the order in 1367, was accused of sympathy for the fraticelli for his favour toward the Observants and for 14

For Michele da Calci: Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 333; Mariano D’Alatri, “Fraticellismo e inquisizione nell’Italia centrale,” Picenum Seraphicum 11 (1974): 289-314, on p. 294. The author mentions that there are no documents concerning the persecution of the fraticelli from the period of the Western Schism. The process has been examined by Grado Merlo from the point of view of the propagandistic intention of the authorities to transmit a determinate “religious message”: Grado G. Merlo, “Coercition et orthodoxie: Modalités de communication et d’imposition d’un message religieux hégémonique,” in Faire croire: Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle, Collection de l’ École Francaise de Rome 51 (Rome: École Francaise de Rome, 1981), 101–118. 15 For the earlier times: Heribert Holzapfel, Manuale historiae ordinis fratrum minorum (Freiburg: Herder, 1909), 81–85; Duncan B. Nimmo, “The Genesis of the Observance,” in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: L’osservanza; Atti del XI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Perugia and Assisi: Università di Perugia, Centro di studi francescani, 1985), 109–131. For the foundation in Brugliano and for Paoluccio: Sensi, Le osservanze francescane, 19–73, 173. For the relation of Paoluccio and the fraticelli zelatori, see ibid., 42. Sensi emphasizes the antithetic character of the two groups (ibid., 51–52); he claims that affirms that the Observance is “superamento e sintesi di due momenti antitetici, il conventualismo e fraticellismo.” 16 Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 369–371.


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his contact with Paoluccio da Trinci, and was suspended from his office for a while.17 The analogy between the religious aspirations is revealed by the fact that Bernardin of Siena, in his younger days was under the influence of Joachimism, which he later abandoned for its resemblance to the heresy of the fraticelli in certain respects.18 At the same time, the contemporary views concerning the relation of the Observants with heretics were not unambiguous. Their efforts to attain official recognition and to create their own institutional frameworks in the second half of the fourteenth century did not prove to be successful. Since, in their appearance, the Observants—as I said above—resembled enough the fraticelli, they realized that they needed to distinguish themselves from them, and this is why they had a predilection to preach against them. The first conflict broke out in 1374 in Perugia, when a public debate took place with them; it was then that the Observants attained the banishment of the fraticelli and the confiscation their houses.19 However, the Conventuals in the inner conflicts of the Franciscan Order often sought to decry the Observants by comparing them to or identifying them with the fraticelli. In the general chapter held in 1421 in Forlì they were excommunicated, the provincial chapter in Touraine pronounced them fraticelli and heretics.20 In these conditions the prominent personalities of the Observance deemed the Papacy as a possible ally and advocate of the reform, 17

Sensi, Le osservanze francescane, 34, 173. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 337. 18 Bernadette Paton, Preaching Friars and the Civic Ethos: Siena, 1380–1480 (London: Centre for Medieval Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1992), 117n62; Mario Fois, “I Papi e l’osservanza minoritica” in Il rinnovamento del francescanesimo: L’ osservanza; Atti del XI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi, 20–22 ottobre 1983 (Perugia and Assisi: Università di Perugia, Centro di studi francescani, 1985), 38. 19 The external similarity was emphasized, for instance, by Christopher of Varese, one of the biographers of John of Capestrano: AASS, Oct. X, p. 500, §. 3: “[e]cclesiam in ipsis consistere fingunt; [...] Ipsi quoque fraticelli sic dicti aliqua loca acceperunt, in quibus habitabant, portantes habitum monachalem et cucullatam, similem nostro in colore, sed nullam Regulam approbatam profitebantur.” Sensi, on the contrary, in spite of the analogous characteristics, stresses the differences between the Observants and the fraticelli; see footnote above. For the events of Perugia, see Mario Sensi, “L’osservanza nel francescanesimo, dagli spirituali agli Osservanti,” in Atti del Convegno di Studi in onore di San Giacomo della Marca, Monteprandone 23 novembre 1991 (Monteprandone: Comitato celebrazioni del VI centenario di nascita di S. Giacomo della Marca, 1991), 38; Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 372. 20 Fois, “Papi e l’ osservanza minoritica,” 75; Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order, 382.

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and thus attacking the fraticelli seemed a good chance to consolidate their position and to distance themselves from the heretics.21 There is no space here to treat in details the activity of Bernardino of Siena, John of Capestrano, and James of the Marches against the fraticelli, which in the case of the two latter embraced the exercise of the function of inquisitor. Nevertheless, all these activities constituted an essential aspect of the struggle against the heretics,22 and this struggle was closely linked with the consolidation of papal control over Central Italy.23 The questions examined in this study appear rather in the polemic works. In the fifteenth century two noteworthy polemic works were written against the fraticelli, both of them composed in the form of a dialogue. The earlier was finished in 1425, and entitled Tractatus contra fratres de opinione. Its author, the Dominican preacher Manfredo da Vercelli, as Daniele Solvi argues, had the intention of defending himself from the accusation of heresy, thus his work was prepared for a close circle of clerics. The usual accusations brought up against the heretics, the simulata sanctitas and the sexual vices, are absent here. The author did not deal with the dogmas and the history of the fraticelli, but emphasized instead, that they were schismatics and calumniators. Furthermore, 21

The details of the problem have been examined, on the basis of the activity of John of Capestrano against the fraticelli, in Daniele Solvi, “Giovanni da Capestrano inquisitore e la dissidenza francescana,” in S. Giovanni da Capestrano: Un bilancio storiografico; Atti del Convegno Storico Internazionale, Capestrano, 15–16 maggio 1998, ed. Edith Pásztor (L’Aquila, 1999), 25–46, esp. 41–46. At the same time, the external resemblance of the two religious groups permitted to the fraticelli to hide in the Observant communities (mimetizzazione); see Giovanni Miccoli, “La storia religiosa,” in Storia d’Italia Einaudi, vol. 2: Dalla caduta dell’Impero romano al secolo XVIII, ed. Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), 960–961. 22 For the chronology and the sources of the activity of James of the Marches against the fraticelli, see Giuseppe Caselli, Studi su S. Giacomo della Marca, 2 vols. (Offida: De Sanctis, 1926), 2:56–68; Mariano D’Alatri, “Il ruolo di Giacomo della Marca nella repressione dei fraticelli,” Picenum Seraphicum 13 (1976): 330–333; Johannes Hofer, Giovanni da Capestrano: Una vita spesa nella lotta per la riforma della Chiesa (L’Aquila: Provincia dei Frati Minori d’Abruzzo, 1955), 147. Besides the Franciscans, Dominican inquisitors, like Manfredo of Vercelli or Leonardo of Florence, also persecuted the fraticelli; see Dupré Theseider, “Sul ‘Dialogo contro i fraticelli’,” 604; Solvi, “Giovanni da Capestrano inquisitore,” 30–31; D’Alatri, “Fraticellismo e l’inquisizione nell’Italia centrale,” 295, with a list of Dominican inquisitors on p. 311. As to the Franciscans, not only John of Capestrano and James of the Marches took part in the persecution, but Lorenzo of Rieti, Tommaso of Spoleto, and Paolo Alvernis of Rome as well. 23 See Fois, “Papi e l’osservanza minoritica.”


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Manfredo’s work, despite its dialogical form has a rather soliloquial character.24 The other dialogue was written by James of the Marches, the celebrated observant preacher, who—as we have seen above—was also charged with the function of inquisitor against the fraticelli.25 It deserves to be mentioned that the work also exists in a vernacular version which has survived in several exemplars. The existence of this vernacular version does not necessarily imply, however, that the aim of the author would have been either a wider diffusion of his work, or propaganda, even if we cannot exclude that he took into account ecclesiastic or lay readers as well, or considered the poor literacy of the parish-priests in the villages of the Appennines. It is possible that the Dialogus was designed for an answer to the views contained in the writings of the heretics, or more specifically, it is a record of disputes held against the fraticelli in 1425–1426.26 In James’ view the main characteristics of the fraticelli are their ignorance, worldliness, corruption and immorality. He maintained that they only had an effect on the simple peasants and on the ignorant women, by deceiving them.27 All this is the result of an intellectual decadence, whereupon they were called by the author rozzi caproni that is boorish billy-goats.28 While formerly—as the author argues—they had been assisted by doctors, noblemen, and even by the emperor, in the age of James they were merely favoured by some apostates, and belonged to the here24

Daniele Solvi, “Dialogare ‘contro’ i fraticelli: Manfredi da Vercelli e Giacomo della Marca,” in Picenum Seraphicum 21 (2002): 49–74. For Manfredo see also Roberto Rusconi, “Fonti e documenti su Manfredi da Vercelli O. P. ed il suo movimento penitenziale,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 47 (1977): 51–107. 25 For the Dialogus, see Livario Oliger, “De dialogo contra fraticellos S. Iacobi de Marchia,” Archivum Fratrum Historicum 4 (1911): 3–23; Govanni Annibaldi, “A proposito del ritrovamento del Dialogo contro i fraticelli,” Picenum Seraphicum 7 (1970): 178–189; and the Preface written by Dionysius Lasić in the edition of the Dialogus: S. Jacobus de Marchia, Dialogus contra fraticellos, addita versione itala saeculi XV, ed. Dionisio Lasić (Falconara Marittima: Biblioteca Francescana, 1975), 23–50 (hereafter cited as DF). The surviving manuscripts were reviewed by the editor, who dated the work to 1458–1460 (ibid., 28–44), like Dupré Theseider, “Sul ’Dialogo contro i fraticelli’,” 579. 26 There are some scholars who accept or concede that such disputes could take place; see, for example, Caselli, Studi su S. Giacomo della Marca, 2:162–165; Dupré Theseider, “Sul ’Dialogo contro i fraticelli’,” 580. 27 DF, I, 6, p. 124: “Vos, in malitia obstinati, seducitis cum vestris fallaciis et decipitis imperitas et simplices personas, allegando falsa pro veris.” 28 DF, I, 8. pp. 148–149.

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tics of the free spirit (“vivere in spirito della libertà”). It is an interesting fact that this remark can only be found in the vernacular version, therefore the author might suppose that the notion of “free spirit” was known in large circles of the population. James contrasted his master, Bernardino of Siena with the heretics, emphasizing that his companion had converted many people all over Italy.29 The other important message of the James’ Dialogue is the moral corruption of the heretics. They do not shrink back from murdering the priests preaching against them, even through hiring assassins, as it is manifested in the case of a Camaldulian preacher, a certain Agnolo.30 James mentions both in his Dialogue and in his sermons that the heretics had attempted to assassinate him. Afterwards, this motif reappears in several passages in one of his biographies written by his companion, Venanzio of Fabriano.31 The fraticelli, James argues, only seek to satisfy their own sexual desires, and are inclined to fornicate with women at their orgiastic meetings.32 Nonetheless, the mentioning of ritual infanticide, attributed to the fraticelli by contemporary writers like Flavio Biondo, is missing here. John of Capestrano and Bernardino of Siena have brought up the accusation as well, although the latter holds it not against the fraticelli, but against the Waldensians who fled to the valleys of the Alps in Northern Italy.33 Furthermore, the fraticelli, James writes to emphasize their moral corruption, wore secular clothes, and often participated in hunts. 29

DF, II, 8, pp. 254–255. DF, I, 8, p. 254. This episode is to be found only in the Latin version, but one can also read it in the Sermones dominicales of the same author: S. Jacobus de Marchia, Sermones dominicales, ed. Renato Lioi, 4 vols. (Falconara Marittima: Biblioteca Francescana, 1978–1982), 3:256–257. 31 La vita di S. Giacomo della Marca (1393–1476) per fra Venanzio da Fabriano, ed. Marino Sgattoni (Zara: Convento S. Francesco, 1940), 140–141, 144–145. 32 DF, II, 8, pp. 252–253: “Alia miracula, quae operatur diabolus per vos, sicut testor coram Deo veritatem, quam expresse repperi, quod viris et uxoribus existentibus in culturis et in agris, fraticelli cum uxoribus et filiabus eorum horribilia operantur.” 33 DF, I, 8, pp. 142–143; Blondius Flavius Forliviensis, De Roma instaurata libri tres ad Eugenium pontificem maximum (Venice, 1510), 78. For the charge of orgy, see Gábor Klaniczay, “Orgy Accusations in the Middle Ages,” in Eros in Folklore, ed. Mihály Hoppál and Eszter Csonka-Takács (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2002), 38–55. For the accusation of the barilotto against the fraticelli: Annibaldi, “A proposito del ritrovamento.” About the vices ascribed to fraticelli by Bernardino of Siena and John of Capestrano: Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (London: Pimlico, 1993), 67–71. Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of 30


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The other main theme of the Dialogue is poverty, the central issue from the point of view of the identity of the Franciscan Observance. But apart from identity, the treatment of poverty was also a suitable device for denouncing the hypocrisy of the heretics. This is the author’s intent when he narrates how Braccio da Montone, lord of Perugia took away all the money of the fraticelli, what they had swindled out of ignorant women. According to the narrative, Braccio justifies his act by saying that the fraticelli do not need money anyway, since the Franciscans live without property.34 James adds that he never saw heretics giving anything to the poor.35 It is noteworthy, that in James’ sermon, entitled De Antechristo, the two main features of the fraticelli, lechery and cupidity, are used to describe the pseudo-prophets.36 The text evidently alludes to the Italian heretics of the age, but at the same time embeds their role in an eschatological context, displaying them as heralds of the Antichrist. 4. From our point of view, the miracle and the capacity of performing miracles have a peculiar significance as one of the most important attributes of sanctity. Working miracles remained an essential demand towards saints, and at the same time it was the most important manifestation of sanctity. As from the high Middle Ages onwards the “self-appointed saints,” condemned by ecclesiastical authorities, appeared frequently, the latter sought to control canonizations, which, as it is well known, gradually became the monopoly of the papacy.37 It was an important element of the struggle with heresies to demonstrate the superiority of catholic saints (who often opposed actively the heterodox movements) in comparison with the heretics, who preached the moral corruption of the church. The catholic authors emphasized the miracles worked by catholic saints, and opposed them to the heretics, who were not able to accomplish miracles, unless by means of the devil’s intervention. The miracle and the true vision became the distinctive feature of saints as opposed to heretics. Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 85–86; See also S. Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols. (Milan: Rusconi, 1989), 2:793–794; Marina Montesano, “Supra acqua et supra ad vento:” “Superstizioni,” maleficia e incantamenta nei predicatori francescani osservanti (Italia, sec. XV), Nuovi studi storici 46 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1999), 109–121. 34 DF, II, 7, pp. 232–233. 35 DF, II, 7, pp. 232–233. 36 S. Jacobus de Marchia, Sermones dominicales, 3:372. 37 Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 58–73; Vauchez, La sainteté, 27–37.

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The Cistercian Geoffrey of Auxerre wrote that Saint Bernard, preaching at Toulouse against the heretic Henry of Lausanne, had performed a number of miracles. Moreover, a remarkable episode can be found in the Legenda aurea, in which Saint Dominic gives a piece of paper to a heretic, on which he had written the arguments against his tenets. Upon showing it to his companions, they proposed to throw it in the fire, in order that the truth come to light. It was done three times, but the paper remained intact.38 At the time of the condemnation of Armanno and Guglielma, mentioned above, the miracles performed by them and recognized by the local ecclesiastical institutions, became a subject of debate when their authenticity was contested by the inquisitors. Later, in the fifteenth century, the preachers of the Franciscan Observance equally stressed, that miracle and heresy are terms opposed to one another: the former could be performed only by an orthodox saint, while the latter is in the service of the devil. Bernardino explained in a sermon that at the time of the execution of Fra Dolcino the stake failed to catch light, owing to the practices of the devil, but after displaying a host there was nothing to prevent the burning of Dolcino and his woman.39 The Dialogue of James explains the traditional view of the Catholic authors that miracles derive from the power of the God. The problem of sainthood in the Dialogue is connected with that of ecclesiology. The author stresses, that the saints can only belong to the Church of God. (I will return to this subject later.) On the other hand, the fraticelli have never been able to perform miracles. As he narrates, in 1449 at Fabriano, on the occasion of an inquisitorial process against the heretics their treasurer (it is surely not accidental, that the author alludes to their wealth), before being sent to the stake, argued that his body will resist the fire, yet it remained burning for three days.40 The bodies of the burned heretics were stinking, which is proof that they could not be saints, because the body of the latter smells fragrant. According to the conventional view of catholic authors, in contrast to the true saints, the heretics only feign holiness in a deceptive manner. This ap38

Geoffrey of Auxerre, Sancti Bernardi vita prima, bk. III, in PL, vol. 185, cols. 312D– 314C; Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, 2:719–720. 39 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari: Quaresimale del 1425, ed. Ciro Cannarozzi, 3 vols. (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1940), 1:118–119. An analogous case occurred in Bologna in 1299: Acta S. Officii Bononiae ab anno 1291 usque ad annum 1310, ed. Lorenzo Paolini and Raniero Orioli, 2 vols. (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1982), 1:193, no. 239. 40 DF, II, 8, pp. 248–249, 250–251.


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proach to the fraticelli was also manifested, for example, in the papal bull issued by Martin V for John of Capestrano. It proclaims, that this heresy “that vomits pestiferous poison, deceives the simple souls, under the cloak of false sainthood, by ensnaring them through its traps and colorful disguise, and bustles about transmitting them to the eternal fire to destroy them.”41 This assertion, basically, does not differ from the above mentioned opinion of Ademarus Cabanensis. With regard to the fraticelli, already in the fourteenth century, one of the bulls of Pope John XXII stated, that some of them claim to profess the Rule of Friars Minors and pretend to observe it literally. The Franciscan Alvaro Pelayo, the famous canonist of the fourteenth century also stressed the fraudulent character of the fraticelli.42 It is obvious that the Observants applied this charge against their rivals, with whom they had a common origin, lived in the same social milieu, and shared the same outward appearance. The Observants, who themselves were regarded suspiciously, and several times were accused of heresy, needed to emphasize that all resemblances were only the product of deception and fraud, because from heresy the internal essence, sanctity, is missing. The author of the Dialogus uses the figure of his master, Saint Bernardino to denote the difference between the Observants and the fraticelli. At the end of his work he applies a skillful trick: the denigrated heretic blasphemes the Sienese saint, by calling him the Antichrist and a false apostle. As a consequence, it is precisely the figure of the saint that becomes more appealing, while the diatribes pronounced by the heretic turn back against him.43 What James emphasizes in this context, is that true saints always belong to the Church, and that God performs miracles through them alone.44 Thus, the intrinsic relation with God and the wonder-making capacity is possessed by the Observant saint, not by the heretic. This example, just like a number of previous ones, show the complexities of the ways in which the mendicants sought to put forward their con41

“[P]estiferum virus evomens simplices animas suis tendiculis et palliatis coloribus sub praetextu simulatae sanctitatis illaquaeando decepit, illas aeterno satagens igni transmittere consumendas.” Bullarium franciscanum, vol. 7 (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1904), no. 1710. 42 Fort the bull of Pope John XXII, see Bullarium franciscanum, vol. 5 (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1898), no. 1056a: “nonnulli eorum regulam Ordinis fratrum Minorum […] se profiteri asserunt et ad litteram se servare confingunt.” For Pelayo’s opinion, see Chronologia historico-legalis Seraphici Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Sancti Fatris Francisci (Naples: Camillo Cavalli, 1650), 118. 43 DF, II, 8, pp. 252–255. 44 DF, II, 8, pp. 248–253.

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ception of holiness. What matters here is not so much their influence on canonisations, but their role in forming a model or models of sainthood, through their propaganda. When James drafted the Dialogus, his master, Bernardino was already canonized, and his figure was employed in this work for polemical purposes. 5. Finally, let us come to the ecclesiological context of our subject. While the heretical movements, for instance in the case of the Cathars or the Waldensians, led to the formation of a rudimentary counter-church more than once, the Inquisition, naturally, watched over the unity of the Church. The fraticelli, from this point of view, were a recent challenge for the Church. They called Pope John XXII a heretic because he cancelled the bull of his predecessor, Nicholas III, issued in 1279 (Exiit qui seminat), which was tolerant with the spirituals’ professing complete poverty. From that moment on, the Church—in their opinion—also became corrupt and heretic, consequently they are those who constitute the true Church, their order is the true successor of the order of Francis.45 (This view makes them differ from other heresies who, like the Waldensians, believed that it was the donation of Constantine that ruined the Church.)46 In the history of the fraticelli there were also initiatives to develop an organization and a hierarchy. James in his Dialogue has related that they ordained bishops.47 James defended vigorously the papal positions by means of sophisticated arguments borrowed from canon law, but beyond these he uses historical arguments as well. He explains that the Church was always strengthened by the persecutions, while the fraticelli was weakened by them.48 But the controversy referred not only to the Church but to the legacy of Saint Francis as well. The fraticelli considered themselves the authentic heirs of the ideas of Francis, and perceived their community as the true Franciscan Order. James narrates that in 1449, when he was an inquisitor, a letter was found in the tower of Maiolati, in which the bishop of the 45

DF, I, 1, pp. 76–79, 82–89; I, 3, pp. 92–97; I, 4, pp. 98–99; I, 6, pp. 122–127; I, 7, pp. 126–140. 46 Giovanni Gonnet, “La Donazione di Costantino presso gli eretici medievali,” Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi, no. 132 (1972): 17–29; György Galamb, “Eretnekség, világi hatalom, szakralitás a 11–13. századi Nyugat-Európában,” (Heresy, secular power and sacrality in eleventh- to thirteenth-century Western Europe), Aetas 13 (1997): 51– 71, on p. 65–69. 47 DF, II, 8, pp. 248–249. See also Dupré Theseider, “Sul ’Dialogo contro i fraticelli’,” 607–609. 48 DF, I, 8., p. 146; II, 8, pp. 242–243.


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fraticelli, a certain Gabriel, dubbed himself “Minister General of the Friars Minor.”49 James disclaims this, having recourse to arguments with reference to papal power: their superiors have not been ordained, they— opposing the Rule—are not obedient to Rome, and moreover, they have no protector cardinal.50 He affirms that the socio-juridical status of the heretics is very ambiguous, because they sometimes enter the Third Order, sometimes live as hermits, and sometimes wear secular clothes and carry arms.51 The Dialogue of James does not only contain propaganda against the fraticelli, but also, among other things, propaganda for the Observance. The author always distinguishes the former ones from the latter ones, and he attacks the heretics by setting them against the Observance. The battle against the fraticelli was very important for the Observants, because, while within the Order they were attacked by the Conventuals, the similarities with the fraticelli were suitable to discredit them. Therefore they were seeking to distinguish themselves from the fraticelli by emphasizing the distance between them, and by fighting as inquisitors and as authors of polemical writings. The question of the unity of the Church and either the integration or the destruction of the dissident circles remained a crucial problem in the period following the Council of Constance as well. In the practice of the Observants, preaching, inquisitorial functions, and, in the case of James of the Marches, the composition of the Dialogus contra fraticellos served this purpose.

49

DF, II, 8, pp. 238–239. DF, I, 3, pp. 96–97; I, 4, pp. 98–101. 51 DF, I, 4, pp. 100–101: “Aperite ergo oculos, quia non estis fratres monores. Ubi est habitus, quem debent portare fratres minores? Quia vos itis aliqui tamquam eremitae, aliqui tamquam de tertio ordine, […] Aliqui vadunt sicut saeculares cum beretis et caligis et giorneis, cum lancea. Aliqui portant claves ad vendendum, et huiusmodi. Aliqui ad modum peregrini se transfigurando per domos simplicium personarum ad decipiendum.” 50

Sermons on St. Sebastian after the Black Death (1348–ca. 1500) Ottó GECSER

Someone could reasonably think that the above title refers to a topic definitely too broad for such a short article. St. Sebastian is widely known to have been one of the most popular Christian saints whose intercession was frequently implored against pestilence and who is the main or partial subject of an immense number of visual representations from murals through sculptures and panel paintings to various kinds of amulets. Nevertheless, in surprising contrast to all these unquestionable facts, I found only a handful of sermons written for his feast in the century and a half that remains from in the Middle Ages after the Black Death. In fact, I found significantly less than in the period of equal length between 1200 and 1348. In what follows, I will sketch a set of possible answers to this problem through examining three aspects of the cult of St. Sebastian: the association of his figure with the plague, the broader patterns in the textual transmission of sermons in his honor and, finally, the content of a select number of sermons written after 1348. St. Sebastian is known to have been venerated as a martyr in Italy from the times of St. Ambrose (337/340–397) onwards.1 The center of his cult was Rome where his martyrdom took place according to the first account of his life and suffering written during the pontificate of Pope Sixtus III Abbreviations: RLS: Johannes Baptist Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350, 11 vols., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 43 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1969–1995). RLSCD: Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters 1350 bis 1500, ed. Ludwig Hödl and Wendelin Knoch, CD-ROM (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001). The research behind this article has been supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA); project identifier: PD 75642. 1 As a recent overview of the medieval development of his cult, see Karim RessouniDemigneux, “La personalité de saint Sébastien: Exploration du fonds euchologique medieval et renaissance du IVe au XVIe siècle,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome: Moyen Age 114 (2002): 557–579.

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(432–440).2 His association with pestilence can be traced back to the Historia Longobardorum, in the sixth book of which Paul the Deacon relates an epidemic (pestilencia) that severely decimated the population of Rome and Pavia. In the latter city, It visibly appeared to many that a good and a bad angel proceeded by night through the city and as many times as, upon command of the good angel, the bad angel, who appeared to carry a hunting spear in his hand, knocked at the door of each house with the spear, so many men perished from that house on the following day. Then it was said to a certain man by revelation that the pestilence itself would not cease before an altar of St. Sebastian the martyr was placed in the church of the blessed Peter which is called “Ad Vincula.” And it was done, and after the remains of St. Sebastian the martyr had been carried from the city of Rome, presently the altar was set up in the aforesaid church and the pestilence itself ceased.3

This story was subsequently included as a post-mortem miracle in the Life of St. Sebastian in the Legenda aurea, and thus gained wider currency.4 There is no hint, however, that the here demonstrated capacity of the saint to deliver people from pestilence was very much sought after in the long plague-less centuries that separated the late seventh century, or the times of Paul the Deacon (720/730–ca. 799), from the Black Death. But from 1348 onwards, it was ostensibly this miracle account in the Legenda aurea that made him eligible for, and helped to establish him firmly in the position of the plague saint for the rest of the Middle Ages—a position in which he was only equaled by St. Roch later on. Of course, Sebastian was by no means the only saint who had been associated with protection against the plague in hagiographic narratives available around 1348.5 Most notably, the Life of Gregory the Great, in 2

BHL 7543. For the dating see Benedetto Pesci, “Il culto di san Sebastiano a Roma nell’antichita e nel medioevo,” Antonianum 20 (1945): 177–200. See also Hippolyte Delehaye, Cinq leçons sur la méthode hagiographique, Subsidia hagiographica 21 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1934), 33–37. 3 Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. William Dudley Foulke, 2nd ed., ed. intr. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1974), bk. 6, ch. 5, p. 255. 4 Critical edition: Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea: Con le miniature del codice Ambrosiano C 240 inf, ed. and comm. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols. (Florence: SISMEL; Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2007), ch. 23, 1:194–201. The plague miracle is on p. 200. 5 For reasons of why a saint was chosen to be a plague saint, see Heinrich Dormeier, “Laienfrömmigkeit in den Pestzeiten des 15./16. Jahrhunderts,” in Maladies et société (XIIe–XVIIIe siècles): Actes du colloque de Biefeld novembre 1986, ed. Neithard Bulst and Robert Delort (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1989), 269–306, esp. 284–298.

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the Legenda aurea again, relates a famous plague miracle which is said to have happened in Rome during Gregory’s pontificate. According to this story, when the epidemic did not cease to ravage the city, the pope ordered to make a procession with an icon of the Madonna claimed to have been painted by St. Luke. As the crowd proceeded, “the infection of the air and the stormy whether” (aeris infectio et turbulentia) before the picture gave place to “an astonishingly fine whether and pure air” (mira serenitas et aeris puritas) behind it, and having reached Hadrian’s Mausoleum, Gregory saw the Angel of God above the edifice putting back his sword in its sheath. This is why it has subsequently been called Castel Sant’Angelo (castrum angeli)—the narrator adds.6 Since this story was also seen as the foundational narrative of the Major Rogations celebrated every year on April 25, it was frequently retold in sermons and James of Varazze himself comes back to it once more in the chapter of the Golden legend dedicated to this feast day.7 What made Sebastian especially attractive among saints associated with pestilence in some or other way was most probably not the arrows employed in the first, unsuccessful, attempt to martyrize him. Even though references to weapons, especially those carried by angels, were widely used in different religious contexts to indicate God’s anger held to be responsible, among other things, for great epidemics as well, there is no evidence that already before the Black Death arrows were preferred to other weapons in religious representation and explanations of epidemics, or that arrows were predominantly associated with pestilence.8 The arrows as iconographic attributes and as a central metaphor easy to recognize and 6

Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, ch. 46, 1:336. The widespread veneration of the icon featuring in this miracle account, and said to be the same as the Lukasbild in the Santa Maria Maggiore, for its prophylactic capacities, started only in the sixteenth century. 7 Ibid., ch. 66, vol. 1, 528–535. See also André Vauchez, “Liturgie et culture folklorique: Les rogations dans la ‘Légend dorée’ de Jacques de Voragine,” in Les laïcs au Moyen Âge: Pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 145–155; and Jussi Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival: Religious Responses to Natural Disasters in the Middle Ages, Studia Fennica Historica 2 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. 2002), who on pp. 70–72 argues that the origin of the litanies was frequently retold in Rogation Day sermons. 8 For this topic, see Peter Dinzelbacher, “Die tötende Gottheit: Pestbilder und Todesikonographie als Ausdruck der Mentalität des Spätmittelalters und der Renaissance,” in Zeit, Tod und Ewigkeit in der Renaissance Literatur, ed. James Hogg, 3 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 117 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1986), 2:5–138; Ernst Hagemann, Der göttliche Pfeilschütze: Zur Genealogie eines Pestbildtypus (St. Michael: J. G. Bläschke Verlag, 1982).

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memorize in liturgical poems, had a firmly established place in the cult of St. Sebastian by the beginning of the fourteenth century without having been connected to the plague.9 It seems more probable that, besides the miracle account in the Legenda aurea, the decisive factor in launching Sebastian’s new mission as plague saint was the availability of his relics in the famous Abbey of St. Victor, near Paris. On November 18, 1348, the bishop of Paris, Foulques de Chanac, granted an indulgence of 40 days to those who visit the altar and pray there. In his letter of indulgence, the bishop referred to the episode in the Legenda aurea, where it is precisely the power of the relics that brings the epidemic to an end (in contrast to the miracle in the Life of Gregory the Great where it is the icon of the Virgin that performs the same function).10 The relics in St. Victor arrived there from the Abbey of St. Medard near Soissons, North-East of Paris, which in 826 succeeded in acquiring a considerable part of the saint’s body from Rome together with relics of Gregory the Great. The abbots of Soissons worked hard in the subsequent two centuries to popularize the power of their relics and to develop their social network by compiling collections of miracles pertaining to them and by sending pieces of them to other monasteries.11 The miracles attributed to these relics in Soissons were not connected, as there was no need to connect them, to the plague. In 1348, however, and from a centre like Paris, the news of the bishop’s letter of indulgence, and of the new channel to supernatural intercession opened by him (if he was indeed the one who opened it), could swiftly reach other cities and regions. In order to find supernatural help people started to look for relics of St. Sebastian, and “reactivate” them, so to speak, in a new function, as it is implied by the report of the great chronicler of the Black Death, Gilles Li Muisis, Abbot of St. Giles in Tournai, about a monastery in Hainaut, where in 1349, “an enormous number of people (including those of noble birth, knights, matrons, ecclesiastics, canons and members of religious orders, as well as ordinary men and women) flocked to [...] when it was discovered that there were relics of St. Sebastian in a shrine there.” But such a specialized wonderworking capacity, connected to a disease that is not present continuously but withers away as quickly as it appears, can only give rise to an ephemeral cult. Thus small wander that “as the 9

Ressouni-Demigneux, “La personalité de saint Sébastien,” 561–566. Ibid., 567–571. 11 Ibid., 569; Delehaye, Cinq leçons, 85. 10

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mortality began to abate after the feast of All Saints the pilgrimages and devotion ceased” in the cited monastery, just like in Soissons, where as “the disaster came to an end, the pilgrimage and devotion ended too.”12 Dominican Dominican: dubious affiliation / anonymous Before 1348

Franciscan

After 1348 Cistercian

Ambiguous

Other religious order / secular clergy Anonymous, not affiliated 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

St. Sebastian-sermons before and after the Black Death according to the religious affiliation of the authors or compilers of sermon collections (n=89, see the Appendices for details)

Gilles Li Muisis’s observation about the quick decline of interest in St. Sebastian after the cessation of the epidemic, may be of importance for the temporal distribution of sermons written for his feast in the last three centuries of the Middle Ages. As it can be calculated from the data represented on the figure above, 55 sermons were surely written before 1348, 10 were certainly written after it, and the dating of a further 24 pieces is ambiguous. Even if all ambiguously datable sermons originated in the period after the Black Death—what is highly improbable given the intended (even if not always prevailing) timeframe of Johann Baptist Schneyer’s Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350 where most of the references to these sermons stem from, and many of them are presumably much older than the manuscripts in which they are preserved—the number of post-1348 texts would still be much less than that of pre-1348 ones.13 One possible explanation of this rather surprising fact is that the sermons composed in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries remained in circulation even later and made the composition of new pieces superfluous. What is more, sermons for the feast of one given saint were fre12

Rosemary Horrox, ed., trans., The Black Death, Manchester Medieval Sources 1 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 54. 13 The possible objection that later medieval sermons on St. Sebastian were not in Latin but in the vernaculars is ruled out by the fact that the number of surviving Latin sermons, even from the fifteenth century, is far greater than that of the vernacular ones.

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quently transformed in those for the feast of another one of the same category—such as a martyr, confessor or virgin—and many sermonaries offered general sermons for such categories in which the name of the saint was to be added by the preacher who delivered them on a given occasion. As St. Sebastian shared his feast day with the martyr pope, St. Fabian, January 20 belonged to the category of “several martyrs” (de pluribus martyribus) to be distinguished from that of “one martyr” (de uno martyre). Thus, at the very end of his Sebastian-sermon, Aldobrandino dei Cavalcanti, for example, suggests that “this sermon can be preached at any feast day of several martyrs.” Or, likewise, the obscure author, Henry of England, advises the preachers who will use his collection to expand his Sebastian sermon in a similar way as he did with his sermon for the feast of the martyr apostles, Simon and Judas; Petrus Berengarii does the same with reference to his general sermons for the feasts of several martyrs.14 Another possible reason of the noticeable absence of many new Sebastian-sermons after 1348 is related to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the surviving de sanctis sermons, and medieval Latin sermons in general, were part of sermon collections intended to facilitate routine preaching on specific days. Sermons composed and delivered ad hoc, during a sudden outbreak of pestilence, for example, were not much likely to survive, since they were not easy to fit in the existing categories following the structure of the ecclesiastical calendar.15 In addition, the feast of St. Sebastian, January 20, may well have been in a period of the year when the frequency of epidemics was the lowest. The data (stemming largely from last wills) collected and analyzed by Samuel Cohn Jr. suggests that in the second half of the fourteenth century and in the first half of the fifteenth, the number of plague victims peaked in the summer months in Southern Europe, and in the autumn ones in Northern Europe.16 Hence even if preachers talked frequently about St. Sebastian in connection to the plague, they may not have been prompted to do so on January 20. It may well be the case, then, that the cult of St. Sebastian in the late Middle Ages had a regular and an ad hoc facet, and sermons related more to the first than to the second, in contrast to pilgrimages or processions. A 14

See Appendix 1, no. 1 (“iste sermo potest praedicari in quolibet festo plurimorum martyrum”), no. 21 (“procede sicut in festo Simonis et Judae”), and no. 47 (“hunc processum require ibidem [inter sermones communes de sanctis, in festo plurimorum martyrum]”); the Latin quotations appear here as given in RLS. 15 Cf. Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 67. 16 Samuel K. Cohn Jr., The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in the Early Renaissance (London: Arnold, 2002), 140–187.


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last important point to be mentioned in this context is the preponderance of Dominican authors among those who composed sermons for the feast of St. Sebastian. This preponderance is all the more surprising if compared to the ostensibly low interest of Franciscan preachers in St. Sebastian, given that the Order of Friars Minor adopted the Roman liturgy where January 20 was a feast of the highest rank, whereas the Friars Preacher raised the feast to the highest level only in the General Chapter of Valladolid in 1523.17 A possible explanation of the attention of the Dominicans (but not of the inattention of the Franciscans), that will be left now in the realm of the hypothetical, lies in the fact that the Passio S. Sebastiani, as well as his Life in the Legenda aurea, is centered around a long exhortation, a sermon, delivered by Sebastian to Marcellianus and Marcus who, having been imprisoned, hesitated to take on the burden of martyrdom. This sermon was subsequently extracted from the Passio and had a life of its own.18 Thus Sebastian as a preaching soldier who suffered martyrdom could be a meaningful model or point of reference for a religious order which was born to fight heresy with the means of words and which had an important holy martyr in an early phase of its history, the inquisitor-preacher Peter of Verona killed by the Cathars in 1252. Whatever is the true explanation of the Dominican interest in St. Sebastian, sermons composed for January 20 before the Black Death had to present him as a martyr and not as a plague saint, what he was still waiting to become. Much less evidently, however, he remained to be a martyr in the first place even in sermons written after 1348. The six sermons, surely written in this latter period, that I examined in detail,19 dedicate very little space to the plague and, in this respect, they largely limit themselves to retelling the Pavian miracle from the Legenda aurea. The Observant Franciscan, Pelbart of Temesvár, for example, notes at the end of his sermon that it is “common knowledge that the intercession of St. Sebastian is more effective against the plague than anything else,” and quotes the Legenda aurea to substantiate this statement but shows not much interest in this aspect of Sebastian’s figure.20 17

Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 4: 1501–1553, ed. Benedikt Maria Reichert, Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Historica 9 (Rome: Collegium Angelicum, 1901), 181. 18 Catherine Saliou, “Du légendier au sermonnaire: avatars de la Passio Sebastiani,” Revue des études augustiniennes 36 (1990): 285–297. 19 See Appendix 1, nos. 5–6, 39, 44, 48, 64. 20 Pomerium sermonum de sanctis (Augsburg: Johann Otmar, 1502), sermon 47, no pagination: “vulgatum dictum quod intercessio beati Sebastiani super omnia valeat contra pestilentiam.”

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It was only the German preacher and theologian, Gabriel Biel, who deemed it relevant to talk about the reason why Sebastian was associated with protection against pestilence: “Saints who were distinguished with unique gifts and victories by God on Earth, are endowed with specific privileges in the state of glory as well to obtain similar gifts and victories for those who venerate them.” Accordingly, “St. Sebastian, having specifically been triumphant over spiritual and corporeal arrows, can be securely implored against their threat and for their removal.” Biel then explains that spiritual arrows are the cunning tricks of the devil by which he pierces the incautious; corporeal arrows, on the other hand, mean not simply those made by a craftsman and shot from crossbows and longbows, “but all bodily dangers which lead to death with epidemics having the first place among them.” 21 But even in this sermon, the theme of the plague merely appears as a digression from the main argument of the preacher, the exhortation of the members of an archer confraternity dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St. Sebastian.22 There were many such archer and crossbowmen confraternities in the fifteenth century which could serve as appropriate settings and audiences for regular preaching about St. Sebastian on his feast day.23 What is more, the figure of the martyr who survives the injuries caused by arrows could be rendered as a heroic model for men-atarms—and the pre-1348 perception of St. Sebastian lacking the theme of the plague could easily be re-utilized in this context. Nevertheless, the absence of a more sustained interest in pestilence in post-1348 Sebastian-sermons can simply be attributed to those patterns of textual transmission I discussed above, and may not say very much about 21

Sermones dominicales Gabrielis Biel Spirensis hyemales estivales de tempore [...], [Sermones de Sanctis] etc. (Hagenau: Heinrich Gran, 1510), f. 382r: “Sancti qui singularibus donis et victoriis in terris a Deo sublimati sunt, etiam in gloria specialibus privilegiis obtinenda similia suis cultoribus sunt sunt donati. [...] Beatissimus ergo Sebastianus quia specialis victor fuit sagittarum spiritualium et corporalium, pro eorundem periculo et submotione secure invocatur. [...] Corporalia tela non tamen illa intelligamus que artificum manibus fabricata balistis et arcu iaciuntur sed omnia pericula corporis ad mortem impellentia inter que epidimia principatum tenet.” 22 The confraternity he adressed his words to was probably in Idstein where he could deliver the sermon on 20 January 1472; see Wolf-Heino Struck, Die Stifte St. Walpurgis in Weilburg und St. Martin in Idstein, rev. ed., Germania sacra n.s. 27 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), 495–496. 23 Dormeier, “Laienfrömmigkeit,” 293; see also Ludwig Remling, “Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte des spätmittelalterlichen Bruderschaftswesens in Franken,” in Einungen und Bruderschaften in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt, ed. Peter Johanek, Städteforschung A/32 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau. 1993), 149–169, esp. 155–156.


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how these or other sermons about St. Sebastian were adapted to specific circumstances by preachers who delivered them. It is not infrequent in medieval sermons about saints that one finds few specific details about the saint himself; with the help of hagiographic compendia like the Legenda aurea, preachers could easily add edifying episodes or miracle accounts to the general argumentative outlines found in sermonaries. Therefore, preachers after the Black Death could use any Sebastian-sermon regardless of its date, or any sermon falling in the category of several martyrs, to which they had access, and in the oral version of these sermons the theme of pestilence could be far more emphatic than the written version of a few post-1348 texts suggest. But if the potential additions to the sermon outlines are miracles in the first place and not, say, medical ideas about the plague, then a serious problem looms large here: apart from the translation of his relics to Padua, there were practically no plague-related miracles of St. Sebastian available to preachers, and there were very few plague miracles in the Middle Ages in general. The latter point was recently made in a forceful way, although not without precedents, by Samuel Cohn Jr. who examined miracle accounts in the Acta Sanctorum, and came to the conclusion that references to miraculous cures from pestilence became more numerous only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.24 Even if the Acta Sanctorum does not contain many acts of canonization, vitae, and collections of miracles where possibly further plague miracles can hide,25 Cohn’s finding is still quite interesting in itself. Apart from the one in the Historia Longobardorum and the Legenda aurea, the only other plague miracle of St. Sebastian I know about appears in a letter written during the Black Death in Avignon, by a monk called Benigno, to an unknown addressee in Tuscany. The letter relates the story of Filippo di Neri dell’Antella, prior of the Florentine monastery of San Pier Scheraggio, who claimed to have recovered from pestilence with the help of St. Sebastian. According to Benigno’s narrative, the prior, in agony and having almost given up all hope of getting better, recalls to have read in alcuna cronica romana about the termination of a great plague in 24

Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, 71–78. See also Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 94–97; and Maria Wittmer-Butsch and Constanze Rendtel, Miracula— Wunderheilungen im Mittelalter: Eine historisch-psychologische Annäherung (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2003), 110. 25 In Vincent Ferrer’s process of canonization in Brittany in 1453–1454, for example, there were plague miracles recorded. See Laura A. Smoller, “Miracle, Memory, and Meaning in the Canonization of Vincent Ferrer, 1453–1454,” Speculum 73 (1998): 429–454, esp. 433.

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Italy roughly eight hundred years earlier thanks to the merits of St. Sebastian. He rushes to a church and with the last remnants of his vigor celebrates a mass in honor of St. Sebastian by the end of which he regains his health.26 We do not know how many people could read this letter but I found no references to the recovery of Filippo dell’Antella elsewhere. And even if the relics of St. Sebastian in Soissons were credited several times with healing power before the Black Death, no collection of plague miracles related to his earthly remains have come to light so far. It may well be the case, then, that in spite of St. Sebastian’s having been the plague saint in the last century and a half of the Middle Ages, preachers could not make much of this aspect of his figure because they had no material to rely on. But any attempt to resolve this problem would bring us far beyond the possibilities of such a short article and would require an extensive study of sources largely different from Latin sermons composed after 1348. Appendix 1: Medieval Latin sermons for the feast of St. Sebastian (ca. 1200–ca. 1500)27 1. RLS I, 170, no. 290: Aldobrandinus de Cavalcantibus OP, d. 1279. 2. RLS I, 186, no. 482: Aldobrandinus de Cavalcantibus OP, dubious attribution. 3. RLS I, 240, no. 227: Aldobrandinus de Toscanella OP, d. ca. 1300.28 4. RLS I, 481, no. 105: Bertholdus de Ratisbona OFM, d. 1272. 5–6. RLS-CD nos. 193–194: Biel, Gabriel, d. 1495. 7. RLS I, 712, no. 89: Caesarius de Heisterbach OCist, d. 1240s. 8. RLS I, 739, no. 282: Conradus de Brundelsheim OCist, d. 1321. 9–10. RLS II, 5, nos. 45–46: Eberhardus de Valle Scholarum, d. 1272. 11. RLS-CD no. 560: Dionysius Cartusianus, d. 1471. 26

The letter has been preserved in a ms. now in the Archivio dell’Opera del Duomo, in Siena. See Franco Cardini, “Una nuova fonte sulla peste del 1348 ad Avignone, Firenze e Siena: il culto di S. Sebastiano e Filippo dell’Antella,” Bullettino senese di storia patria, 82–83 (1975–1976): 372–384. The letter bears the date of 6 May, but the year is not specified. According to Cardini, it “senza dubbio è il 1348” but offers no argument to underpin this contention. As the story with the citation of a chronicle sounds as a post hoc justification of the prior’s having turned to St. Sebastian and not to some other saint, the date may well be 1349, that is after the indulgence of Foulques de Chanac for St. Victor. 27 In the case of anonymous works, the terminus ante quem is based on the date of the manuscripts. Secondary literature about the authors I cite only in those cases when sufficient information in well-known dictionaries of (literary) biography and church history is not available. 28 For his poorly studied life, see Letizia Pellegrini, I manoscritti dei predicatori: I domenicani dell’Italia mediana e i codici della loro predicazione (secc. XIII–XV), Dissertationes historicae 26 (Rome: Istituto storico domenicano, 1999), 272–273.


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12. RLS II, 203, no. 7 (= RLS VI, 104, no. 168): Godefridus de Blenello OP, d. 1250. 13. RLS-CD no. 9: Later addition to the “Graeculus” collection, 14th–15th cent. 14–16. RLS II, 345, nos. 374–376: Guido Ebrocensis OP, flor. ca. 1290–1293. 17. RLS II, 490, no. 91: Gerardus (in the older secondary literature: Guillelmus) de Malliaco OP, d. ca. 1300. 18. RLS II, 559, no. 341: Guillelmus Peraldus OP, d. 1271. 19–21. RLS II, 632, nos. 147–149: [Henricus de Anglia] OP? (dubious affiliation), 13th– 14th cent. 22. RLS-CD no. 79: [Hungarus], 13th–15th cent. 23. RLS III, 32, no. 409: Jacobus de Benevento OP, flor. 1255–1271. 24–26. RLS III, 250, nos. 356–358: Jacobus de Voragine OP, d. 1298. 26bis. RLS III, 269, no. 613 (looks like the same as the previous one: RLS III, 250, no. 358). 27–28. RLS III, 361, nos. 27–28: Johannes de Biblia OP, ca. 1338. 29. RLS-CD <Jo.B.> no. 164: John Bromyard OP, d. 1352; in a unique collection of distinctiones.29 30. RLS III, 635, no. 268: Johannes de Opreno OP ca. 1270. 31–32. RLS III, 747, nos. 316–317: Johannes a San Geminiano OP, d. 1333. 33. RLS-CD <J.St.> no. 16: Johannes (de) Stekna, d. ca. 1407. 34–38. RLS IV, 287, nos. 479–483: Nicolaus de Gorran OP, d. 1295. 39. RLS-CD <Me.> no. 99: Meffreth (Hortulus Reginae), completed by the anonymous author in 1443. 40. RLS-CD no. 60: Nicolaus Verenkorn, 15th cent. 41. RLS IV, 438, no. 546: Odo de Chateauroux, d. 1273. 42. RLS-CD no: Paulus Cholner, d. ca. 1384. 43. RLS IV, 539, no. 192: “Paratus,” 13th–14th cent. 44. RLS-CD no. 363: Pelbartus de Temesvár OFM, d. 1504. 45. RLS IV, 558, no. 118 (= RLS IX, 413, no. 120): Peregrinus de Opole OP 46. RLS IV, 565, no. 212: Peregrinus de Opole OP, dubious attribution. 47. RLS IV, 605, no. 79: Petrus Berengarii OP, d. 1311. 48. RLS-CD no. 40: Petrus Hieremiae/de Hieremia OP, d. 1452. 49–50. RLS IV, 734, nos. 140–141: Petrus de Remis OP, d. 1247. 51–52. RLS V, 376, nos. 38–39: Servasanctus de Faenza OFM d. ca. 1300.30 53. RLS V, 541, no. 222: “Thesaurus Novus,” 14th–15th cent. 54. RLS V, 567, no. 151: [Thomas], 13th–14th cent. 55–60. RLS V, 585, nos. 73–76; V 593: nos. 190–191 (= V, 604, nos. 344–345): Ps.Thomas de Aquino, 13th–14th cent.31 29

For a reinforcement of its attribution to the older John Bromyard who died in 1352, see Siegfried Wenzel, Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif (Cambridge: C. U. P., 2005), 137–138. 30 For his life the best article is still Livario Oliger, “Servasanto da Faenza O.F.M. e il suo ‘Liber de virtutibus et vitiis’,” in Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, 6 vols., Studi e testi 37– 42 (Rome: B. A. V., 1924), 1:148–189, esp. 178–186. 31 Cf. Louis-Jacques Bataillon, “Les sermons attribués à saint Thomas: Questions d’authenticité,” in Thomas von Aquin, ed. Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 19 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 325–341.

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61–63. RLS V, 647, nos. 230–232 (under the name of Thomas de Lisle): Thomas Agni de Lentino OP, d. 1277. 64. RLS-CD no. 244: Vincent Ferrer OP. 65–67. RLS VI, 104, no. 171; 174, no. 136; 196, no. 47: anonymous Paris university sermons, 13th cent. 68–69. RLS VI, 312–313, nos. 378–379: anonymous sermons from a Benedictine collection, 13th cent. 70–73. RLS VI, 459, nos. 54–57: anonymous sermons from a Cistercian collection, 13th cent. 74. RLS VI, 563, no. 69: anonymous sermon from a Dominican collection. 13th–14th cent. 75–76. RLS, VI, 576, nos. 32–33: anonymous Dominican sermon collection, 13th cent.32 77. RLS VI, 626, no. 97 (= RLS VIII, 807, no. 115): anon. sermon that appears in a Dominican coll. as well, 13th–14th cent. 78. RLS VII, 483, no. 21: anonymous sermon from a Franciscan collection, 13th–15th cent. 79–80. RLS VIII, 47, nos. 37–38: anonymous sermons, 13th cent. 81. RLS VIII, 106, no. 9: anonymous sermon, 13th cent. 82. RLS VIII, 807, no. 116: anonymous sermon, 13th–14th cent. 83–84. RLS IX, 110, nos. 24–25: anonymous sermons from Italy, 13th cent.33 85. RLS IX, 312, no. 44. (= RLS IX 465, no. 16., here for the feast of St. Stephen): anonymous sermon, 13th–14th cent. 86. RLS IX, 413, no. 121: anonymous sermon (incomplete), beg. of the 13th–14th cent. 87. RLS IX, 605–606, no. 354: anonymous sermon, 13th–14th cent. 88. RLS IX, 830, no. 1: anonymous sermon, 13th cent. 89. RLS IX, 888, no. 29: anonymous sermon, 13th–15th cent.

Appendix 2: Religious affiliation of authors of, or sermon collections containing, Sebastian-sermons: Dominican

Dominican: dubious affiliation / anonymous Franciscan Cistercian Other religious order / secular clergy Anonymous, not affiliated

32

Before 1348 nos. 1, 3, 12, 14–16, 17, 18, 23, 24–26, 27– 28, 30, 31–32, 34–38, 45, 47, 49–50, 61–63 nos. 2, 75–76 nos. 4, 51–52 nos. 7, 8, 70–73 nos. 9–10, 41, 68–69 nos. 65–67, 79–80, 81, 83–84, 88

After 1348 nos. 48, 64

Ambiguous no. 29

–

nos. 19–21, 46, 55–60, 74, 77 no. 78 – –

no. 44 – nos. 5–6, 11, 33, 40, 42 no. 39

nos. 13, 22, 43, 53, 54, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89

Edit Madas, “A Dominican Sermon Collection,” Budapest Review of Books 6 (1996): 415–419. 33 Ressouni-Demigneux, “La personalité de saint Sébastien,” 564.

“Had She Born Ten Daughters, She Would Have Named Them All Mary because of the Kindness of the First Mary” St. Anne in the Sermons of Two Late Medieval 1 Hungarian Preachers Emőke NAGY

The veneration of St. Anne2 was far from being uncontroversial in the Middle Ages, due to her apocryphal origin, her vitae, and the theological debates regarding the conception of her daughter, the Virgin Mary. The surviving textual sources of her cult from late medieval Hungary are mostly sermons and legends written in Franciscan environments. At the end of the fifteenth century, two renowned Hungarian Observant Franciscan preachers, Pelbartus de Themeswar (ca. 1435–1504) and Osvaldus de Lasko (ca. 1450–1511), dedicated sermons to the saint in their works. Both preachers lived and worked in the same period and occupied simi1

I would like to thank my PhD thesis supervisor, Gábor Klaniczay, for his advice regarding an earlier version of this paper. I also would like to express my gratitude for the fruitful conversations with Carmen Florea, Péter Molnár, Virginia Nixon, and for revising the translations from Latin to Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar. The quotation in the title stems from one of the two preachers, Osvaldus de Lasko; see footnote 37 below. 2 For basic studies on Saint Anne, see Beda Kleinschmidt, Die Heilige Anna: Ihre Verehrung in Geschichte, Kunst und Volkstum (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1930). For a new approach inspired by gender studies as well as cultural and interdisciplinary studies, see Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, eds., Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990); Ton Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne: A Holy Grandmother and Her Children,” in Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (New York: Garland, 1995), 31–65; eadem, “St. Anne and Her Family: The Veneration of St. Anne in Connection with Concepts of Marriage and the Family in the Early Modern Period,” in Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Lène Dresen-Coenders (London: Rubicon, 1987), 101–127; Virginia Nixon, Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 1–55.

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larly important positions within their order. Consequently, it is plausible to assume that both of them treated the saint’s figure and cult in a similar manner. Given their important positions within their order a comparative analysis of their sermons dedicated to the saint can help to understand the extent of variation in the Franciscan perception of her cult. The few existing studies on the written sources of St. Anne’s cult in medieval Hungary surveyed only her legends preserved in manuscripts of Hungarian provenance.3 No analysis of the above mentioned sermons about her has been carried out so far. In the following paper I would like to examine these works in the broader context of theological debates around her figure, and focusing on the ways preachers selected from and interpreted her vitae in order to shape their own image of the saint. Saint Anne in Theological Debates The names of Mary’s parents, Anne and Joachim, are mentioned for the first time in the Protevangelium of James (second century) as part of the story of Jesus’ birth and maternal ancestry. The Protevangelium was widely spread in Eastern Christianity and aimed to fill in gaps in the officially approved, canonical Gospels. It effectively popularized the story of Mary’s childhood and gave birth to liturgical feasts. The Protevangelium itself was not known in the West until the sixteenth century; the saint’s vita was propagated here by a Latin version of the Protevangelium, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, also known as the Liber de Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia Salvatoris (ca. 550–700), and by works derived from it. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew4 told the story of Anne and Joachim, an old childless married couple who, contrary to their age, were blessed by God to have a child, the Virgin Mary. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew spread to the West in Carolingian times, and the number of exemplars increased considerably in the Ottonian period. The first data on the cult of 3

Lajos Katona, “A Teleki-kódex legendái” (The legends of the Teleki codex), Értekezések a nyelv- és széptudományok köréből 18 (1904): 1–30; Anna Veres, “Szent Anna alakja a Jakab-féle ősevangéliumban és három kódexünkben” (Saint Anne’s figure in the Protevangelium of James and in three Hungarian codeces), Plaustrum seculi 3 (2005): http://sermones.elte.hu/?az=337tan_plaus_veresanna (accessed April 30, 2010). 4 Constantinus Tischendorf, Evangelia apocrypha: Adhibitis plurimis codicibus graecis et latinis maximam partem nun primum sonsultis atque indeditorium copia insiguibus (Leipzig: Mendelssohn, 1876), 101–140; Aurelio de Santos Otero, ed., Los Evangelios Apocrifos: Collección de textos griegos y latinos, versión crítica, estudios introductorios, comentarios e ilustrationes, (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1956), 189–258.

St. Anne in the Sermons of Two Late Medieval Hungarian Preachers

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St. Anne are connected to the diffusion of the Holy Virgin’s religious feasts from the East. Liturgical evidence referring to St. Anne is sporadic before the twelfth century.5 The intense debates on the problem of Immaculate Conception beginning in the twelfth century also involved in the discussions the Virgin’s mother Anne. One of these debates was related to Anne’s conception of Mary. Theologians agreed on the spotless conception of Mary’s soul but the same was questioned regarding her body. In the words of Mirella Levi D’Ancona: “Was the body of Mary also conceived immaculately, and in that case was the conception of the parents of the Virgin immaculate, or was it subjected to the laws of Original Sin?”6 The debates regarding Anne’s role in the conception of her daughter were renewed during the late Middle Ages. Another subject of the controversies surrounding St. Anne was the legend of her trinubium from the twelfth century onwards. The Protevangelium of James and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and its variants did not include the legend about the three marriages of St. Anne (the trinubium). This legend is a Western addition to her cult; its origins are not known precisely. The first traces of this legend appeared in the West in the Carolingian period; it was recorded in the ninth century by Haymo of Auxerre in his Historiae Sacrae Epitome and it began to spread around 1100 from Anglo-Norman regions.7 Haymo tried to solve the mystery around the remarks on Christ’s brothers (as kin) appearing in the New Testament, which also questioned Mary’s immaculate nature indirectly. He reached the conclusion that Mary had two other younger sisters, also named Mary, and their sons were presented as Christ’s brothers.8 Thus, in Haymo’s interpretation, Anne had three daughters named Mary from three different marriages. The old Hebrew laws prescribed the 5

Kleinschmidt, Die Heilige Anna, 6–75; Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, “Introduction,” in Interpreting cultural symbols, 1–69; Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne,” 31–65; eadem, “St. Anne and Her Family,” 101–127; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 1–55. 6 Mirella Levi D’Ancona, The Iconography of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (New York: College Art Association of America and Art Bulletin, 1957), 7. 7 Ashley and Sheingorn, “Introduction,” 11–17; Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne,” 41–42; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 13–16. 8 Haymo of Auxerre, Historiae sacrae epitome, in PL, vol. 118, cols. 823–824. The text was previously attributed to Haymo of Halberstadt; see Baudouin de Gaiffier, “Le Trinubium Annae,” Analecta Bollandiana 90 (1972): 289–298; Ashley and Sheingorn, “Introduction,” 59; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 168.

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practice of levirate: in the event of the husband’s death, his brother had to marry the widow. According to Haymo, Anne, after Joachim’s death, married his brother Cleophas, and after his death, the third brother, Salomas. Mary Cleophas (named after her father) married Alpheus and became the mother of Jacob the Younger, Simon, Judas and Joseph the Righteous. Mary Salomas (also named after her father) married Zebedee and gave birth to Jacob the Elder and John the Evangelist.9 Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) rejected both the trinubium and the Immaculate Conception but endorsed the doctrine of Mary’s Sanctification by asserting that although Mary was conceived in Original Sin, according to the laws of humanity, she was released from impurity in the moment when her sanctified soul joined her body in the womb of her mother Anne.10 It was this opinion—that Mary was sanctified in the womb of her mother Anne and thus, in spite of having been conceived in Original Sin, she was born without being tainted by it—that was supported by the Dominicans in the Later Middle Ages.11 The Franciscans, on the other hand, supported the theory that Mary was conceived without Original Sin, thus without sexual desire on the part of her parents. Or, as others put it, God made an exception in the case of Mary. John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308) suggested that Mary had been preserved from sin from the moment of her conception until the Redemption of the Cross, when she had been saved together with the entire human race. Christ’s salvific action cleansed her mother in advance.12 Despite the controversies, the legend of the trinubium was included in later variants of Pseudo-Matthew’s Gospel. One of these later variants, called The Gospel of the Birth of Mary13 served as source material for the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1226–1298) in writing Anne’s vita, including the trinubium, as part of the chapter on the Nativity of the Vir9

Ashley and Sheingorn, “Introduction,” 11–12; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 16; Brandenbarg, “St. Anne and her Family,” 104–105. 10 Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolam ad Galatas lectura, lectio 5, in Commento al Corpus Paulinum (Expositio et lectura super epistolas Pauli apostoli), ed. Battista Mondin, vol. 3: Seconda lettera ai Corinzi, Lettera ai Galati (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2006), 563–569; idem, Summa Theologiae IIIa, q. 27 (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1988), 14–15. 11 Ashley, and Sheingorn, “Introduction,” 13–17; Nixon, Mary’s Mother, 13–16. 12 Ioanes Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 20: Lectura in librum tertium sententiarum, dist. 1–17 (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 2003), d. 3, q. 1, pp. 119–138. Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage, 1983), 242. 13 De nativitatae sanctae Mariae, in PL, vol. 30, cols. 307–315.


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gin in the Legenda Aurea.14 Since the Legenda Aurea was widely used as a source for writing sermons, through these latter vehicles, and by being incorporated in biblical history, the legend of the trinubium reached much broader dissemination than before. Anne’s cult flourished at the end of the fifteenth century and in the first decades of the sixteenth century especially in German-speaking areas. Besides the Golden Legend, the rich German hagiographical material disseminated the legend of her three marriages.15 Her veneration was first approved by pope Urban VI (ca. 1378–1389), who officially recognized the cult of the saint in England in the bull Splendor aeternae gloriae in 1378. The Franciscan pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) introduced the feast of St. Anne in the Roman calendar in 1481.16 St. Anne in the Sermons of Pelbartus de Themeswar and Osvaldus de Lasko Previous scholars attributed the rapid diffusion of St. Anne’s cult in medieval Hungary especially to the Franciscans.17 Their major role in propagating it has been explained by the great importance of Mary’s Immaculate Conception among Franciscan feasts.18 The sermonaries of Pelbartus de Themeswar and Osvaldus de Lasko, reached mass circulation through the early printing press.19 Both preachers fulfilled important positions in 14

Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols. (Florence: SISMEL, 1998), 2:900–917; Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne,” 41–42. 15 Angelika Dörfler-Dierken collected and analyzed hagiographical works about Saint Anne which were composed and printed in Germany in this period. See Angelika Dörfler-Dierken, Die Verehrung der heiligen Anna in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992). 16 Ashley and Sheingorn, “Introduction,” 21; Dörfler-Dierken, Die Verehrung, 70. 17 Sándor Bálint, Ünnepi Kalendárium: A Mária-ünnepek és jelesebb napok hazai és közép-európai hagyományvilágából (Liturgical calendar: On the feasts of the Virgin and other significant feasts in Hungarian and Central European traditions), 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Szeged: Mandala, 1998), 2:115. 18 Ibid., 95–118. 19 On Franciscans in medieval Hungary see, first of all, János Karácsonyi, Szent Ferenc rendjének története Magyarországon 1711-ig (The history of the order ot St. Francis in Hungary until 1711), 2 vols. (Budapest: MTA, 1922–1923); Fortunát Boros, Az erdélyi ferencrendiek (The Franciscan order in Transylvania) (Cluj: Szent Bonaventura, 1927). On the genre of model sermons, see Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ed., The Sermon, Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). For religious life in late medieval Hungary, see Lajos Pásztor, A magyarság vallásos élete a Jagellók korában (Religious life of the Hungarians in the Jagiellonian era), 2nd ed. (Budapest: Magyar Egyháztörténeti Enciklopédia Munkaközösség, 2000); Marie-

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the life of their order, and both read theology in the convent of Buda; Osvaldus de Lasko was also elected guardian of the Pest convent, and twice vicar of the Hungarian province. Pelbartus’ sermon collections, the Stellarium Coronae Beatae Mariae Virginis—dedicated to the Virgin for his recovery from an illness20—and the three-volume Pomerium sermonum were published in at least 20 editions each, mostly in Haguneau/Hagenau between 1498 and the 1520s. While Pelbartus dedicated four sermons to St. Anne21 in his Pomerium sermonum, Osvaldus wrote only two such sermons22 in his three-volume sermonary, the Biga salutis, first published in Haguneau/Hagenau in 1499. The St. Anne sermons of Pelbartus (De eius praecelsa sanctitate cum historia; De gratia divinae benedictionis qua refulsit; De privilegiorum eius dignitate; and Mulier timens Deum, ipsa laudabitur)23 are more elaborate and detailed concerning the saint’s cult, than those of Osvaldus (De sancta Anna, De eadem)24 Madeleine de Cevins, L’église dans les villes hongroises à la fin du Moyen-Age (vers 1320–vers 1490) (Budapest: Institut Hongrois, Société pour l’Encyclopédie de l’Histoire de l’Église en Hongrie, 2003). For the life of Pelbartus and Osvaldus, see Áron Szilády, Temesvári Pelbárt élete és munkái (The life and works of Pelbartus de Themeswar) (Budapest: Franklin, 1880), Cyrill Horváth, Temesvári Pelbárt és beszédei (Pelbartus de Themeswar and his sermons) (Budapest: Franklin, 1889); Richárd Horváth, Laskai Ozsvát (Osvaldus de Lasko) (Budapest: Sárkány, 1932). For a recent study on how the model sermons of Pelbartus and Osvaldus were compiled and used, see Ildikó Bárczi, Ars compilandi: A késő középkori prédikációs segédkönyv forráshasználata (Ars compilandi: The use of sources in late medieval sermonaries) (Budapest: Universitas, 2007). 20 As Pelbartus explains in the prologue of his work; see Pelbartus de Themeswar, Stellarium corone benedicte Marie virginis in laudem eius pro singulis predicationibus elegantissime coaptatum (Hagenau: Henrich Gran, 1501). I used the copy Cluj-Napoca, Lucian Blaga Univ. Library, BMV 40. See also János Horváth, A magyar irodalmi műveltség kezdetei Szent Istvántól Mohácsig (The beginnings of Hungarian literature from St. Stephen to Mohács) (Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság, 1931), 58–59. 21 Pelbartus de Themeswar, Pomerium de sanctis II. [pars aestivalis] (Augsburg: Johann Otmar, 1502), sermons 36, 37, 38. I used the copy Cluj-Napoca, Lucian Blaga Univ. Library, BMV 41. See also my “Anyaság és szentség: Szent Anna és Szent Erzsébet Temesvári Pelbárt prédikációiban (Motherhood and sanctity: Saint Anne and Saint Elizabeth in the sermons of Pelbartus de Themeswar),” in Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet: Magyar-német kultúrkapcsolatok Kelet-Közép-Európában, ed. Csilla Gábor, Tamás Knecht, and Gabriella-Nóra Tar (Cluj-Napoca: Verbum, 2009), 32–47. 22 Osvaldus de Lasko, Sermones de sanctis Biga salutis intitulati (Hagenau: Heinrich Gran, 1499), sermons 62, 63. I used the copy Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Inc. 1030. 23 “On her exceptional sanctity, including her story;” Pelbartus, Pomerium, sermon 36. “On the divine benediction which shined brightly upon her;” ibid., sermon 37. “On the dignity of her privileges;” ibid., sermon 38. As to the fourth sermon, Pelbartus only indicates its topic to the user: “The woman who fears God, she will be praised.” Thus, the


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Both preachers used the Golden Legend as the main source for their sermons on St. Anne.25 Her legend as it stands in the Legenda Aurea is not retold in detail in any of the texts,26 but the authors, inspired by the work of Jacobus de Voragine, use this source freely, integrating bits and pieces in the structure of their sermons. Jacobus de Voragine describes the genealogy of Christ as a matrilineal descent, in contrast to the Gospels of Mathew (1:1–17) and Luke (3:23–38)27 where it proceeds through Joseph, not Mary. While the genealogy presented in the Bible underlines the royal origin of Christ,28 the Dominican friar draws the ancestors of the Virgin from the priestly line of Levi. Pelbartus in the first sermon refers to the saint’s apocryphal origin but argues in favor of her devotion. It is her divine election that makes her worthy of being venerated. She is at the root of the genesis of the Heavenly Queen and of Christ himself, and also of the apostles belonging to the Holy Kinship who contributed to the establishment and propagation of Christianity. In the second sermon, he even calls her a matriarch of everybody waiting for salvation (matriarcha omnium salvandorum).29 The Holy Kinship itself is presented in a detailed manner, including Hismeria, the younger sister of Anne, and her parents, Stollanus and Emerentia along with Servatius, the nephew of St. Elizabeth. All members of Christ’s earthly family appear in the presentation. When enumerating them, Pelbartus refers to Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit (Matt. 7:17). Therefore, a particularly good or the best fruit bespeaks a particularly good or the best tree.”30 user could treat the topic freely, compiling the material for his sermon from other predicabilia; see Bárczi, Ars compilandi, 39–40. 24 “On Saint Anne;” Osvaldus, Sermones, sermon 62. “On the same [saint];” ibid., sermon 63. 25 Edit Madas, “La Légende dorée—Historica Lombardica—en Hongrie,” in Spiritualità e lettere nella cultura italiana e ungherese del basso medioevo, ed. Sante Graciotti and Cesare Vasoli (Florence: Olschki, 1945), 53–61; Bárczi, Ars compilandi, 39–40. 26 Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda Aurea, 2:901–906. 27 Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, “La Vierge, l’arbre de Jessé et l’ordre chrétien de la parenté,” in Marie: Le culte de la vierge dans la société médiévale, ed. Dominique Iogna-Prat, Éric Palazzo, and Daniel Russo (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), 137–173; Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, L’ombre des ancêtres: Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 51–57, 222–227. 28 Guerreau-Jalabert, “La Vierge,” 147. 29 Pelbartus, Pomerium, sermon 37, K. 30 “[O]mnis arbor bona facit fructus bonos. Ergo melior et optimus fructus meliorem et optimam arborem esse probat.” Pelbartus, Pomerium, sermon 36, H.

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In portraying Anne’s virtues and exemplary life which, besides her motherhood, made her worthy of praise, Pelbartus addresses everybody, and especially the three orders of women: “people of all conditions can draw [from it] many examples for their salvation, that is to say, those who are in wedlock as well as the widows and the virgins.”31 Her characteristics are described as examples to follow: her fear and love of God, her piety and compassion, and her devotion. Without recounting Anne’s vita in detail, Osvaldus also addresses his first sermon to women, and preaches about exemplary behavior. The author introduces Anne as an outstanding example of fearing and loving God, and of obeying him. Both Pelbartus and Osvaldus, through their sermons, intended to shape the everyday life of the faithful. They exhorted them to lead a pious life in order to merit the via salutis.32 Loving God and receiving his mercy are indispensable conditions of salvation. The fear of God, on the other hand, has many aspects as the emotion of fear is manifold too: “natural, worldly, human, servile, initial, and filial.”33 Each kind of fear can enhance the obedience to God in its own way; natural fear, for example, can lead to the avoidance of robbery and fornication. Besides general moral teachings, Osvaldus also emphasizes the complementary duties of husband and wife: just like a husband should fear God and should live in chastity, a woman should be chaste for the love of her husband, in order to keep him away from a sinful life. Although Osvaldus does not refer to Anne’s apocryphal origin, he still enumerates Christ’s matrilineal forbears just as his fellow friar. He argues in favor of Anne’s devotion, just like Pelbartus, with reference to Anne’s status: he calls her not matriarch but “saintly root,” and her giving birth trice is characterized with “unheard fruitfulness.”34 Neither Pelbartus nor Osvaldus elaborates on Anne’s three marriages to the extent that it is treated in the legends. They only mention that Anne and her family obeyed God’s will. Osvaldus’ remark of “unheard fruitfulness” reminds us of the way Anne is frequently referred to in legends and hymns as, for example, Arbor Anna fructuosa, exemplifying fertility.35 Unlike in the 31

“[O]mnis status homines possunt accipere plurima salutis exempla, scilicet tam coniugati, quam viduae et virgines.” Ibid., I. 32 Pásztor, A magyarság, 14–15. 33 “Natural[is, …] mundan[us, …] human[us, …] servil[is, …] initial[is, …] filial[is, …].” Osvaldus, Sermones, sermon 62. 34 Ibid. 35 Brandenbarg, “Saint Anne,” 41.


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sermons of the two preachers, in Anne’s most extensive Hungarian vita, in the Franciscan Teleki Codex (1525–1531),36 her marriages are presented as examples of unhesitating obedience to the law prescribing the practice of levirate and, through this, to God’s will. The fact that this argument is repeated in each of the three cases was meant to underline the saintly intentions of a woman who got married three times. In contrast to this, the extent of Osvaldus’ lack of interest in defending Anne’s trinubium is revealed by his curious remark on the three marriages: “Had she born ten daughters, she would have named them all Mary because of the kindness of the first Mary.”37 It is the third sermon about St. Anne, where Pelbartus first discusses the issue of the Immaculate Conception.38 He structures the sermon according to twelve “privileges” (privilegia) of St. Anne, that is twelve characteristics which make her worthy of praise. These twelve privileges allude to the twelve stars of the Virgin’s crown as it appears in John’s vision (Apoc. 12:1–6),39 and thus create a frame of reference for the whole argument. True to his Franciscan affiliation, Pelbartus supports the immaculate view: “God worked greater miracles with Anne than with Joachim because in her he sanctified his own tabernacle[...]. And, according to our teachers, he preserved the Holy Virgin from the original sin in Anne’s womb.”40 In the Stellarium, his sermon collection dedicated to the veneration of the Virgin, Pelbartus criticizes the ignorance of those who believe that St. Anne did not conceive in the natural way, but per solum osculum: “it isn’t true what the common people think, that St. Anne conceived just through a kiss of Joa36

György Volf, ed., Teleki-kódex (Teleki codex), Nyelvemléktár 12 (Budapest: MTA, 1884), 291–297. Based on a widespread legend of an anonymous Franciscan friar (Legenda sanctissimae matronae Annae, published in several variants after 1496), which circulated in Western Europe, the Life of St. Anne in the Teleki codex contains the most elaborate version of the saint’s legend known from medieval Hungary. See Emőke Nagy, “Motherhood and Sanctity in the Cult of Saint Anne: The Reception of the Saint’s Legend Based on Her Earliest Sources from Medieval Hungary, the Teleki, Kazinczy, and Érdy codices,” Colloquia 16 (2010): forthcoming. 37 “[S]i decem (filias) genuisset omnes Marias nominasset propter gratiositatem primae Mariae.” Osvaldus, Sermones, sermon 62. 38 Pelbartus, Pomerium, sermon 38. 39 Guy Lobrichon, “La Femme d’Apocalypse 12 dans l’Occident latin (760–1200),” in Marie: Le culte de la vierge, 407–441. 40 “Deus maiora fecit miracula in Anna, quam in Ioachim, quia ibi sanctificavit tabernaculum suum[...]. Et secundum nostros doctores praeservavit Virginem Beatam ab originali peccato in utero Annae.” Pelbartus, Pomerium, sermon 38, H.

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chim.”41 In the same mariological work, he poses the question: “Is it allowed to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception in church?” In answering it he complains that some people teach not to celebrate this feast because Mary was conceived by Joachim and Anne in the natural way, thus in sin. In consequence, the feast should not address the Immaculate Conception but the Sanctification of Mary, since even if Mary was conceived in sin, she was sanctified after being conceived.42 Pelbartus argues against this opinion by saying that in spite of having been conceived in sacred matrimony she was not conceived in sin, because the matrimony of Anne and Joachim was sacred. In contrast to Pelbartus, who discusses the Immaculate Conception both in the Stellarium and in the third sermon about St. Anne, Osvaldus neglects this problem entirely. This leads us to think that there is not a direct connection between the cult of St. Anne and the Franciscan support for the Immaculate Conception, as the earlier scholarship supposed. It was rather a matter of personal preference whether a preacher dealt with this topic or not. The difference between the two preachers in this respect might be explained by Pelbartus’ special devotion to the Virgin and his dedication to furthering and diffusing her cult.

41

“Et non est verum quod simplices putant. S. Annam concepisse per solum osculum Ioachim.” Pelbartus, Stellarium, li. 4, p. 1, a. 1. 42 Ibid. The debate on the conception of Mary can be found in works of Hungarian preachers as well; see Ince Dám, A szeplőtelen fogantatás védelme Magyarországon a Hunyadiak és Jagellok korában (The defence of the Immaculate Conception in Hungary during the time of Hunyadis and Jagellonians) (Rome: Ars Graf, 1955).

The Cult of the Saints in the Bohemian Reformation: The Question of Images Petra MUTLOVÁ

I. The cult of the saints in the period of the Bohemian Reformation has not yet been treated in a systematic way. The subject still lacks a general study and many previous attempts to approach this topic failed, often due to methodological flaws.1 As component parts of medieval devotion, veneration of sacred images, or that of sacred relics, have naturally attracted some attention of historians dealing with this period. However, in order to grasp the complexity of the cult of the saints, these categories must be first understood in their own abstract ways. Undoubtedly, these constructs are very difficult to distinguish2 and a number of particularities must still be clarified before a profound analysis of the phenomenon can be carried out. The Hussites generally shunned the saints and can be conceived as one of the groups to whom the cult of saints meant very little. One of the implications of this attitude was that the Hussites have been branded as iconoclasts ever since the fifteenth century. This topos has been accepted by generations of historians and still holds in the present. The need to appraise the phenomenon of Hussite attitude to works of art afresh from a broader historical perspective came to the fore only in the past few decades, postulated mostly by art historians. Milena Bartlová, one of the leading scholars of the field, inspired through her work a number of smaller contributions dealing with Hussite iconoclasm from unexplored 1

One of the latest studies on the cult of the saints—Ota Halama, “Otázka svatých v české reformaci: Její proměny od doby Karla IV. do doby České konfese” (The question of saints in the Bohemian Reformation: Its changes from the period of Charles IV until the time of the Bohemian Confession) (Brno: L. Marek, 2002)—failed to follow a sound methodology and approached the cult of the saints as if it was identical with the problem of sacred images. See Milena Bartlová’s review in Umění 51 (2003): 341–343. 2 This is by no means a problem of the Hussite studies only—see Marina Miladinov, “Usage of Sainthood in the Reformation Controversy: Saints and Witnesses of Truth in Matthias Flacius Illyricus,” New Europe College Yearbook 10 (2002–2003): 15–61, http://www.nec.ro/fundatia/nec/publications.htm, accessed in December 2009.

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points of view.3 Bartlová stressed the need to examine the social status of images in this specific historical situation and to assess the habitual practices related to the perception of sacred images.4 Lately, František Šmahel voiced the opinion that the origins of Hussite iconoclasm are essentially an ideological matter, stimulated by the radical preachers.5 Previous scholarship has not differentiated between practical piety, liturgical cult or theological reflections on images, a fact which still distorts our understanding of Hussite iconoclasm. The few attempts to meticulously appraise individual acts of iconoclasm during the Hussite wars revealed that they were manifold in nature. Norbert Schnitzler ascribed many of these events to military actions,6 and further methodological differentiations were suggested by Bartlová.7 Nevertheless, one of the most complicated issues remains how the abstract theological critiques of images could be transmitted to the popular masses, if such a connection between theory and iconoclastic practice can be truly justified. The aim of this paper is to present a particular example concerning this issue. Specifically, it will put forward a question related to the role of ymagines in the early stage of the Bohemian Reformation as reflected in the theoretical work of an important Hussite representative. II. The theological discussion about various aspects of the veneration of images was studied extensively.8 It should be stressed that the Hussites’ attitude towards images cannot be reduced solely to the traditional objections against the aesthetic nature of works of art (i.e. in case it obscures their religious function), or to inappropriate use of latria or dulia towards images, or be limited to objections against the veracity of images voiced 3

See, for instance, the proceedings of a conference: Public Communication in European Reformation: Artistic and Other Media in Central Europe 1380–1620, ed. Milena Bartlová and Michal Šroněk (Prague: Artefactum, 2007). 4 Milena Bartlová, “Understanding Hussite Iconoclasm,” Filosofický časopis, suppl. 1 (2009): 115–126. 5 František Šmahel, Husitské Čechy: Struktury, procesy, ideje (Hussite Bohemia: Structures, processes, ideas) (Prague: Lidové noviny, 2001), 80, 350. 6 Norbert Schnitzler, Ikonoklasmus—Bildersturm: Theologischer Bilderstreit und ikonoklastisches Handeln während des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1996), 88–95. 7 Such as attacks on images as vehicles of power, see Bartlová, “Understanding Hussite Iconoclasm,” 126. 8 A survey of older opinions can be found in the 8th volume of Husitský Tábor (1985), which was fully dedicated to the topic. References to older literature are best accessible in František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, trans. Thomas Krzenck and Alexander Patschovsky, 3 vols. (Hannover: Hahn, 2002).

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already by ancient writers. Naturally, all these opinions reverberate through the theoretical works of the Bohemian reformers. Nevertheless, even within the set of ideas of single individuals who addressed themselves to the above problem, there are discrepancies that cannot be explained very easily. It appears that the gap between theory and practice which we strive to comprehend can be traced on this level, too. The spiritual father of the Hussite reformers, Matthew of Janov (d. 1393), traditionally stands at the beginning of the Hussite critique of images.9 His ideas were exploited mainly by two representatives of the Hussite theoreticians, Jacobellus of Missa and Nicholas of Dresden, supported by Peter Payne and others. John Hus himself held the conservative opinion that was widespread among many Hussite theologians, namely that the images do have an undeniable function in the sacred space but their proper use must be constantly guarded.10 Let us take a look at one example, namely at the attitudes of Nicholas of Dresden. Nicholas expressed his views on ymagines on several occasions. Around September 1415, he composed a tract called De imaginibus, a prime source for his attitude towards images in churches and modes of their veneration.11 He touched upon the same topic in another tract written around the same time, Querite primum regnum Dei, where he compiled large chunks of mostly biblical quotations for the given topic.12 In both of these treatises, Nicholas refused images altogether and thought that the contemporary tradition maintained by the official Church was completely 9

M. Matěj z Janova, jeho život, spisy a učení (Master Matthew of Janov, his life, works and doctrine), ed. Vlastimil Kybal (Prague: Královská česká společnost nauk, 1905; repr., Brno: L. Marek, 2000). Matthew deals with the problem of images in the fifth book of his treatise: Matthiae de Janov dicti Parisiensis Regularum Veteris et Novi Testamenti liber V: De corpore Cristi, ed. Jana Nechutová and Helena Krmíčková (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993). 10 A comparison of selected Hussite opinions on images was carried out by Kristína Sedláčková-Steffanová, “De ymaginibus. Matěj z Janova, Mikuláš z Drážďan, Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Petr Payne” (Master’s thesis, Masaryk University, Brno, 2003). See also Jana Bělohlávková, “Die Ansichten über Bilder im Werk der tschechischen Reformprediger,” Studie o rukopisech 29 (1992): 53–64. 11 “Nicolai de Dresda ‘De imaginibus’,” ed. Jana Nechutová, Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity E 15 (1970): 211–240. Eadem, “Traktát Mikuláše z Drážďan ‘De imaginibus’ a jeho vztah k Matěji z Janova” (The tract ‘De imaginibus’ by Nicholas of Dresden and its relation to Matthew of Janov), Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity E 9 (1964): 149–162. 12 Nicolaus de Dresda, Querite primum regnum Dei, ed. Jana Nechutová (Brno: Universita J. E. Purkyně, 1967).

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erroneous. This is one of the most distinctive differences between his ideas and those of Matthew of Janov, who criticized only certain side effects of image veneration—that is, in the case that they overshadowed the central role of the Eucharist, a cause which was subsequently strongly accentuated by the Hussites. Based on his opinions expressed in these two treatises, Nicholas has been traditionally labeled a hard-core iconoclast and his ideas professedly influenced the radical Hussite circles afterwards. Nevertheless, that even Nicholas made good use of images under certain circumstances will be presented in the following section. III. Around 1412 Nicholas wrote a treatise entitled Tabule veteris et novi coloris, a polemical treatise comparing the primitive Church of Christ with the praxis of the contemporary Church represented by the pope identified with the Antichrist.13 The Tabule attracted the attention of mostly art historians due to the book illuminations preserved in two codices dating from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—the socalled Göttingen and Jena codices that contain an old Czech adaptation of Nicholas’ Latin Tabule.14 The relationship between Nicholas’ original Latin text and its Czech adaptations in these two manuscripts was subject to a long-lasting discussion but the main point is clear:15 the illuminated codices were modeled on different examples and adjusted the original Latin text in different ways. It is generally accepted that Nicholas’ text itself served either as a libretto for certain wall-paintings, or for painted boards that were being carried during the street riots in Prague in 1412– 1414; or that Nicholas was inspired by some already existing pictorial antitheses and made good use of them in his Tabule. In the following, I 13

Howard Kaminsky et al., eds., Master Nicholas of Dresden: The Old Color And The New, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 55, pt. 1 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1965), 38–65. 14 Literature concerning both codices is vast; for the Göttingen codex, see Viktor Svec, Bildagitation: Antipäpstliche Bildpolemik der böhmischen Reformation im Göttinger Hussitenkodex (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1994); older literature on the Jena codex was compiled by Pavel Brodský, “Bibliografie k Jenskému kodexu” (Bibliography on the Jena codex), Sborník Národního muzea v Praze C 29 (1984): 55–58; idem, Katalog iluminovaných rukopisů Knihovny Národního muzea v Praze (Catalogue of the illuminated manuscripts of the Library of the National Musem of Prague) (Prague: KLP, 2000), 49–54. n. 41. A facsimile edition of the Jena codex was prepared by Marta Vaculínová et al., The Jena Codex (Prague: Gallery, 2009). 15 Mostly owing to analyses of Miloslav Vlk published in a series of articles, the last of which contains references to the previous ones: Miloslav Vlk, “Jenský kodex: Kodikologický rozbor” (Jena codex: Codicological analysis), Sborník Národního muzea v Praze A 21 (1967): 73–106.


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will present one seemingly minor issue connected to the textual tradition of this treatise, which will contribute to the debated relationship between the Tabule and its illuminations.16 The text of the Latin Tabule has come down to us in fifteen manuscript copies. Out of these, three contain only excerpts or an incomplete text, and another three are deemed to represent an independent phase of text development. The Tabule comprise a collection of authorities divided into nine parts—the tabule or tables—illustrating the contrasts between the praxis of the primitive Church and that of the contemporary corrupted Church. They do so with the help of passages from the Bible and the Church Fathers set in contrast with quotations from the Decretals and glosses on the Canon Law. The title Tabule has caused some confusion among historians. The whole text has nine parts marked as tabule. Each tabula gathers material for one theme but could have rendered inspiration for several pictures. In three of the preserved manuscripts the text is entitled Novus color et antiquus and this terminology prompted some researchers to think of the treatise in relation to paintings. However, the manuscripts of the Tabule themselves present evidence that lex divina antiquus color, lex humana novus color, that is, the old color represents the divine law and the new color the human law. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that such terms were traditional means of medieval rhetoric.17 Nicholas quoted the Tabule as the Cortina de Anticristo (cortina meaning a carpet, a curtain or a drape, but it can also have the figurative meaning of “a collection of authorities”).18 Apart from this title, some manuscripts read the incipit Conversacio Christi opposita conversacioni Antichristi.19 The copies dating from the late fifteenth century often read the subsequently widespread and 16

I have presented some of this matter in my article “Communicating Texts Through Images: Nicholas of Dresden’s Tabule,” in Public Communication in European Reformation, 29–37. 17 For medieval rhetorical figures in a Czech context, see Josef Tříška, Rétorický styl a pražská univerzitní literatura ve středověku (Rhetorical style and Prague university literature in the Middle Ages) (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1977). 18 Dana Martínková et al., eds., Latinitatis medii aevi lexicon Bohemorum, vol. 1 (Prague: Academia, 1987), 953. 19 Such a title in one of the Vienna manuscripts (MS ÖNB 4343) led Loserth to consider the text a dialogue and to edit the incomplete text based on this manuscript in a corresponding form, see Johann Loserth, “Ein kirchenpolitischer Dialog aus der Blütezeit des Taboritentums,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen 46, no. 2 (1907): 107–121.

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accepted title Tabule veteris et novi coloris, or also Antithesis Christi et Antichristi. The structure of the work does not allow for an unequivocal opinion concerning its illuminations. In the preserved copies of Nicholas’ Tabule, only rubricated headings of every table can be found, together with the numbering of the theses, which to some extent indicate the structure of the text. One copy contains a truncated drawing and this fact together with notes in several other manuscripts such as Cristus portans crucem—papa equitans in equo led to the hypothesis that these represented certain instructions for painters.20 The structure of the whole text is so confusing that even its critical edition has not clarified it unequivocally. Nevertheless, the most controversial issue concerning the relationship between the original text of the Tabule and its supposed illuminations still lies in the question of whether the Latin text of the Tabule was written first and then illuminated (if at all), or whether some wall-paintings (or other pictorial medium) existed first and provided inspiration for Nicholas’ Tabule—in short, which medium informed the origin of the other. František Šmahel came up with an intriguing hypothesis concerning the Tabule. He tried to explain the transposition of some of the tables in the illuminated codices through the layout and the perception of the wallpaintings in the house at the Black Rose in Prague where Nicholas and his colleagues lived and worked.21 As Šmahel argued, this disposition could match the layout of the tables in the Göttingen codex where they appear in a slightly distorted order: first comes the ninth table, followed by tables 5 to 8 and completed by tables 1 to 4. This could correspond to tables 5–8 and 1–4 being on the side walls and the ninth table on the central pillar in the atrium at the Black Rose House. From the codicological point of view, this hypothesis does not rest on very sound foundations as the order of the quaterns, especially in the Jena codex, is so distorted that it cannot offer solid evidence for any such conclusion. Nevertheless, from the communication point of view, this does not matter at all. For Šmahel rightly pointed out that the most powerful effect of the presumably existing wallpaintings could have been reached only through an audio-visual performance during which a learned interpreter with a good command of Latin could assist in the collective perception of the paintings closely connected with the text. 20

František Šmahel, “Die Tabule veteris et novi coloris als audiovisuelles Medium hussitischer Agitation,” Studie o rukopisech 29 (1992): 98. 21 Ibid., 95–105.


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A little piece of information can be added to the function of the text that was so far interpreted with the help of presently known complete manuscripts of the Tabule. The text tradition of the Tabule has been rich and varied from its very beginning. Let us repeat that nine of the so far known manuscripts represent the tradition of the lengthy collection of authorities; another six copies contain only incomplete texts or abridged excerpts, and three out of these are considered to be representatives of a different phase of text development. These incomplete texts require attention they have not received because their examination might lead to a reconstruction of a text quite different from the one we know at present. All the more so, since the relationship between the Tabule and their later illuminated Czech adaptations still causes friction. A manuscript preserved today in an archive in Herrnhut, Germany, shows a close connection to the illuminations and can be dated to a time close to the actual origin of the Latin Tabule.22 It contains various hussitica, the youngest of which can be dated to 1412, and an excerpt from Nicholas’ Tabule.23 The manuscript contains a scribal explicit of 1412 and none of the inner or outer signs of the codex contradicts the acceptance of this date. Provided that the text of the Tabule was composed around the beginning of the year 1412, it might be one of the oldest copies of this text—both of the dated manuscripts containing the complete text of the Tabule were copied at the earliest in 1417. The excerpt copied in the Herrnhut manuscript contains passages from the fifth table, followed by the contradicting authorities from the second, first, third and fourth tables and the testes de Antichristo are summed up at the end. It is remarkable that the passages are organized in a way that corresponds to the antithetical character of the text, that is, a pars Christi on one side faces a pars pape on the other side. These inscriptions are also noted in the upper margins of each folio in the codex.24 Moreover, we find not only captions that can be read as instructions for the illuminations, but also blank spaces that seem to have been left for the pictures.25 The layout of this copy thus at22

MS Herrnhut, Unitätsarchiv, AB.II.R.1.16.a, f. 93v–97r. The editors of the Tabule did not include this manuscript in their edition, nevertheless, it is briefly described in the foreword to the edition, see Kaminsky, Master Nicholas, 34, 37. 23 The unpublished catalogue compiled by Dr. Joseph Müller is accessible in the Unitätsarchiv in Herrnhut. 24 Folio 94v: Pars Christi que debet depingi baiulans crucem facing folio 95r: Pars pape que debet depingi iuxta tenorem privilegii; f. 95v: Pars Christi facing f. 96r: Pars pape. 25 The heading pars pape on f. 94r is written in the middle of the page, leaving the upper part blank.

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tests to an explicit connection between the picture decoration and the text in a manuscript that is very close to the origin of the Tabule themselves. IV. Whether the Herrnhut manuscript represents a rudiment of the original text of the Tabule or, on the contrary, if it is only a preparation for the textual edition of the Tabule as inspired by certain paintings cannot be unequivocally decided. To the intricate situation concerning the images and the Tabule, the existence of the Herrnhut manuscript introduces one essential implication—namely that already around 1412, that is at a time very close to the composition of the Tabule, their pictorial decoration was intended as a means for the promotion of the ideas they contained. This in consequence shows that the correlation between theory and practice is not at all easily understood even in the case of a single individual. Even though, as I have presented at the beginning of this paper, Nicholas of Dresden together with other Hussite ideologists had iconoclastic points of view, and iconoclastic acts were indeed committed, we should not hastily establish a straightforward relationship between these phenomena. As it is crucial to differentiate between individual iconoclastic acts, so should the views of theoretical iconoclasts be analyzed on an individual basis. Only then we will be able to understand how Nicholas, who in his theoretical treatises explicitly called for destruction of all images, made good use of them when the need arose.

Madonna of Loreto as a Target of Reformation Critique Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger Marina MILADINOV

In her book on The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany (2007), Bridget Heal has offered a judicious image of the impact that the Protestant Reformations had on the Marian practice of piety.1 Despite the widespread scholarly opinion that the Virgin disappeared from both private and public spiritual life and made her comeback only in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a weapon of the Counterreformation, Heal has indicated that this supposition is largely based on the polemical writings of the reformers and that it cannot be consistently established for everyday life. Unlike the saints, whose cults indeed lost their power on the reformed territories, Mary survived as an object of veneration in the form of images and sculptures, as well as the Magnificat and the three feast days that Luther had retained: the Annunciation, the Visitation, and Mary’s Purification. In Nuremberg, which officially introduced the Lutheran Reformation in 1525, images of the Virgin continued to adorn private homes and public spaces, while curses involving her name were legally punishable to the same extent as before.2 Nevertheless, the reformers faced no dilemma when it came to condemning the practice of pilgrimage, and they based their criticism on various arguments, often extolling, beside the theological ones, those that addressed ethical and social aspects. Thus, pilgrimage was condemned as yet another method of snatching money from the credulous and also as an occasion to involve oneself in debauchery. It was also criticized as being detrimental for the social structures, since it disrupted families and deprived women and children of sustenance for an extended period of time. 1

Bridget Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 2 Ibid., 84–85.

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It should be emphasized that a number of Roman Catholic authors criticized the practice for the very same reasons, the most renowned among them being Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose pungent satire entitled “The Religious Pilgrimage” presented a most acerbic picture of that popular practice.3 This paper is about a specific pilgrimage site and also a very specific Protestant author, who abandoned his position as the bishop of Capodistria and a special commissioner of the Roman curia in order to become one of the most prolific and most acerb polemicists against the Roman Catholic church: Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger (1498–1564). Vergerius began his polemic activity immediately after he fled Istria and Italy in 1549 to take refuge on the territory of Graubünden, which was at that time open to the reformers’ preaching while at the same time retaining some of the ecclesiastical structures of the Roman Catholic church. Along with his activity as a preacher at various localities in Valtellina and Valchiavena, Vergerius published a number of treatises, letters, and apologies in which he was recalling his experiences in Capodistria and Italy in order to criticize various aspects of Roman Catholic spirituality, among which the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary is of particular interest for our topic.4 Vergerius mentions the “idol of Loreto” in several of his writings composed after he moved out of the Inquisition’s reach, but the legal process against him testifies to the fact that he had preached against the Loretan cult even while he was still active in his diocese. A witness mentioned that the bishop “always dishonored the saints and slandered their images, saying that the Madonna of Loreto is a work of the devil.”5 And 3

The Colloquies of Erasmus, transl. Nathan Bailey, ed. Edwin Johnson, 2 vols. (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878), 2:1–37. On other authors, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, who criticized pilgrimage, see Graham Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, ed. Craig G. Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 110–125; Günther Reiter, “Heiligenverehrung und Wallfahrtswesen im Schrifttum von Reformation und katholischer Restauration” (PhD diss., University of Würzburg, 1970). 4 As for Vergerius’s critique of the cult of the saints, I have discussed this topic at length in my article “Reformacijski spisi kao hagiografski izvori: Matija Vlačić Ilirik i Petar Pavao Vergerije ml.” (Reformation writings as hagiographic sources: Matthias Flacius Illyricus and Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger), Hagiologija: Kultovi u kontekstu, ed. Ana Marinković and Trpimir Vedriš (Zagreb: Leykam International, 2008), 59–76. 5 Gottfried Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition in Italien um die Mitte des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1910), 318 (testimony of Pietro Pamphilo, layman from Gubbio, doc. 87, August 1551).

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indeed, in the written apology that he compiled around 1547 and published several years later in Basel under the title Eight Points of Defence by Vergerius, Bishop of Capodistria, in Which Only a Minor Part of the Huge Superstitions in Italy Is Made Plain,6 under the title “Difesa VIII” he refuted the legend of the Madonna of Loreto in great detail, while in “Difesa III” (On Images) he stated that he could easily claim that the accusations against him were false, but refused to do so against his better conscience, since indeed “it would be better to give that oil to the poor instead of burning it in lamps in front of the image of Our Lady.”7 But the main polemic treatise that Vergerius dedicated entirely to the critique of the Loretan cult is that On the Chamber and Statue of Madonna Known as that of Loreto, Recently Defended by Fra Leandro Alberti Bolognese and Equipped with a Solemn Privilege by Pope Julius III.8 This work was published in 1554 in Italian, under Vergerius’s preferred pseudonym Athanasius, servant of Christ, and was translated into Latin in the same year to be published under the title De idolo Lauretano, while at the same time Vergerius also published it in Italian under his real name, which clearly shows the importance that this topic and its divulgation had for him.9 One of the reasons may have been the fact that his experiences with Loreto were first-hand, since he had visited the shrine three times himself, according to his own testimony.10 In order to place the hostility that Vergerius kept expressing against the cult of Loreto into the proper context, it is necessary to say a few words about its evolution.11 It was a relatively recent, late medieval cult, first mentioned early in the fourteenth century at the locality of a small rural 6

Le otto difensioni del Vergerio Vescovo di Capodistria. Nelle quali e notata & scoperta una particella delle tante superstitioni d’Italia: & della grande ignorantia & ingiustitia de Prencipi de Sacerdoti, Scribi & Farisei (Basel: Parco, 1550; preface from 1546). 7 Vergerius here quoted the testimony itself: “Ho sentito dire al Vescovo, che sarebbe meglio dare a poueri quell’olio che si abbruggia nelle lampadi dauanti le imagini della nostra Donna.” Vergerius, Le otto difensioni, Difesa III, c iiij. 8 Della camera et statua della Madonna chiamata di Loretto, la quale e’ stata nuouamente difesa da Fra Leandro Alberti Bolognese, & da Papa Giulio III Con un solenne priuilegio approuata (n.p., 1554). 9 Cf. Floriano Grimaldi, Il libro lauretano: Secoli XV–XVIII (Macerata: Diocesi di Macerata Tolentino Recanati Cingoli Treja, 1993), 52–55 and 93–95. 10 “Io so come sta la cosa perche io l’ho ueduto tre uolte, & l’ultima fu in compagnia del Cardinal di Ferrara...” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, h v. 11 I am here relying on the most exhaustive scholarly presentation of the cult, that of Floriano Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi a Loreto nei secoli XIV–XVII, Bollettino Storico della Città di Foligno, Supplement no. 2 (Foligno, 2001).

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church situated at eight kilometers’ distance from Recanati. It first flourished after it was granted the privilege of indulgence in 1375, when the inaccessibility of the Holy Land raised the importance of European pilgrimage sites. The tradition about the transfer of the church is ascribed to Pietro di Giorgio Tolomei alias Terramano, its provost, who probably published it several years before his death in 1473. According to that legend, the so-called Holy House was in fact Mary’s chamber in which she had grown up and received the Annunciation, while the Virgin’s holy image, venerated at Loreto, had been painted by Apostle Luke personally. When the land was occupied by infidels (1291), the angels raised the house in the air and carried it away from Nazareth, first to Tersato nearby Fiume, where it stood for a while until the Virgin decided that she was not venerated there adequately. Upon that, the angels raised the house again and carried it across the Adriatic to a place near Ancona, where they set it down on the land of a woman called Loretta. Crowds of people began to visit the sanctuary, which resulted in a number of robberies, so the angels had to intervene again and carried the house away to the mountains, placing it on the property of two brothers, but it caused great dissent between them and thus the house was lifted for its last journey, to the place where it has remained until today. In 1296, its story was miraculously revealed to a holy man, which motivated the people of Ancona to delegate sixteen respectable men who would travel to Palestine and check things out. They indeed measured some foundations that they found there and allegedly encountered an inscription saying that the house once stood there, but suddenly disappeared without trace. The authenticity of the house was meanwhile proven by numerous miracles, often involving lights or visions of angels carrying the house on their shoulders.12 Vergerius spills much poison over the popular naïveté of the legend and its author, for “all that was needed was a small village and a miserable priest to make an idolatry grow and turn the place into a bastion with forty canons and chaplains to attend.”13 The story contains a number of sacrilegious elements and illogical claims, contradicting the Scripture at every step. Stating that the Apostles consecrated the church and held divine service in it equals accusing them of lying or concealing the truth, since 12 13

The entire text is given in Vergerius, Della camera et statua, b–b ij. “Ecco allora ui era una uilletta, & solo un pretazzuolo, la oue al presente essendo in colmo cresciuta la supersititione, et l’idolatria... se n’ è fatto un buon castello da molta gente habitato, & cinto di buonissime mu//ra & bastioni, & ui sono intorno a quaranta canonici, et capellani.” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, b ij–b iij.


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they never mentioned it in the Gospels, and the most enraging story for Vergerius is that of Apostle Luke as the one who painted the Virgin’s image and placed it into that church: “I cannot restrain myself,” exclaims Vergerius in passion, “from telling you: may God confound you, may God confound you, you papacy, who are the author of this and the defender of other such criminal lies and idolatries!”14 With respect to the alleged behavior of the Virgin Mary in the whole story, Vergerius adds another serious reproach: she is presented as vain and capricious, since she obviously has an idea about how her chamber should be venerated and, since the citizens of Fiume failed to fulfill her requirements, she made the angels lift that “heap of stones” and carry it across the whole Adriatic, ordering the moving of the church two more times after that. She also comes to survey the situation at Loreto every year at the feast of her nativity. “Do you think,” Vergerius asks the papacy, “that the most holy mother of Jesus Christ is (like you are) idolatrous and wishes to be adored in statues and images, as the false gods wish, and do you think she is conceited and ambitious as you are?”15 And could she have not predicted whether the Fiumans would venerate her as she would have wished? The episode of Tersato is indeed intriguing, for there existed a link between the two sanctuaries, attested from the first half of the fifteenth century. A Croatian redaction of Terramano’s account appeared in 1520 under the title Izgovorenie od carkve od Svete Marie de Lorite,16 and its basis was probably an oral tradition told by some Slavs at Loreto. Another connection has been observed by Grimaldi in two Dalmatian testaments contemporary to the redaction: in the first, a fazolum novum elaboratum is donated to one church or the other, while in the second a pilgrim is sent to Tersato instead of Loreto. Obviously, such interchangeability of the sanc14

“Non mi posso contenere che qui io non dica, Dio ti confunda, Dio te confunda Papato autore, & difensore di cotali sceleratissime bugie & idolatrie.” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, b v. 15 “Adunque tu pensi, che la santissima madre di Giesu Cristo sia (come sei tu) idolatra, & voglia essere nelle statue, & imagini adorata, come uoleano, esser i falsi Dei, & pensi che ella sia boreosa, & ambitiosa come sei tu?” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, d ij. 16 Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 268–269. Cf. Sante Graciotti and Emanuela Sgambati, “Lingua e tradizione nell’Izgovorenie sulla chiesa loretana contenuto nel Libro od mnozijeh razloga,” in Philologia Slavica in honorem Francisci Venceslai Mares, septuagenarii (Prague: Slovansky, 1992), 511; idem, “Sulla fonte italiana del Raguseo Izgovorenie od carkve od svete Marie de Lorite,” in Prijateljev zbornik: Zbornik radova posvećenih sedamdesetogodišnjici života Krune Prijatelja I, Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji 32 (Split: Regionalni zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture u Splitu, 1992), 579–588.

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tuaries implies the approximation of their level of importance, at least for the pilgrims and faithful from the eastern coast of the Adriatic.17 Moreover, according to the sources, the Schiavoni were coming to Loreto in great numbers around the middle of the sixteenth century: Raffaele Riera, a penitentiary at Loreto in the period from 1554–1582, noted down that every year a “copia grandissima d’Illirici, chiamati Schiavoni in volgare” were crossing the Adriatic in order to venerate the Virgin of Loreto. In 1559, he counted almost 500 persons—men, women, and children— entering the temple on their knees, with candles in their hands and accompanied by their priests.18 In a letter that he wrote to the general of his order in the beginning of May 1559, he expressed his sympathy for those who had lost the Santa Chiesa: We are greatly edified at seeing each year these large ships of Schiavoni, who traverse the gulf of Adriatic in great numbers and bring with them their priests, with whom they confess and hear the Mass in the vernacular, according to their ancient custom. With abundant tears, they scream and sing in their language: Come back to Fiume, Mary; Come back to Fiume; and thus they distress and move the audience. Fiume is a place in Sclavonia where the holy chapel was standing many years before the angels brought it to this place; and they would love to have it back. But I see it firmly standing on solid rock, that is, in the patrimony and the special administrative status of the Holy Roman Church, so the mentioned Schiavoni will have to satisfy themselves with the merit of their tears and their devotion.19

It is highly interesting that these pilgrims from Fiume and Dalmatia seem never to have doubted the veracity of the translation account and the authenticity of the Holy House in Loreto. 17

Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 269. According to this author, the documents are preserved at the State Archive in Zadar: Simon Damiani, B.7, fasc. 1, c. 49; and Ioannes de Calcina, B. VIII, fasc. III, cc. 114–115. 18 Raffaele Riera, Historia de la Santa Casa di Loreto (Loreto: Sertorio de’ Monti, 1580), 57–60; cf. Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 269. 19 “Ci dà grandissima edificatione il veder ogn’anno quelle grandi barcate di schiavoni, i quali trapassano in gran numero il golfo Adriatico et vengono con li suoi preti, de i quali si confessano et sentono messa in volgare, secondo l’antica usanza. Essi con grande lagrime gridano et cantano in lingua sua: Torna a Fiume, Maria; Torna a Fiume; et così si affliggono et commuovono gl’auditori. Fiume è una terra in Schiavonia dove stette la santissima capella molti anni prima che per mano degl’angeli fusse portata un questo loco; et vorriano rehaverla. La veggio ben ferma sopra la salda pietra, cioè nel patrimonio et Stato special governo della Santa Chiesa romana, onde basterà alli detti schiavoni il merito delle lagrime et divotion loro.” Monumenta historica societatis Jesu, Litterae Quadrimestres, vol. 6: 1559–1660 (Madrid, 1925), 159; cf. Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 269–270.


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The most difficult aspect of the cults to fight against was, of course, the same one which made saints so popular and indispensable: the fame of their miracles. In case of Loreto, this fame was particularly strong and aptly sustained by the ecclesiastical hierarchy by means of rituals, which involved all human senses, and devotional objects. With his long years of experience as a bishop directly involved in promoting the spiritual life of his flock, Vergerius was aware that the ceremoniousness of the Catholic church was naturally something that addressed the most basic religious needs of common men and women, who were struck with awe at the brilliance of church decoration and clerics’ attires and rarely looked beyond the authoritative appearances. As to the testimonies of the witnesses to the Loreto miracles, he is highly skeptical and even falls into most bitter sarcasm, mocking the ignorance and lowliness of the hermit who saw the light above the church, particularly his attempt to give authority to his words by giving its precise measurements: “Ah, that is indeed a thing, here I am convinced and I do not know what to respond. You are right, oh papacy, that is doubtlessly the chamber of Virgin Mary, since a friar claimed that he saw that light; and a light that is twelve feet long and six feet wide cannot signify anything else than the mother of Christ.”20 On the other hand, he would prefer more tangible data from the witnesses and often rejects the veracity of their testimonies precisely because of their vagueness: if the ancestors of the witnesses had really seen the angels, why wouldn’t they have said anything concrete about the appearance of the miracle? How did the angels look like? Did they carry the house on their backs or dragged it across the sea? How were they dressed? Did they have wings?21 Vergerius evidently did not have a very high opinion of such gente mecanica, & plebeia and considered peasants and workers as the perpetuators of superstitious stories, which then again served the papacy to sustain the cult: “you want that, if a miserable peasant, a villain, an inn-keeper, a washerwoman, or some other old hag comes to the idea of saying that she regained her health or was liberated from some peril by the intercession of Madonna or an image, or that she has seen some appa20

“Oh questo e’ ben qualche cosa, & qui mi ritrouo conuinto, ne so piu che rispondere. Tu hai ragione o Papato, quella e senza dubbio la camera della uergine Maria, gia che un frate ha detto di hauer ueduto quel lume, & non puo esser altramente se non che un lume lungo xij piedi, & largo sei significhi la madre di Cristo.” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, e v. 21 Vergerius, Della camera et statua, f–f ij. Likewise, he requires to know where are the “autentiche scritture” on the basis of which Fra Leander composed his account. Ibidem, h iiij–h v.

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ritions, you want then, I say, that all should be obliged to believe it under the pain of losing their lives or their souls.”22 Such people are inside a vicious circle of manipulation, they create the stories and are in turn manipulated by them, believing what has under circumstances been suggested to them, to which purpose effects of light and sound are aptly used. The same goes for other miraculous occurrences and objects, such as the famous Veil of Veronica, which allegedly bears the image of Christ that was not made by human hand: those who have seen it could swear on thousand sacraments that it is indeed so, although in their accounts they cannot even agree upon the color of the veil. Namely, as a person approaches such a place or object, his or her mind is already filled with images of what he will experience and, if he is presented with an appropriate spectacle, he will fall in a sort of trance and see and hear miraculous things. Precisely that is what happens in the chamber of Loreto, says Vergerius: The most ignorant mob… when they enter that miserable hut, they already enter with their minds occupied by that imagination and persuasion that it is Madonna’s own chamber, and, moved by such opinion of the flesh and hearing that racket of bells, organs, and other music, and seeing all those people in huge crowds, and all those burning lamps, candles, and torches, and all that glistening silver and heaps of gold… as the mob, I say, sees that spectacle and hears those noises that the cardinals and bishops produce there—and also the Popes, since they want to add credibility to that swindle— these people remain petrified and stupefied and, little by little, let themselves be persuaded that they are indeed seeing and hearing all that, which they have heard others talk about.23

And sensations were not scarce, particularly after 1554, when the Jesuits issued a call to the faithful to go on pilgrimage and began receiving and 22

“… tu uuoi che se ad un uillanaccio, ad un facchino, ad un Tauernaro, ad una o Lauandera, ò altra uecchiarella uerrà uoglia di dire di hauer ricuperata la sanità ouero di essere stata liberata d’alcun pericolo per intercessione d’u // na Madonna, o di una depintura, et di hauer uedute certe apparitioni tu ui [?] uoi, dico, che tutti sieno obiigati a creder lo sotta pena di perder la uita, & l’anima...” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, h v. 23 “… l’ignoran//tissimo uolgo... quando entra in quella spelunchetta u’ entra con l’animo gia occupato da quella imaginatione, & persuasione che quella sia la propria camera della Madonna, & mosso da una tal opinion carnale, et sentendo quei strepiti di campane, d’organi, et altre musiche, & uedendo quella frequentia, & calca grandissima, et ardere quelle tante lampadi, candelle, & torchie, & rilucer molto argento & molto oro... uedendo dico il uolgo cotai spettacoli, & sentendo tai romori & che i Cardinali, & uescoui ui concorrono, & etiandio i Papi per dar credito alla barreria, egli rimane attonito, et imballordito, et di lungo uia dassi ad intendere di uederui // & sentirui tutto quello che ha udito dire degli altri...” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, h v.


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supporting confraternities in their organized penitential performances: thus, the rector of Collegio Lauretano, Oliviero Manareo, recorded that around Easter 1555, some 200 persons came from Verona accompanied by music, carrying in front a large crucifix and lights; they went on foot and the penitents were beating themselves to blood with chains; when they arrived to the square, they shouted and implored mercy with great affection and devotion and sang litanies with burning candles in their hands; some companies then proceeded to the church walking on their knees.24 That custom had its roots in the sanctuary’s tradition: the beginnings of organized pilgrimage to Loreto were linked, among other things, to the emergence of the popular flagellant movement of the “bianchi” late in the fourteenth century. They wore white robes with a hood that covered their faces, a small red cross on their chest, and a rope around the waist; they approached the sanctuary in a procession, walking in twos or threes, carrying candles in their hands and whipping themselves to blood in an impressive coloristic contrast. It may have been as early as his personal visits to Loreto that Vergerius was shocked by all the trade and secular amusement that surrounded it, especially on the feast days, when all sorts of dubious individuals were attracted to Loreto in great numbers in hope of some profit. It is understandable, he says, that Fra Leandro only fleetingly mentioned the “basest ruffians that exist in this world, that swarm Loreto in huge numbers: bums, prostitutes, tricksters, priests, losers, and certain wretches that sell minute crowns, icons, and thousands of other miserable superstitions, and it is perfectly adequate that all sorts of misery and uselessness should come together at the place that is so much governed by false cults and idols.”25 The extent and character of trade around the sanctuary is attested in other sources as well: as early as 1468, the Council of Recanati had found 24

Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu, Litterae quadrimestres, vol. 3: 1555 (Madrid, 1896), 374–375; ibid., vol. 6, pp. 162–165. Cf. Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 334. For the appointment of the Jesuits to Loreto, see Archivio Storico della Santa Casa; cf. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996), 257. 25 “… oue egli ha uoluto circoscriuere gli hosti, de quali il Castello è pieno, et pare che si sia uergognato a nominargli essendo coloro in fatti i piu forfanti hosti che abbia l’Universo, anzi non ui è altro in quel Loretto che un branco di cotai hosti, roffiani, meretrici, barri, preti, pifferi & certi forfantelli che uendono coronette, imaginette, & sic mil altre superstitioncelle, & ista ben bene che oue regnano tanto il falsi culti, & gli idoli ui concorrano anco tutte quelle altre cotante feccie, & poltronerie.” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, h iiij.

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it necessary to forbid tradesmen selling wax, rosaries, and other goods to pull the foreigners by the sleeve and seize the reins of their horses in order to draw the customers into their shops; and two years later, at the instigation of local merchants, the council intervened again and limited the trading license to those who had been living in the villa lauretana for at least five years and possessed real estate of a defined value there.26 Merchants from other regions were allowed to come at the time of the fair, but had to pay additional taxes; they placed themselves along the way leading to the sanctuary, which thus received the name of “Via de’ coronari”. Although local merchants held more respectable souvenir shops, the Council had to intervene there as well in order to prevent or correct abuses: the end of the fifteenth century saw an increase in trade with devotional objects made of silver and gold to answer the demand of wealthier pilgrims; again, the Council had to act more than once in order to stop abuses with precious metals of low quality.27 The financial aspect plays an equally important part in Vergerius’s condemnation of the cult of saints and the Virgin. Not only is it a shame for the Church to display greed for the earthly treasures and make use of fraud and credibility of its subjects in order to obtain them, but it also impoverishes the population and the country on which territory it lives. In his work On the Commissions and Authorizations that Pope Julius III Conferred upon His Nuntius and Inquisitor, M. Paolo Odescalco Comasco, for the Entire Territory of the Most Illustrious Lords of Graubünden, which he wrote in 1554 under his preferred pseudonym of Atanasio, Vergerius develops a method of restructuring the financial system of the land of the Lords of Grisoni, particularly the two valleys of Valtellina and Valchiavena. In his calculation, the costs of having the papist church present on the territory sucks out such an amount of money from the region that its expulsion would provide for the establishment of a number of social institutions without any additional costs. Monasteries could be turned into schools and hospitals that would not require payment and thus be accessible to the underprivileged, and there would be a leftover of finances sufficient to provide dowries for poor girls. The greatest cost-cutting measure would, however, be the abolishment of the Catholic 26

Archivio di Stato, Roma, Camerale III, Busta 1252. Cf. Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 470. 27 Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 472–474. In 1553, Julius III (Exponi nobis) permitted trading with paternoster and other merchandise at Loreto on feast days. Archivio del Comune di Recanati, Pergamene, 284. Cf. Grimaldi, Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi, 566.


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Mass and the cult of saints, since it requires the greatest expenditure with the least purpose, except to sustain superstition: Then there are the constructions of churches with all their equipment and accessories: the towers, belfries, organs, images, statues, altars, chapels, tombs, baptisteries, sacristies, ornates, chalices, patens, tabernacles, monstrances, censers, chandeliers, crosses, and standards, in which things incredible amounts of money are spent, all in vain and against the explicit wish of God and Christ, while nurturing superstition and idolatry.28

As an example, Vergerius mentions the construction of the church of the Madonna of Tirano in Valtellina, at the territory of the Bishop of Como, which was begun only six months after a certain Mario Omodei had a vision in which the Virgin ordered it, promising that she would stop the scourge of plague that was threatening Valtellina at that time. Given this impetus for the erection of the church, it was naturally oriented primarily towards the healing miracles, which had their material expression in an abundance of votive images. “What do you think,” writes Vergerius, addressing the Lords of Graubünden, that the construction of that temple of Diana of Ephesus, which the papists call Madonna of Tirano, has cost? I have been informed that it was more than fifty thousand scudi to build and decorate it. And then, how much money do you think your deceived subjects hurried to spend around that idolatry since the time in which a certain Mariolo (that is how everybody called him) said that enormous lie that the Virgin spoke to him, the lie from which many other have sprung and the papacy supports them although they offend the glory of God and Christ? How many tablets, painted with thousands of falsities and dreams have been attached there? How many statues of paper, clay, wax, and even silver? How many heads, how many eyes, arms, hands, legs, candles, and torches? How many of those idolatrous masses they ordered to be spoken and sung, while they whirled away with both hands, as if their eyes were bound, testoni, fiorini, and scudi? Besides the expenses that went on traveling, accommodation, dances, and banquets?”29 28

“Ci sono poi le fabriche delle chiese con le circostantie, & accessorij torri, campanili, organi, imagini, statue, altari, capelle, sepolture, battisterij, sacristie, paramenti, calici, patene, tabernacoli, monstranze, turribuli, celostri, candelieri, croci, stendardi, nelle quai cose si spende un danaro incredibile, et tutto uanamente, et contra le espressa uoluntà di Dio, & di Christo, et si nutrisse la superstitione et la idolatria.” Vergerius, Delle commissioni et facultà che Papa Giulio III. ha dato à M. Paolo Odescalco Comasco suo Nuncio, & Inquisitore in tutto il paese di magnifici Signori Grisoni. Al Signor P. Antonio di Nassale (Tübingen: Ulrich Morhart, 1554), F 3. 29 “Quanto credete che costi la fabrica di quel tempio di Diana Efesia, che è da papistici chiamato le Madonna di Ti//ranno? ho inteso io a dire che piu di cinquanta mila scudi a edificarlo, & ornarlo ui sono stati spesi. Quanto poi credete che quei uostri sudditi ingannati siano corsi a spendere d’intorno a quella idolatria da quel tempo in qua che un certo Mariolo (cosi era da tutti chiamato per nome) disse quella enormissima buggia che

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Instead of a conclusion, I would like to point out that Vergerius’s critique of the cult of Loreto should be considered in the context of his energetic polemic against all forms of saintly cults and reflects his conviction that, if one could only manage to destroy that “head or queen” of all cults, “all other such images and idolatries, which depend on it as its members or subjects, would lose their credit.”30 What he probably had in mind were primarily the Virgin cults, usually related to a miraculous image and known under different names according to their location, being basically treated as separate “saints”. His younger contemporary Matthias Flacius Illyricus offered a pungent picture of the situation in his fierce polemic treatise against the Roman Catholic church, entitled On the sects, dissensions, contradictions and confessions of the doctrine of papal religion, papal authors and doctors of the church (1565): Moreover, it not only happened that one person adored this saint, another that, but also that one honored a particular church, altar, or image above all others, venerating it, expecting from it help in his troubles or asking other benefits from it. Thus, one adored saint Mary in England, another adored her in Loreto, the third one in Recanati, the fourth adored the one in Venice that they call “lady of miracles”, the fifth one the beautiful Mary in Regensburg, the sixth one that in Polish Częstochowa, the seventh Mary in Grienthal, the eighth the one that is in Solio (im Sal) in Carinthia, the next person some other. It would take a whole day, if not a year, if I tried to enumerate this countless variety of idols.31 la Madonna gli hauea parlato, della qual forte buggie molte altre se ne soglion dire & il papato le comporta et le loda percioche elle uituperano la gloria di Dio, et di christo. Quante tauolette depinte con mille falsità, & sogni sono andati ad attaccarui? Quante statue intiere di cartone, di creta, di cera, & tal l’hor d’argento? Quante teste, quanti occhi, braccia, manelle, gambe, candelle & torchie? Quante di quelle idolatrissime messe han fatto dire, & cantare spingendo fuori come a occhi chiusi con amedue le mani i testoni, i fiorini, et scudi? oltre le spese che si fan su i uiaggi, sulle hosterie, su i balli, & su i banchetti?” Ibid., F 3–4. 30 “… perche t’accorgi che // quando tu lasciasti che questa, che è come il capo, & la reina perdesse la riputatione & rimanesse destrutta, perderobbono il credito, & andrebbono per terra tutte le altre cotali imagini, & idolatrie che da quella come membri, & suddite dependono.” Vergerius, Della camera et statua, h iiij. That theory of his probably would have not worked in practice, but it is true that the Roman curia held the cult of Loreto in high esteem as the prototype and the bastion of Marian veneration; thus, in 1545 Pope Paul III founded the Collegio dei Militi Lauretani with his bull Coelestis patris familias: their tasks included the protection of the Holy Roman Church, the protection of the western Adriatic coast from the pirates, and the protection of the Holy House and the pilgrims from the brigands. 31 “Imo non solummodo unus hunc, alter alium adoravit sanctum; verumetiam unus hoc templum, altare et imaginem summo in honorem habuit, coluitque et inde in suis difficultatibus auxilium axpectavit, aut alia bona ab eis quaesivit. Verbi causa unus S.


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And yet, as to the cult of Loreto, he gave a very laconic comment: “You should be ashamed to believe that enormous lie and fraud: angels have better things to do than carry walls on their shoulders from Judea to Italy.”32 Even this small difference between the two reformers clearly shows that Vergerius’s aim was purely practical: instead of exercising wit in his criticism of saintly cults, he wanted to accomplish in his new homeland what he had failed to do in Istria because of the hostilities and impediments that his reforming plans had encountered there.

Mariam in Anglia adoravit, alter illam in Loreto, tertius in Racanato, quartus illam Venetiis quae vocatur de miraculis, quintus formosam Mariam quae est Ratisbonae, sextus illam in Polonia Cestochoviae, septimus Mariam in Grienthal, octavus eam quae est in Solio (im Sal) in Carinthia, alius aliam. Dies enim, vel etiam annus me deficiat, si hanc innumeram varietatem idolorum recensere conarer.” Flacius, De sectis, dissensionibus, contradictionibus, et confessionibus doctrinae religionis, scriptorum et doctorum Pontificiorum (Basel: Paul Queck, 1565), 57–58. 32 “Naime bihote imiti sram za verouati, onoy preuelicoy laxi, i himbe angeli imaglu drugo ca ciniti, nego stati za noisti zidi na ramenah od xudie v Italiu.” Flacius, Rasgovarange megiu papistu i gednim Luteran (published under the pseudonym Antun Segnanin) (Padua [recte: Tübingen]: Gracioza Percacina [recte: Ulrich Morhart], 1555), B or 9.

Saint Christopher The Patron of Treasure Hunters Benedek LÁNG

Anyone who believes in the protective power of amulets might purchase a beautiful magic medal of Saint Christopher for the reduced price of just 35 dollars on the Internet.1 This medal provides—as the website explains— protection on the Path of Life and on the Road of Happiness, as it has protected, for centuries, “the solitary pilgrim as much as the military troops on their paths of conquest.” More surprisingly perhaps, we also learn that the Saint Christopher Magic Medal might also lead the way in the hunt for treasure and money. That Saint Christopher—being one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and the legendary carrier of Christ—has been traditionally believed to be the patron saint of travelers, is widely known, and attested by countless sources, including prayers and medals. Related to his specialization for travelers, he also holds patronage against lightning, pestilence, floods, and lately in favor of motorists, drivers, surfers, and transportation workers. Somewhat unrelated, but again in a wide variety of sources, he is also prayed to in case of some medical problems, such as fever, poor eye conditions, and severe toothache. However, there is nothing in his legend, or in his late antique, medieval, and early modern veneration, that would support the idea that he has anything to do with treasures and money.2 In fact, there is no trace before the eighteenth century that Saint Christopher would have been associated with treasure hunting. In the years after 1700, however, he seems to have been more and more frequently named both in handbooks of treasure hunting and in legal documents penalizing this magical activity. Not only his role as a patron of treasure seekers, but also the very genre of treasure hunting handbooks, were novelties in those times. 1 2

http://www.sara-freder.com/catalogue/christophe.asp Gertrud Benker, Christophorus—Patron der Schiffer, Fuhrleute und Kraftfahrer: Legende, Verehrung, Symbol (Munich: Callwey, 1975).

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Whereas magic manuscripts surviving from medieval times contain primarily natural magic, talismanic magic, divination, ritual magic (angel or demon summoning), and other methods to find lost or hidden objects (but very rarely treasures),3 by the early modern period, a considerable thematic shift can be identified. A new genre emerged in the literature of magic: that of treasure hunting that grew gradually more important, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became a dominating type of text in magic handbooks in Latin, German, and also in Hungarian sources. Through a close reading of these sources, it becomes possible to reconstruct the main rules of this art, and the magical inventory (crystal, mirror, virgin boy, magic wand, arrow, etc.) that is usually applied to find hidden treasure in the earth. Both the magical handbooks containing detailed instructions on how treasures should be searched with the help of various magical rituals, and the legal documents, in which a given person (or a group of persons) is accused of pursuing such methods contain clear indications that the described practice of treasure hunting was put in practice. Even Latin handbooks contain occasionally sentences written in the vernacular and thus testify again to a strong local interest in—or even practice of—this art. The most interesting—and the rarest type of—example is where both the handbook and the documentation of a legal process against the owner and user of the given book survived. In a considerable portion of the cases we can claim with confidence that the source that has come to us was not written out of pure “academic” curiosity but with the intention of using it.4 The introduction of Saint Christopher in this new genre of magic was not immediate. In the seventeenth-century “Book of Knowledge,” a longer treasure hunting text written in Hungarian and found in Debrecen, he was not yet mentioned.5 Instead, the treasure hunter is praying, through dozens 3

From the vast literature, I mention here the following publications: Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton, 1997); idem, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Frank Klaassen, “English Manuscripts of Magic, 1300–1500: A Preliminary Survey,” in Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic, ed. Claire Fanger (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 3–31. 4 Benedek Láng and Péter Tóth G., eds., A kincskeresés 400 éve Magyarországon (kézikönyvek és olvasóik) (400 years of treasure hunting in Hungary: Introduction and text edition) (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2009). 5 See János Herner and László Szörényi, “A Tudás Könyve: Hasznos útmutató haladó kincsásóknak,” in Collectanea Tiburtiana: Tanulmányok Klaniczay Tibor tiszteletére, ed. Géza Galavics, János Herner, and Bálint Keserű (Szeged: JATE, 1990), 9–33.

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of pages, to God, Jesus Christ, and Saint Michael the archangel to expel the treasure-keeping devils. A hundred years later, however, in an equally rich but considerably less Hungarian source that survived in Kassa (Košice, in present day Slovakia) from ca. 1770 he plays a more central role.6 This thick book is in fact not one single text but a collection of five thematically close booklets bound together, in which German, Latin, and to a smaller extent Hungarian texts provide angel summoning methods, prayers, and magic circles to help the user to find treasure. Saint Christopher becomes a dominating addressee of the prayers here, in part a of the collected texts (Das heilige und Wohl erfundte Approbiert und Gerechtes S. Christophorus Gebett) he is prayed to in German through sixty pages, while in part d (Efficax S. Christophori Oratio) he is addressed in Latin and Hungarian on more than fifty pages. These colligated booklets include psalms and gospel excerpts between the prayers. Part b seems to be the most technical among them, offering a wide range of magic circles and astrological tablets which indicate the days and hours convenient for treasure hunting. The Latin section constituting the majority of part d gives detailed instructions on how to prepare the circle of Saint Christopher, cleaning its place on the ground, performing suffumigations with the help of various burning substances, drawing the circle itself with a cross and with the picture of the saint, and finally sprinkling it with holy water. Using a wax candle, and telling the appropriate psalms, one ought not to be afraid of the malign spirits. The whole miscellany is a handbook with an extensive collection of treasure hunting methods, which was by all means used for real practice. In part b the above methods are amplified with alchemical ones, an association probably due to the thematic closeness of the method of finding metals in the earth, and the method of creating them in the laboratory. In a slightly later manuscript, most of the Hungarian prayers are addressed to an obscure—apparently feminine—entity, the “Virgin Holy Crown” (and not the Holy Crown of the Virgin, which would make more sense), but second to this, Saint Christopher is again the favorite addressee.7 The crown and the saint are requested to help compel the demon who guards the treasure, and the “pious” tone is secured by quotations from the Gospels of John and Mark at the end of the book. We should mention finally a fairly extensive and widespread text from the nineteenth 6 7

Esztergom, Főszékesegyházi Könyvtár (Archiepiscopal Library), MS II 102a–102e. Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (National Széchényi Library) MS analekta 11.012, published in Láng and Tóth, eds., A kincskeresés 400 éve, 95–104.

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century, the author of which is called “Eberhardus, the Jesuit, who was the ordinary professor of Mathesis in the University of Engelstadt,” and the main actor of which is Terosius, the chief devil who is responsible for keeping treasures. The usual version of this text does not turn to Saint Christopher,8 a considerably altered version of it—attributed to Eberhardus again, and mentioning the chief devil (here: Terophile)—however, has a considerably different tone.9 Instead of the devils, the Virgin Mary, Christ, and first of all, Saint Christopher are the major characters of the book, and the prayers are more “orthodox” and less magical and exorcism-like than in the more widespread version of Eberhardus’ book. Just as in the handbooks, the emergence of Saint Christopher in the legal documents dealing with treasure hunting was a relatively late phenomenon; he is first mentioned in eighteenth-century sources. The former priest born in Fiume (Rijeka), Michael Szvetics, was accused in 1752 of trying to perform magic in Pécs in southern Hungary. He had in his possession the finger of a dead person, a holy image, and a small leaflet with a Saint Christopher prayer when he attempted to find treasure in the cemetery hill of the town.10 Another novelistic account survived from Győr (western Hungary) from 1761, which tells the story of a company of friends (among them a nobleman, a merchant, a tapster, and other less important figures of the town) who planned to go for a common expedition to find treasure, signed their pact with their blood, and decided to get into alliance with Satan himself. As the legal documents specify, they had a book containing payers to Saint Christopher. Interestingly, the members of this curious company decided to cheat each other as well, but the main reason why they were arrested was that one of them decided to use the magic tools (to be received from the devil) against the Habsburg monarch of the country. Besides paying a considerable fee, as part of their sentence, they had to finance a statue of Saint Michael archangel triumphing over Satan. The statue is still visible in Győr.11 All the above quoted examples survived in sources related to Hungarian history. Should we see the preference of praying to Saint Christopher in treasure hunting manuals as a Hungarian specialty? While this phe8

Among others: Szeged, Somogyi-könyvtár (Somogyi Library), Hg. 387, published in Láng and Tóth, eds., A kincskeresés 400 éve, 71–94. 9 Szeged, Somogyi-könyvtár (Somogyi Library), AD 1925. 10 The case is described in Láng and Tóth, eds., A kincskeresés 400 éve, 32–35. 11 Magyar Országos Levéltár (Hungarian National Archive), C 28, Acta captivorum et malefactorum; Lad. A. Fasc. 1. No. 3. Lig. 8., published in Láng and Tóth, eds., A kincskeresés 400 éve, 136–172.

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nomenon seems relatively rare in Early Modern European sources, it is by no means a Hungaricum. Treasure hunting had a sophisticated popular tradition in German territories too, and Saint Christopher seems to have played there a similar role as in the Hungarian sources. Johannes Dillinger and Petra Feld present a large number of treasure hunting cases from the protestant duchy of seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Württenberg,12 in which occasionally the dukes themselves participated, even though treasure hunting was always seen by the officials as a prohibited magical action and an abuse of religious practice.13 As it can be reconstructed on the basis of the sources, amulets, magic circles, and prayers to God, Christ and the saints were believed to ensure protection against the evil spirits. Anyone deciding to pursue this activity had a large number of handbooks at his disposal, which helped him (treasure hunters were usually men) with the practical details of treasure hunting.14 In this complex tradition of treasure hunting practices Saint Christopher played the role of patron saint.15 We can only speculate about the reasons why the legendary giant, the carrier of Christ, the saint who was often depicted as a dog-headed creature, was chosen for this particular role. Johannes Dillinger put forward the hypothesis that this choice might have been motivated by the belief that Christopher had particular power over demons, and this was exactly the kind of power that was needed in 12

Johannes Dillinger, “‘Das Ewige Leben und fünfzehntausend Gulden:’ Schatzgräberei in Württemberg, 1606–1770,” in Zauberer—Selbstmörder—Schatzsucher: Magische Kultur und behördliche Kontrolle im frühneuzeitlichen Württemberg, ed. Johannes Dillinger (Trier: Kliomedia, 2003), 221–297; idem and Petra Feld, “Treasure-Hunting: A Magical Motif in Law, Folklore, and Mentality, Württemberg, 1606–1770,” German History, 20 (2002): 161–184. For the wider picture, see also Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History (Basingstoke: forthcoming in 2011); Manfred Tschaikner, Schatzgräberei in Vorarlberg und Liechtenstein: Mit Ausblicken nach Tirol, Bayern, Baden-Württemberg und in die Schweiz (Bludenz: Geschichtsverein, 2006). 13 Among others, by Christoph Matthäus Pfaff, De invocatione p. Christophori ad largiendos nummos (Tübingen: Löffler, 1748). 14 Johann Georg Theodor Graesse, Bibliotheca magica et pneumatica (Leipzig: W. Englemann, 1843), 37–38, 64, 87; quoted also in Dillinger and Feld, “Treasure Hunting,” 165. 15 Friedrich Merzbacher, “Schatzgräberei und Christophelgebet,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 4 (1952): 352–354; Dillinger and Feld, “Tresure Hunting,” 167; Dillinger, “Das Ewige Leben,” 235–236; Edward Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 171–172, 236–239, 246–248.

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treasure hunting activities.16 As was widely believed, treasures were not simply buried in the earth, but also guarded by various evil demons, who had to be exorcised and compelled to help the treasure hunter. I conjure you, all the spirits and owner of all those treasures that Saint Christopher will provide to me, with the help of the Sun and the Moon, and the five wounds and the precious blood of our most sacred Lord Jesus Christ, with the help of the first man, Adam, who was created by God, in the name of the Father + the Son + and the Holy Spirit + Amen.17 We, NN, conjure you Saint Christopher! Great and holy martyr, patron of the poor, consoler of the afflicted and the abandoned, in the name of the God Father + and the Son Redeemer + and the sanctifying Holy Spirit + conjure and call you with all his words and works that he achieved in this word.18

It was precisely the ritual character of treasure hunting that gave the handbooks a specific religious outlook. Ostensibly, the procedures of treasure hunting did not merely form a subcategory of divination, that is, the art of foretelling future events or of finding hidden objects through the interpretation of signs, such as geomancy, palmistry, etc. They rather seem to have belonged to a somewhat more sophisticated methodology, that of ritual magic, which functioned through the invocation of angels and demons, contained a great number of prayers, and often involved young girl and boy mediums who get into contact with the spirits. Saint Christopher had the role of a powerful mediator between the corporal and the spiritual realms.

16

Dillinger, “Das Ewige Leben,” 235–236. “Conjuro vos omnes spiritus, ac possessores thesauri illius quem mihi Sanctus Christophorus laturus est, per solem et lunam et per quinque vulnera Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Jesu Christi per pretiosissimum sanguinem, et primum hominem quem Deus creavit Adamum, in nomine Patris + Filii + et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.” Esztergom, Főszékesegyházi Könyvtár (Archiepiscopal Library), MS II 102d, f. 7. 18 “Nos NN. conjuramus te Sancte Christophore! Magne et Sancte Martyr, et Patrone Pauperum, et afflictorum desolatorumque consolator, in nomine Deus Patris + et Filii Redemptoris + et Spiritus Sancti Sanctificatoris + conjuro, et voco te per omnia ejus verba et opera qua fecit in hoc mundo.” Esztergom, Főszékesegyházi Könyvtár (Archiepiscopal Library), MS II 102d, f. 50. 17

Contributors

Stanko Andrić is senior researcher at the Croatian Institute of History in Slavonski Brod. After his major study on The Miracles of St. John Capistran (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2000), the focus of his research has shifted to the history of Slavonia and Syrmia from late Antiquity until the Ottoman period. Apart from being a historian, he is also an acclaimed writer. Péter Bokody has defended his PhD on “Pictorial and Iconographic Reflexivity: Images-within-images in Italian Painting (1278–1348)” under Gábor Klaniczay’s supervision in 2010 at CEU. He is interested in how pictorial innovations can contribute to the successful visualization of various ideological agendas. János M. Bak is professor emeritus at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU and the Department of History, UBC, Vancouver. He is editor-in-chief of the five volumes of the Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (Bakersfield, CA, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1989–) and is one of the editors of the Central European Medieval Texts series. His selected articles are being published (with a bibliography of his writings), edited by Gábor Klaniczay and Balázs Nagy, as Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects (Aldershot: Variorum, 2010). Ildikó Csepregi works in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. She studied Classics and Medieval studies; her research focuses on miraculous healing in Late Antiquity and Byzantine hagiography, on the interaction between Greek religion and healing, and on ancient medicine. She is preparing a book for Cambridge University Press on temple sleep and coordinates a research team on magical healing and non-Hippocratic medicine. This year she is a senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks.

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Contributors

Viktória Hedvig Deák OP is professor of Church history at the Sapientia College of Theology of Religious Orders in Budapest where she also serves as the vice-rector of the College. She is the author of Árpád-házi Szent Margit és a domonkos hagiográfia: Garinus legendája nyomában (St. Margaret of Hungary and Dominican hagiography: On the track of Garinus’ legend) (Budapest: Kairosz, 2005). Dávid Falvay is assistant professor at the Department of Italian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, where he teaches medieval literature and history. He has published extensively on Guglielma of Milan, Marguerite Porete and Hungarian female saints in the Middle Ages. He is the editor of Árpád-házi Szent Erzsébet kultusza a 13–16. században (The Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the 13th–16th centuries) (Budapest: Magyarok Nagyasszonya Ferences Rendtartomány, 2009). His current work concentrates on late-medieval Italian hagiographic manuscripts. In 2009, he was a Mellon Research Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence. György Galamb is associate professor of history at the University of Szeged. His research focuses on the connections between power and sacrality in the Middle Ages and, especially, on the history of religious movements and heretical groups. He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters published in French, Hungarian, and Italian. Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar graduated in Classical Philology from Universitatea de Vest, Timişoara, Romania (1993). MA (1998) and PhD (2006) in Medieval Studies at CEU, Budapest with a dissertation on the Philotheos historia of Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Instructor of Ancient Languages at the CEU, Department of Medieval Studies. Author of various studies and articles on topics such as patristics, Central-eastern European and Byzantine hagiography, late antique intellectual history, monastic sexualities, Indo-European comparative mythology. Translator (into Romanian) of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus and of the Minor Prophets for the New Romanian Septuagint. Patrick Geary is professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles. He is the author of several books on medieval culture and society as well as on the historiography of the Middle Ages, including Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1978), Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 1994), and Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 2006).

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313

Ottó Gecser is assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and OTKA post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU. He is interested in cultural and religious history and in historical sociology. His current work focuses on the interrelationship of science and religion in medieval and early modern interpretations of the plague. Gerhard Jaritz is professor of medieval studies at CEU and senior research fellow at the Institut für Realienkunde of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His main research interests are in cultural history of the Middle Ages, everyday life in the Middle Ages, and the history of medieval visual culture. He has published extensively in these fields. Stanislava Kuzmová has defended her doctoral dissertation about “Preaching Saint Stanislaus: Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus of Cracow and Their Role in the Construction of His Image and Cult” at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU, in 2010. Her research interests include the cult of saints, hagiography, as well as sermons and preaching. Benedek Láng is assistant professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is a historian of science interested, first of all, in the borderline of science and non-science both as a historical and as a philosophical problem. Up till now, his work concentrated, primarily, on the relations between learned magic and accepted science in the 14th–17th centuries. His monograph, Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe, was published by Penn State University Press in 2008. Most recently, his attention has turned towards the history of artificial languages and cipher systems. József Laszlovszky is professor of medieval studies at CEU. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest with an MA in archaeology and history and specializing in medieval studies. He pursued postgraduate studies at ELTE and New College, Oxford. He was awarded a PhD degree in medieval history by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was the head of the Department of Medieval and PostMedieval Archaeology at ELTE and of the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU. His main research fields are medieval archaeology, material culture, monastic culture, landscape and settlement studies. He was (co)director of archaeological investigations at Mont Beuvray (France), Senlis (France), Ravenna (Italy), Visegrád (Hungary), and Koh Ker (Cambodia).

314

Contributors

Jacques Le Goff was director of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (and of its predecessor, the 6th Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études), and co-director of the journal Annales. His long series of books, many of which have been translated into English and various other languages, began with Marchands et banquiers du Moyen Âge (1956), and includes Saint Louis (1996), Saint François d’Assise (1999), and, most recently, Le Moyen Âge et l’argent (2010). Ernő Marosi was research professor at the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) and professor of art history at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He is a full member of the HAS, of which he also served as vice-president. He is the author of several books and articles on the history of medieval art and on the historiography of art history. Marina Miladinov is lecturer of Church history and Latin at the Theological Faculty “Matthias Flacius Illyricus” in Zagreb. She is also one of the founding members and president of Hagiotheca—Croatian Hagiography Society and a free-lance translator in the fields of religious studies, arts, and humanities. Her interests reside in hagiography and the Reformation critique of the veneration of saints. Her recent publications include Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central Europe between East and West (2008), “Reformation Writings as Hagiographic Sources: Matthias Flacius Illyricus and Peter Paul Vergerius the Younger” (2008), “Coluistis deos alienos: Biblical Arguments of the Early Protestant Reformers against the Veneration of Saints and Images” (2008), and “Flacius and the Hussite Legacy: The Confessio Waldensium from 1558” (2009). Petra Mutlová is assistant professor at the Department of Classical Philology, Masaryk University, Brno. She holds a PhD in Historical Sciences from Masaryk University (2007), and she has been guest researcher at the Humboldt University, Berlin. She is a member of the research team preparing critical editions for the Magistri Ioannis Hus Opera omnia series for Brepols Publishers. Her main research interests comprise the Bohemian Reformation, codicology, and the transmission of late medieval theological texts. Balázs Nagy is associate professor of medieval European history at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest and at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU. He graduated from ELTE in 1986 and defended his doctoral dissertation at the same institution. Thereafter he was visiting fel-

Contributors

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low at various universities, including Edinburgh, Leuven, Toronto, and institutions like the NIAS (Wassenaar). His main fields of interest are medieval economic and urban history, and his works include source editions and studies on the economic and commercial history of late medieval Central Europe. He was the co-editor of the Latin-English bi-lingual edition of the autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and also the translator into Hungarian of the same text. Emőke Nagy is a historian who pursues her doctoral studies in a joint PhD program of the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, and the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She is interested in medieval female sainthood and the anthropological aspects of the cult of saints. Her current work focuses on the cult of Saint Anne in late Medieval Hungary with a special emphasis on textual sources like sermons and legends. Marianne Sághy is associate professor of Medieval Studies at CEU and of history at Eötvös Loránd Universty, Budapest. Her fields of research include the social and religious history of Rome in Late Antiquity, the cult of the Roman martyrs, and hagiography. She is the author of Versek és vértanúk: A római mártírkultusz Damasus pápa korában, 366–384 (Poems and Martyrs: Pope Damasus and The Cult of the Roman Martyrs, 366–384) (Budapest: Kairosz, 2003) and Isten barátai: Szent és szentéletrajz a késő antikvitásban (The Friends of God: Holy Men Hagiography in Late Antiquity) (Budapest: Kairosz, 2005). Marcell Sebők teaches Renaissance cultural history at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU. His fields of research comprise early modern collections and science, humanist education, and the art of communication within the Republic of Letters, but he has also been engaged with modern literary history, questions of memory and oblivion, and cultural policies. He was a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, the Warburg Institute, London, the NIAS, Wassenaar, and the Collegium Budapest. Béla Zsolt Szakács is the head of the Department of Art History, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba, and associate professor of Medieval Studies at CEU. His research interests are in medieval architecture and Christian iconography. He is the author of A Magyar Anjou Legendárium képi rendszerei (The pictorial systems of the Hungarian Angevin Legendary) (Budapest: Balassi, 2006) which will also appear in English.

316

Contributors

Katalin Szende is associate professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, CEU. She graduated in history, archaeology and Latin philology, and her area of specialization is medieval towns in the Carpathian Basin, especially their topography, society, demography, literacy, and everyday life. She is co-editor and author of Segregation— Integration—Assimilation: Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Eastern and Central Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) and Generations in Towns: Succession and Success in Pre-Industrial Urban Societies (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009). She is the member representing Hungary in the Commission International Pour l’Histoire des Villes. André Vauchez is professor emeritus at the University of Paris X (Nanterre), and former director of the École française de Rome. He is a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, of which he served as president in 2009. Prof. Vauchez has published numerous books that explore the religious history of the Middle Ages, including La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988), Les laïcs au Moyen Âge: Pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris: Cerf, 1987), Saints, prophètes et visionnaires: Le pouvoir surnaturel au Moyen Âge (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), and François d’Assise entre histoire et mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2009).

Index

Aboukir. See Menouthis Acre, 73n13, 81 Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, 90, 91 Adalbert, St., bishop of Prague, 31–39, 51, 53, 54–55, 56, 57, 58, 154, 156n27, 168; visual representation of, 181n7 Adalbert of Magdeburg, archbishop, 168 Ademarus Cabanensis, 245, 257 Agnes of Rome, St., 3, 6–8, 13 Aix-en-Provence, 179 Albornoz, cardinal, 250 Aldobrandino dei Cavalcanti, 266, 270 Aleppo, 25 All Saints, 125, 265; pictorial cycles of, 188 Almakerék. See Mălâncrav Altomonte, 181. See also Martini, Simone Ambrose of Milan, St., 7, 8, 11, 39n31, 261 amulets, 305, 309 Ancona, 294 Andrew III, king of Hungary, 147, 222 Andrew of Naples, duke, 177, 182 Anne, St., 273–282; her trinubium, legend of, 275–277, 280, 281; visual representation of, 209, 224, 225 Anne of Přemysl, queen of Bohemia, 165 Anne of Schweidnitz (Świdnica), empress, 187 Anthony of Padua, St., visual representation of, 181n7, 211, 212, 219, 220 Antony of Egypt, St., 3, 35, 36

anthroponymy, in royal dynasties, 166– 167, 168–169, 173 Arius, Arian(s), 3, 4, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 75n14 Armanno Pungilupo. See Pungilupo, Armanno armor, visual representation of, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198, 203, 204, 219 Artemius, St., 18, 26 Arthur, king, 189 Ashraf Khalil al-, sultan, 81 Assisi, 66, 69, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80–81, 153 Augustine of Hippo, St., 33, 39n31, 162n53 Avignon, 91, 128, 171, 182, 184, 269 Babylon, 72, 73–74 Bădeşti, 196 Bádok. See Bădeşti Balduin of Luxemburg, archbishop of Trier, 165 Barbara, St., visual representation of, 210, 220 Bartholomew of Pisa, 89, 96n26, 99, 100 Béla II, king of Hungary, visual representation of, 187 Béla IV, king of Hungary, 105, 126; visual representation of 187 Benedict of Nursia, St., 132; Regula monachorum, 33 Benedict XII, pope, 171 Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 256; visual representation of, 231, 242 Bernardino of Siena, St., 252, 254, 256, 257, 258

318

Index

Biel, Gabriel, 268, 270 Blaise, St., visual representation of, 216, 220 body: of the heretics, 256; incorruptibility of, 151, 154, 162; as the measure of candle offerings, 55; miraculous division and reintegration of, 151–163; miraculously transported in a cart, 95, 97, 101; its role in fourteenth-century mysticism, 125–126 Bohemia, 32, 56, 57, 58, 165–173, 283– 290; local saints in, 173, 188, 206 Boleslaus the Shy, duke of Cracow, 158 Boleslaus II the Bold, king of Poland, 52, 151, 155–156, 159–160 Boleslaus III Wrymouth, duke of Poland, 52, 53, 54 Bolesław. See Boleslaus Bologna, 78n29, 184, 222 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, St., 61, 69, 77, 78, 80, 162n54; visual representation of, 211 Bonizo of Sutri, bishop, 44 Bonus of Rome, St., 88 Book of Revelations of the Virgin, 143–150 Braccio da Montone, lord of Perugia, 255 Bretislaus II, duke of Bohemia, 57 Břetislav. See Bretislaus Brogliano, 250 Bruiu, 212 Brulya. See Bruiu Bruno of Querfurt, St., 57–58 Buda (part of Budapest), 123, 187, 196, 198, 202, 278 Čakovec, 225 Canaparius, 31–32, 55. See also Vita S. Adalberti Canute the Great, king of Denmark, England and Norway, 189 Capodistria, 292 Cassian. See John Cassian Cassiodorus, 34 Cathar(s), 246, 248, 258, 267 Catherine of Alexandria, St., 172–173; visual representation of, 196, 210, 220, 222, 223, 235

Cavallini, Pietro, 184, 221 Celerina, 3, 5 Čerín, 198 Chalcedon, Chalcedonian, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 Charlemagne, 169; visual representation of, 189 Charles I, king of Hungary, 127n8, 176, 193, 221 Charles II, king of Hungary, 224 Charles II, king of Naples, 221, 222 Charles IV (of Luxemburg), emperor and king of Bohemia, 165–174, 187, 190, 222; autobiography of, 167–174; visual representation of, 187–188 Charles IV the Fair, king of France, 168 Charles of Calabria, duke, 182 Charles Robert. See Charles I Chiaravalle, 246 Christopher, St., 305–310 Chronicle of the Czechs. See Cosmas of Prague Chronicon Faventinum, 98 Clare of Assisi, St., visual representation of, 211, 219 Classe, 75 Clavijo, battle of, 53 Clement, St., pope, 43–44; Passio Clementis, 44–45, 46–48; visual representation of, 42–49 Clement VI, pope, 182, 250 Clementine liturgy, 43, 48 coat-of-arms, 179, 189n24, 193, 200 Conrad of Marburg, 137 Conradus de Brundelsheim, 270 Constantius II, emperor continuity of cults, 17 conversion, 19–21, 61, 63–64, 65, 69–72, 78, 168, 248 Cosmas and Damian, SS., 18, 19, 20, 21, 25; miracles in the London codex, 23– 26 Cosmas of Prague, 51, 53, 54, 55–58 Cracow, 56, 153, 156, 157, 158, 162 crusade(r), 69, 81; First Crusade, 98 Csáktornya. See Čakovec Cserény. See Čerín

Index

Csetnek. See Štítnik Cyril, St., 44, 45, 47 Cyril of Alexandria, 26, 27 Cyrrhus, 25, 26 Cyrus and John, SS., 18, 19n8, 26, 27, 28, 29 Dalmatia, 296 Damasus, pope, 1–15 Damietta, 69 Dance of Death (pictorial theme), 241 Dante Alighieri, 65 Debrecen, 306 Dětmar, bishop of Prague, 38, 39n31 Dialogus contra fraticellos. See under James of the Marches Dio Cassius, 42 Długosz, Jan, 152, 156, 158 Dolcino, Fra, 256 Dometius, St., 18, 25; ambiguous identity of, 26n24 Dominic, St., 139, 256 Dominican Order, 66, 122, 127–128, 129, 149, 245, 248, 252n22, 267, 272, 276 Domitian, emperor, 42 Donatist(s), 2, 3 Dorothea, St., visual representation of, 210, 220, 223 Dúbrava, 220 Duccio di Gana, 142 Egypt, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 74 Elizabeth, St., mother of John the Baptist, 279; visual representation of, 236 (see also Visitation) Elizabeth of Hungary, St., 137–144, 146, 147, 149, 150; in the Cronica Fiorentina del secolo XIII, 140–141; in the Legenda Aurea, 139; Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum, 137, 142, 143, 147n32; miracle of the dress, 142, 143; miracle of the roses, 140, 141, 142, 143; Tuscan vita, 140; visual representation of, 183, 211, 219, 220, 223 Elizabeth Kotromanić, queen of Hungary, 187

319

Elizabeth Łokietek, queen of Hungary, 176, 182, 185n15, 187, 222; visual representation of, 176–177 Elizabeth of Přemysl, queen of Bohemia, 166, 173 Elizabeth of Töss, Bl., 144, 147, 148, 149 Emeric, St., visual representation of, 183, 193, 194, 195, 221, 222, 223. See also Holy Kings of Hungary Ephesus, 22 Erasmus, St., visual representation of, 210, 214, 216 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 292 Eucharist, 21, 28–29, 63, 129, 162, 286 Eusebius of Cesarea, 11 ex-voto, 4, 8, 55 Fabriano, 256 fama sanctitatis, 103, 118, 123, 127, 133, 248 Filippo di Neri dell’Antella, prior of San Pier Scheraggio, 269, 270 Filippo di Sangineto, 182 Fiume, See Rijeka Flavio Biondo, 254 Flavius Clemens, 42–43 Florence, 80, 182, 250; Santa Croce, Bardi chapel, 77, 78, 79 Foulques de Chanac, bishop of Paris, 264, 270n26 Fourteen Holy Helpers, 220, 305 Francavilla, 83, 84, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 Francis of Assisi, St., 59–67, 139, 248, 249, 258; attitudes to God, 63, 64; perception of nature, 63; religious innovations of, 63–65; views on humility and power, 63; visual representation of, 69–81, 181n7, 211– 212, 219. See also under Franciscan Order Franciscan Order, 61, 62, 65, 66, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 92, 95, 99, 245, 248, 249, 251, 252n22, 255, 258, 267, 276, 277; Conventuals, 93, 101; Observants, 100, 101, 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259; Spirituals, 62; Third Order, 138, 147, 259

320

Index

Fraticelli, 246, 248–259 Frederick II, emperor, 59, 63 Frederick III, emperor, 194 Free Spirit, heretics of, 253–254 Galen, 19 Galgóc. See Hlohovec Gallus Anonymus. See Gesta principum Polonorum Garinus de Giaco, 125, 139, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136 Gaudentius, archbishop of Gniezno, 31n1, 56 Gentile da Spoleto, 247 Geoffrey of Auxerre, 256 George, St., 171; visual representation of, 194, 195 Gesta principum Polonorum, 51–52, 53, 54, 152 Giacomo di Cordone, 150 Giles, St., 53 Gilles Li Muisis, abbot of St. Giles in Tournai, 264, 265 Giovanni Barrile, Master of, 179 Giovanni della Valle, 249 Gniezno, 51, 54, 56 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, 274, 275 Gospels, apocryphal, 274–276 Graubünden, 292, 301 Gregory the Great, St., pope, 15, 34, 132, 154, 262–263, 264 Gregory VII, pope, 45, 46, 48; ecclesiastical reform, 42, 47–48 Gregory IX, pope, 141 Guglielma of Milan, 246, 247, 256 Győr, 308 Haymo of Auxerre, 275 Helena, St., visual representation of, 196, 209, 220 Henry of Carinthia, king of Bohemia, 165, 166 Henry of Lausanne, 256 Henry of Moravia, margrave, 231 Henry II, emperor, St., 206; visual representation of, 189 Henry IV Probus, duke of Silesia, 158

Henry VII, emperor, 165 Herculan, St., bishop of Perugia, 154 Hervoja, duke of Spalato, 202 Hippocrates, 19 Hlohovec, 181 Holy Kings of Hungary, visual representation of, 183, 184, 192, 193, 194, 195, 203, 219, 221, 222 Holy Kinship, 276, 279, 280, 281 Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, 176, 179, 187, 220, 221 Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, 156, 160 Hus, John, 285 Hussites, 283–290 iconoclasm, Hussite, 283–290 iconography: classical influence in, 74; domestic creation in, 176; innovations in, 181–182, 184, 187, 194; realistic, 81 (see also realistic display in painting); secular, 74–81; traditions in 184, 188, 194, 203; transfers in, 176 idolatry, attributed to the Saracens, 73–74, 76, 77, 79 idols. See statuettes Illuminatus, brother, 72, 79 Ilok, 85, 87, 101 incubation, 18 Industrious and the Lazy Bishop, The (pictorial theme), 233, 242–243 Innocent IV, pope, 76n21, 160 Innocent V, pope, 127 Innocent VI, pope, 250 Iohannes de Caulibus, 144, 146 Jacobellus of Missa, 285 Jacobus de Voragine. See Legenda aurea Jacopone da Todi, 65 James, St., the Elder, 53 James of the Marches, 246, 252; De Antechristo, 255; Dialogus contra fraticellos: 253–259; its vernacular version, 253–254 James of Varazze. See Legenda aurea Jan of Słupca, 162 Jerome, St., 6, 43 Jerome of Ascoli. See Nicholas IV

Index

321

Kâmil, Malik al-, sultan, 69 Karlštejn Castle, 188, 189, 190, 193, 194, 222 Kassa. See Košice Kengyel, excavation site, 112–117 Keszthely, Franciscan church in, 180, 181, 207–225 Kisszeben. See Sabinov Košice, 210, 307

Lambert of Maastricht, St., visual representation of, 214 Last Judgment (pictorial theme), 241, 242 Lawrence, St., 8–9, 13, 54 Legend of the Accused Queen, 148 Legenda aurea, 139–140, 248, 256, 262– 263, 264, 267, 269, 276–277, 279 Leo, Brother, 60, 67 Leo the Great, pope, St., 22 Leo of Ostia, 44, 45 Leodegar, St., bishop of Autun, 154 Leonard, St., visual representation of, 201, 201, 203 levitation, 125, 129, 133 Liberius, pope, 3–4, 6, 9 Libice, 32 Linus, pope, 11, 44 Lipova, 177, 179, 221 Lippa. See Lipova London codex. See under Cosmas and Damian Lónya, 195, 196, 222 Loreto, 291–303; Holy House in, 294, 296, 302n30 Louis of Toulouse, St., visual representation of, 176, 177, 179, 180, 183, 204, 205, 213, 214, 219, 221, 222, 225 Louis I the Great, king of Hungary, 176, 177, 180, 185n15, 187, 193, 196, 220, 222, 224, 231 Louis IX, king of France, St., 59; visual representation of, 189, 204, 205, 222 Ludmila, St., 54, 56, 58 Luther, 291

Labors of the Months (pictorial theme), 229 Lacha, Guido, 247 Lackfi, István, palatine of Hungary, 207, 223, 224, 225 Ladislas, king of Naples, 224 Ladislas I, king of Hungary, St., 51, 53, 101, 206; visual representation of, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185n15, 187, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 201, 202, 203, 205, 219, 221, 222, 223 (see also Holy Kings of Hungary)

Magdeburg, 32, 36, 168 magic, handbooks of, 306 Mălâncrav, 211, 222 Manareo, Oliviero, rector of Collegio Lauretano, 299 Manđelos. See Francavilla Manfreda Pirovano. See Pirovano, Manfreda Marcianos, emperor, 22 Margaret of Antioch, St., visual representation of, 209, 220, 225

Joachimism, 251 Joanna I, queen of Naples, 180, 182 John the Baptist, St., 175; visual representation of, 76n22, 196 John Capistran. See John of Capestrano John of Capestrano, St., 85, 88, 110, 252, 254, 257 John Cassian, 33–34, 36–37, 39; Conlationes, 36–37 John Chrysostom, 11 John Duns Scotus, 276 John the French, 83–102 John Garai, 202 John Hus. See Hus, John John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, 165, 166 John of Salisbury, 157 John II, pope, 168 John VIII, pope, 46 John XXII, pope, 249, 257, 258 John and Paul, SS., legend of, 5–6 Jókai (formerly Ehrenfeld) Codex, 91 Journey of the Magi (pictorial theme), 240 Julian, emperor, 5 Julian of Halicarnassus, 27, 29

322

Index

Margaret of Hungary, St., 104, 105, 106, 107, 122, 123, 125–136; process of canonization, 104–105, 126–128, 129, 130, 135, 136; Legenda Maior, 125, 128, 129, 133, 135, 136; Legenda vetus, 126, 128, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136; visual representation of, 183 Mariazell, 231 Martini, Simone, 177, 179, 181, 184 Martinus Polonus, 140–141 martyrs, cult of, 1–15 Mary, Virgin, St., 21, 22, 24, 35, 65, 135, 142, 143, 147, 148, 170, 171, 175, 268, 273, 274–276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 291–303, 307, 308 (see also Loreto); collections of miracles of, 142–143; immaculate conception of, 275–277, 281, 282; visual representation of, 177, 185n15, 209, 224, 225, 231, 236, 237, 264 (see also Visitation) Mary of Hungary, queen, 224 Mary of Luxemburg, queen of France, 168 Mary Magdalene, St., 220–221; visual representation of, 209, 221, 223 Mary of Naples, queen, 184–185, 222 Master of Giovanni Barrile. See Giovanni Barrile, Master of Matthew of Janov, 285, 286 Matthias Flacius Illyricus, 302 Meco del Sacco of Ascoli, 247 Meditationes Vitae Christi, 139, 144–150 Menouthis, 26 Michael, St., the Archangel, 171, 307; visual representation of, 195, 220, 308 Michael de Massa, 150 Michele da Calci, 250 Mieszko I, 53, 155 Miracula S. Alexii, 34n12 miracles, in chronicles, 53–58 miracles, Reformation critique of, 297 miracles, historical analysis of: as sources of social history, 103–123; as vehicles of theological positions and propaganda, 17–30, 246 miracles, types of: bodily reintegration, 151–163; Eucharistic (see also Eucharist), 129; healing, 17–30, 53, 96,

133, 301; metonymic, 162; plague, 262–263–264, 267, 269–270; punishment, 28, 54, 133; translocation, 95, 97, 101, 234. See also incubation, levitation, prophecy, Schlachtenhelfer, vision, and under Elizabeth, St. miracles, visual representations of, 230– 231 Mombrizio, Bonino, 46 Monte Cassino, 45 mystical holiness, 129–131, 133, 136 Nagyolaszi. See Francavilla Nagyszombat. See Trnava Nagyvárad. See Oradea name-change, 168–169. See also anthroponymy Naples, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 187, 221, 222; churches: Santa Chiara, 177, 179; Brancaccio chapel, S. Domenico Maggiore, 221; Santa Maria Donnaregina, 74n14, 184 Nazareth, 294 Nestorius, Nestorian(s), 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 73n13 Neszmélyi, Nicholas, bishop of Pécs, 223 Nevegy, 105, 107, 108, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 Nicea, Nicean, 2, 3, 4, 21, 22 Nicholas of Dresden, 285–290 Nicholas II Garai, 200, 201–202 Nicholas III, pope, 258 Nicholas IV, pope, 80, 81 Nicolaus de Tarnoch (miraculé), 107, 108, 109, 110, 114, 116, 117, 118–120, 121– 123 Nicopolis, 202, 224 Notger, bishop of Liège, 34n11 Nuremberg, 291 Ochtiná, 214 Odescalchi, Livio, 87 Oradea, 101 Orthodox(y), definition of, 22–24, 27–28 Osvaldus de Lasko, 273, 277–282 Otto III, emperor, 31n1, 32n5

Index

Pammachius, 6 Paolino of Venice, 88 Paoluccio da Trinci, 249, 250, 251 Paris, 66, 69, 264, 272 Paschal II, pope, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48 Passio Clementis, 43–44, 45, 46 Paul, St., 5–6, 9–12, 13; visual representation of, 183 Paul the Deacon, 262 Paul III, pope, 302n30 patron saint(s), 225, 305, 309; of Bohemia, 54, 57, 166; of Hungary, 204 (see also Holy Kings of Hungary); of Poland, 159; of Rome, 10; visual representation of, 188, 195, 198, 203, 225 Pavia, 262 peasants, visual representation of, 240, 241, 242, Pécs, 91, 93, 223, 308 Pelayo, Alvaro, 257 Pelbart of Temesvár (Themeswar), 205, 267, 271, 273, 277–282 Peregrinus of Opole, 161, 271 Persia, 22 Persius, 37n23 Perugia, 137, 251, 255 Pest (part of Budapest), 107, 117, 122, 123, 278 Peter, St., 9–12, 13, 43, 44, 49; visual representation of, 183 Peter Payne, 285 Peter of Verona, St., 139, 248, 267 Petrus Berengarii, 266, 270 Pietro Cavallini. See Cavallini, Pietro Pietro di Giorgio Tolomei, 294, 295 pilgrimage, 230, 265, 266; to the Holy Land, 224; to Loreto, 291–303; to Mariazell, 231; to Trier, 234; to Rome, 12 pilgrims: badges of, 153, 157; as subjects of dream healing, 18 (see also incubation) Pirovano, Manfreda, 246, 247 plague, 261–172, 301 poverty, Franciscan, 63–64 Prague, 37, 38, 39, 55, 56, 57, 58, 169, 171, 188, 286, 288

323

private cults, 5–6, 200, 291 Procopius of Sázava, St., 173 prophecy, 96, 129, 133, 135, 136, 156, 159, 160 Protevangelium of James, 274, 275 Provinciale ordinis Fratrum Minorum, 88, 99 Prudentius, 7, 11 Prussia, 32 Przemyśl II, king of Poland, 158 Pungilupo, Armanno, 246, 247, 256 Radim. See Gaudentius Ravenna, 75 realistic display in painting, 69 Recanati, 294, 299 Reform, Gregorian. See under Gregory VII relics: in the Bohemian Reformation, 283; bound to the fate of a community, 157; contained in picture frames, 188; discovery of, 221; distribution of, 157, 264; “reactivation” of, 264; theft of, 54, 56; translation of, 25, 44, 203, 262, 269; as vehicles of supernatural power, 154, 162, 264, 270 Riéval, 98 Rijeka, 294, 295, 296, 308 Robert the Wise, king of Naples, 179, 182 Robert Guiscard, 43 Rome, 1–15, 41–49, 76, 77n23, 127, 261, 262, 263, 264; churches and monasteries: SS. Alexius and Boniface, 32n3, 33, 39; San Clemente, 42–43, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, 6; S. Lorenzo in Lucina, 8; S. Paolo fuori le mura; San Pietro in Vaticano, 11, 182; San Sebastiano, 9 Ruricius, bishop of Limoges, 33, 37–38; Letters, 37–38 Sabinov, 220 Salerno, 45 Sancia, queen of Naples, 179, 185n15 Sankt Lambrecht, 216 Saracen(s), 69, 72–74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 Saramita, Andrea, 246, 247

324

Index

Sebastian, St., 261–172 Segesd, 91 Seleucia, 20, 22 sermons, 25, 64, 150, 151–163, 227, 254, 255, 256, 261, 264–272, 273–274, 277– 282 sex: horror of, 32; marital relations and, 280 Severus of Antioch, 25, 28, 29 Schlachtenhelfer, the saint as, 53–54 Schwesternbücher, 129 Sigismund, St., 190, 195, 196, 198, 222 Sigismund, emperor, king of Hungary and Bohemia, 195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 201, 207, 224 Siklós, 200, 201, 203, 219 Simone Martini. See Martini, Simone Sixtus III, pope, 261 Sixtus IV, pope, 277 Soissons, 264, 265, 270 Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 27, 29 Speculum perfectionis, 90 Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius, 83, 89–94, 101, 102 Spišská Kapitula, 181, 203, 220 Sremska Mitrovica, 99, 100 St. Victor, Abbey of, 264, 270n26 Stagel, Elsbeth, 147 Stanislas of Cracow, St., 52, 151–163; venerated as a martyr, 151, 160, 163; Vita maior, 152, 155, 156, 158, 159; Vita minor, 152, 156; Vita Tradunt, 156. See also Długosz, Jan Stanislaus, Master, 152n6 Stanislaus of Skarbimiria, 160 Stary Zamek, 153 statuettes, depicted, 72–81; regarded as idols, 73–74 Stephen, St., protomartyr, 272 Stephen, duke, 177 Stephen I, king of Hungary, St., 51, 52, 206; visual representation of, 183, 184, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 205, 216, 221, 222, 223, 225 (see also Holy Kings of Hungary) Stephen V, king of Hungary, 126, 184 Štítnik, 214

Sunday Christ (pictorial theme), 229 Syria, 22, 24, 25, 26 Syrmia, 83–85, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99 Szávaszentdemeter. See Sremska Mitrovica Székesfehérvár, 101, 220 Szepeshely. See Spišská Kapitula Szvetics, Michael, 308 temple sleep. See incubation Terenzo, 170–171 Terosius (chief devil), 288 Terramano. See Pietro di Giorgio Tolomei Tersato, 294 Thecla, St. 18, 19, 20–21, 22 Theodericus, Magister (painter), 193, 194 Theodosius, patriarch of Alexandria, 28, 29 Thomas Aquinas, St., 266 Thrace, 3 throne of wisdom, iconography of, 76 Tommaso da Frignano, 250 Töss, 147 Trajan, emperor, 11, 43 treasure hunting, 305–310 Trnava, 91 Újlak. See Ilok Urban VI, pope, 277 Ursinus, Ursinian(s), 4, 6, 9 Valchiavena, 292, 300 Valladolid, 257 Valtellina, 292, 300, 301 Vásári, Nicholas (Miklós), 184, 222 Venanzio of Fabriano, 256 Vergerius, Peter Paul, the Younger, 293– 303 Vergil, 33n9, 35n17, 39n31 vernacular languages, 41–49; Italian, 42, 45; sociolinguistic aspects, 48–49; in hagiography, 41–42, 137–150; on the Clement fresco in Rome, 45, 48–49; their use in religious contexts, 65; in liturgy, 44, 296; in sermons, 265n13; in handbooks of treasure hunting, 306 Verona, 299 victory, iconography of, 74, 79 Vienna, 228

Index

Vincent Ferrer, St., 169n25, 272 Vincent Kadłubek, Master, 151–152, 154, 155 Vincent of Kielcza, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 160 virgines capitales, 220 vision, 65, 96, 129, 143, 170–171, 221, 255, 281, 294, 301 Visitation (feast), 291 Visitation (pictorial theme), 236, 237 Vita S. Adalberti, 31–39; monastic bias in, 38; quotations in: classical, 33, 37, 39; patristic, 35–38; rhetorical elaboration in, 36; textual spolia in, 39. See also Canaparius Vornbach, 214

325

Wenceslas, St., 54, 56, 57, 154, 165, 166, 173, 206; visual representation of, 198, 222 Wenceslas II, king of Bohemia, 166 Wenceslas III, king of Bohemia, 165 Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia, 201 Wendelin of Trier, St., 234, 242 Wladislaus, duke of Opole, 158 Wladislaus Łokietek, king of Poland, 158, 160 Vratislav II, king of Bohemia, 57 Vukovar, 85, 87, 88 Waldensians, 254, 258 William of Rubruck, 73n13 Willigis, archbishop of Mainz, 37, 38, 39 Württenberg, 309

12 CEU Medievalia ISSN 1587-6470

Series Technical Editor: Annabella Pál Volumes 1-3, 7, 8 are out of print Vol. 4. Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation Al-Azmeh, A., 2003 978-963-9241-58-9 cloth, 978-963-9241-50-3 paperback Vol. 5. People and Nature in Historical Perspective Laszlovszky / Szabó, 2003 978-963-9241-86-2 paperback

The studies in this volume concentrate on a complex set of socio‐cultural phenomena, the cult of saints, in a variety of regions from Egypt to Poland, with a focus on Italy and Central Europe. The subjects of the contributions range in time from the fourth until the eighteenth century. The diversity of approaches adopted by the contributors—from literary analysis and historical anthropology to archaeology and art history—represents that open and multidisciplinary historical research that characterizes the work of Gábor Klaniczay to whom these essays are dedicated.


Vol. 6. Latin Classics in Medieval Hungary: Eleventh century Nemerkényi, E., 2004 978-963-7326-04-2 paperback

Ottó Gecser (Budapest)

Edited by O. Gecser, J. Laszlovszky, B. Nagy, M. Sebők, K. Szende

Series Editor: József Laszlovszky

Editors

Vol. 9. Catalogue of the Slavonic Cyrillic Manuscripts of the National Széchényi Library Cleminson / Moussakova / Voutova, 2007 978-963-7326-97-4 cloth, 978-963-7326-82-0 paperback Vol. 10. The Apostolic Penitentiary in Local Contexts Jaritz / Jørgensen / Salonen, 2007 978-963-7326-83-7 paperback

Edited by

József Laszlovszky (Budapest)

Ottó Gecser, József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, Katalin Szende

Balázs Nagy (Budapest)

Katalin Szende (Budapest)

Contributors Stanko Andrić (Slavonski Brod)

Promoting the Saints Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period

FORTHCOMING: The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity Laszlovszky / Hunyadi

János M. Bak (Budapest) Péter Bokody (Budapest) Ildikó Csepregi (Budapest) Viktória Hedvig Deák OP (Budapest) Dávid Falvay (Budapest) György Galamb (Szeged) Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar (Budapest) Patrick Geary (Los Angeles) Ottó Gecser (Budapest) Gerhard Jaritz (Budapest and Krems) Stanislava Kuzmová (Budapest and Trenčín) Benedek Láng (Budapest) József Laszlovszky (Budapest)

Vol. 11. The Edges of the Medieval World Jaritz / Kreem, 2009 978-963-9776-45-6 paperback Vol. 13. The Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary c. 1150-1387 Hunyadi, 2010 978-963-9662-44-5 paperback

Marcell Sebők (Budapest)

Jacques Le Goﬀ (Paris) Ernő Marosi (Budapest) Central European University Department of Medieval Studies http://medievalstudies.ceu.hu

Marina Miladinov (Zagreb)

Central European University Press Budapest-New York http://www.ceupress.com

Emőke Nagy (Cluj-Napoca)

Petra Mutlová (Brno) Balázs Nagy (Budapest)

Marianne Sághy (Budapest) Béla Zsolt Szakács (Budapest)

ISBN 9789639776937

90000 >

André Vauchez (Paris)

M E DI E VA L I A 9 789639 776937

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Promoting the Saints

Saints

Saints

Saints

Saints

Promoting Extensionality

When the Saints

When the Saints

The Saints Everlasting Rest

Saints of the Sword

The Soviet Saints

Backseat Saints

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