Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 June 2015
This study focuses on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century images, commissioned by the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, of Augustine in rapture at the Trinity, revealing a wounded heart. This imagery begins an iconographical trend within the order that portrays Augustine as the Doctor of Love and departs from the image initiated by Possidius of Augustine as the rational thinker and bishop. A comparison with contemporaneous images of Francis receiving the stigmata reveals a new understanding of the relationship of the body to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century mendicant piety, and the importance of the iconisation of the body in the Hermits' understanding of Augustine.
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29 Ibid. This can be seen in the Vitae Augustini written by the Hermits in the fourteenth century, which tend to represent Augustine as being converted to ascetic Christianity at his baptism in order to emphasise Augustine's monastic achievements: Initium sive Processus Ordinis Heremitarum Sancti Augustini, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, ms Plut. 90 Sup. 48, fos 57v–62v; Henry of Friemar, Tractatus de origine et progressu Ordinis Fratrum Eremitarum Sancti Augustini, Bibliothèque publique, Verdun, ms 41, saec. xiv, fos 144r–150r; Nicholas of Alessandria, Sermo de beato Augustino, Clementinum, Prague, Metropolitan chapter library, ms Metr. Kap. 812, fos 35v–40r.
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