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Friends of the Family: Some Miracles for Children by Italian Friars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Diana M. Webb
Diana M. Webb*
Affiliation:
King’s CollegeLondon
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Extract

At some time in the 1320s, the Sienese master Simone Martini painted an altar-piece celebrating the Hermit friar Agostino Novello. Agostino, who had died at the convent of San Leonardo al Lago, near Siena, in 1309, is shown surrounded by illustrations of four of his posthumous miracles (see plates 1 and 2, pp. 198 and 200, below). Of these, three were performed on behalf of children. The exception, at upper right, shows the deliverance of a knight who, riding in a desolate mountainous landscape, has fallen beneath his horse. Top left, we see the rescue of a child from mauling by what is presumably a wolf. Below, a child falls into the street from a wooden balcony when one of its slats gives way; not only does he suffer no injury from the fall, but Agostino seizes the falling slat in mid-air and prevents it from hurting him. Bottom right, an infant suffers head injuries when he falls from his cradle, but his aunt kneels to make a vow to Agostino, and in the lower register we see the fulfilment of the vow: robed as a little Augustinian friar and carrying a taper, the child is carried by his nurse to give thanks, followed by his mother and his aunt, who carries another taper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 183 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 Martindale, A. Simone Martini: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1988), pp. 33—4, 211—14 and pls 75—81 Google Scholar. Vita and miracles in ActaSS, Maii 4,614-24; four further miracles in a life printed by Arbesmann, R. ‘A Legendary of early Augustinian saints’, Analecta Augustiniana, 29 (1966), pp. 44–7 Google Scholar.

2 See the general comments of Shahar, S. Childhood in the Middle Ages(London, 1992), pp. 145–7 Google Scholar.

3 Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 212-14 and n.6, pls 19, 36. The father of the child revived by Louis bears an image, not of the child, but of the saint himself as bishop in thanksgiving.

4 ActaSS, Augusti 5, p. 791. Cf. below, n. 21.

5 Seidel, M., ‘Condizionamento iconografico e scelta semantica: Simone Martini e la Tavola del Beato Agostino Novello’, in Martini, Simone, convegno, atti del, Bellosi, L. ed. (Florence, 1988), pp. 81–6 Google Scholar.

6 Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 212, gives the texts and references.

7 Vita ac legenda Beati loachimi Senensis, ed. Soulier, P.M. AnBoll, 13 (1894), pp. 393, 395 Google Scholar. For the other miracles, see below, pp. 191, 192.

8 ActaSS, Aprilis 2, pp. 818-31.

9 Ibid., pp. 828, 829, 823-4, 827.

10 Ibid., Martii 3, pp. 181-251.

11 Ibid., p. 234.

12 Ibid., Aprilis 3, pp. 510-27.

13 Ibid., Junii 2, pp. 376-91. Eighty-five clients had suffered conditions from birth, and another sixty ‘from the cradle’, ‘from infancy’ or ‘childhood’ or from a specified young age. Many more, who are described only as having suffered for so many years, may have suffered from childhood.

14 Reported as hearsay by Henry’s biographer, Pietro Dominico, Bishop of Treviso, a canon of the cathedral in the saint’s lifetime: ibid., p. 371.

15 Ibid., Aprilis 3, p. 508; Vauchez, A. La Sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge (Rome, 1981), pp. 240–7 and n. 187 Google Scholar.

16 Printed with Ambrogio Taegio’s sixteenth-century compilation of the saint’s Life, ActaSS, Aprilis 3, pp. 686-719. On the reliability of these texts, Dondaine, A. ‘Saint-Pierre-Martyr: Etudes’, AFP, 23 (1953). PP.66–162 Google Scholar.

17 ActaSS, Martii 3, pp.210-41. I have cited Ambrogio’s miracles principally from this source.

18 ll processo di canonizazzione di S. Nicola di Tolentino, ed. Occhioni, N. (Rome, 1984)Google Scholar. Several miracles are included in the life printed in ActaSS which are not in the canonization process.

19 Vauchez, A. ‘La Commune de Sienne, les Ordres Mendiants et le Culte des Saints. Histoire et enseignements d’une crise (novembre 1328-avril 1329)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole Francaise de Rome, 89. ii (1977). PP. 757–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Vauchez, Sainteté, p. 617, citing de Kerval, L. L’évolution et le développement du merveilleux dans les légendes de saint Antoine de Padoue (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar. Cf.Thompson, A. Revival Preachers and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Italy: the Great Devotion of 1233(Oxford, 1992), pp. 90, 108, 213 Google Scholar.

21 Vauchez, Sainteté, pp. 398-9. The miracles are edited in Analecta Franciscana, 8 (1951), pp. 275-331.but I have cited here the old text in ActaSS, Augusti 5, pp. 775-822.

22 ActaSS, Augusti 5, p. 817. Agostino Novello enabled the widowed mother of a poor girl who had borne a baby daughter, but had neither milk nor the money to hire a wet-nurse, to produce enough milk herself to feed her granddaughter: ibid., Maii 4, p. 621.

23 Ibid., Martii 3, p. 200. Another very similar miracle is described on pp. 235-6.

24 Ibid., pp. 223, 198. For Ambrogio’s concern in life with the well-being of virgines nubiles, see p. 193. It was the fame of his own virginity which attracted petitioners of both sexes and apparently gave him the power both to bring about marriages which had seemed impossible and prevent others which seemed inevitable. Every year iuvenculae nubiles made offerings at his tomb ‘ut in matrimonio sancto digne se copulare possent’.

25 For example, Thompson suggests, during the ‘Alleluia’ of 1233: Revival Preachers, pp. 115-17.

26 ActaSS, Aprilis 3, pp. 705-7.

27 Ibid., Augusti 5, pp. 817-18 for examples.

28 Ibid., Aprilis 2, p. 831.

29 Ibid., Martii 3, p. 224.

30 Ibid., p. 226.

31 Ibid., p. 223; there is another account on p. 197, and a notarial instrument recording the miracle, p. 204.

32 Ibid., Aprilis 3, pp. 706, 708.

33 Ibid., p. 710.

34 Ibid., p. 714.

35 Ibid., Junii 2, p. 721.

36 Ibid., p. 719.

37 Vita, p. 394.

38 ActaSS, Junii 2, p. 721.

39 Ibid., Septembris 3, p. 661; Il processo, pp. 263-4; ActaSS, Martii 3, p. 226. For similar hazards documented in English manorial court records, see Hanawalt, B. The Ties thai Bound (Oxford, 1986), pp. 175–8.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., Junii 2, pp. 728-9.

41 Origo, I. The World of San Bernardino(London, 1963), p. 46 Google Scholar.

42 ActaSS, Aprilis 2, p. 825.

43 ActaSS, ASB Martii 3, p. 238.

44 Vita, pp.393,395,395-6

45 ActaSS, Martii 3, p. 239.

46 Ibid., Aprilis 3, p. 714; Martii 3, pp. 231, 219.

47 Ibid., p. 239.

48 Ibid., Junii 2, p.738.

49 Ibid., Aprilis 3, pp. 709, 711, 706-7.

50 Ibid., pp. 708-9.