Saints are models for us. In the Middle Ages the
‘Discernment of Spirits’ was to ask if one’s comportment was for
charity for all or for self-aggrandizement. Only recently has
sainthood required scientific medical proofs. The Saints of the
Early Church gave their lives as martyrs in defiance of Roman
Imperialism and are named in the Canon of the Mass,
the first a slave in Carthage, “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha,
Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia”, Christianity, in its essence
being the 'Religion of Women and Slaves' because of its Gospel of inclusion of
all those outside of the hierarchies of male power, spread
rapidly across all of Europe, even reaching Ireland and Iceland.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers refused to participate in material
consumerism, living ecologically as Hermits in Egypt and
elsewhere, singing Psalms and sustaining themselves with weaving
baskets. Their stories were read as Legends, providing models for
later Christians, the word 'Legend' meaning what is read, from
these stories being read from books to monks by monks dining
together in silence in their monastic refectories, as still is
done at 23San Miniato. A
Legend is not necessarily true but its story-telling both delights
and teaches us how to behave for the good of all. Women's contemplative practices had
them image the lives of Mary and Jesus as happening now. This
mapping of the saints of Florence will include others than those
officially Canonized and sanitized by the Church hierarchy as
Saints, to present also those who cared for the City of Florence
and its poor, who cared for Tuscany, who cared for Europe, who
cared for World Peace. Florence is particularly
sanctified in the Communion of Saints, so many of whom were women,
Saints Mary, Felicity, Reparata, Monica, Bridget of Ireland,
Umiliana de' Cerchi, Santa Giuliana Falconieri, Monna Tessa, Beatrice Portinari, Umilta
da Faenza, Piccarda Donati, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena,
Domenica del Paradiso, the Ricoveri shepherdesses, Sarah Parker Remond, Teresa del
Bambino Gesù, Maria Valtorta, Fioretta Mazzei, Amalia Ciardi
DuPré. An early church dedication in Oltrarno is to the slave
martyred in the arena in Carthage while still lactating her child,
17Saint
Felicity. The Greek world praised parrhesia, the
obligation to speak the truth for the common good, at personal
risk. Saints are like the irritating grain of sand around which
the pearl is formed, Isak Dinesen saying 'Pearls are like Poet's
tales, loveliness born out of disease'. All of us are called to be
defiant saints, to practice Holy Disobedience to injustice. And to
remember that every saint had a past, every sinner, a future.
The two saints of Florence, who are her present patrons, are the
Madonna and St John the Baptist, Mary who sheltered the city under
her great cloak, John who renounced all his family’s tax breaks
and priestly privileges to live in austerity by the Jordan River
and preach prophetically to prostitutes and publicans. John is
celebrated in the 1Baptistery,
Mary in the great 2Duomo. Beside the Duomo is the Misericordia,
founded seven hundred years ago to care for the ill, the dying
and to bury the dead, anonymously. They still run the free
ambulances you see beside the Duomo. The dome of Santa Maria del
Fiore is shaped like the Madonna's cloak, even her
breast, as sheltering and nurturing the entire city. Her cloak is
also shown in the Bigallo Madonna
della Misericordia, with the Seven Acts of Mercy (1, Feed the
Hungry, 2. Give Drink to the Thirsty, 3. Clothe the Naked, 4.
Shelter the Stranger, 5. Visit the Sick, 6. Visit the Prisoner, 7.
Bury the Dead),
embroidered on it, and in the 8Madonna
of the Innocenti, founded by the Silk Guild, who shelters all the
abandoned children, and where they are taught a trade, given a
dowry. She is the Madonna of the great Hospital of 9Santa Maria Nuova, founded by
Folco Portinari and Monna Tessa, Dante’s Beatrice’s father and
nurse, caring for the sick and the stranger, and even the great
Dominican church, 4Santa
Maria Novella, opposite Giovanni Michelucci's Station, is named
for her. Its frescoed Spanish Chapel is where Catherine of Siena,
who visited Florence several times, seeking to make peace, was
tried by the Inquisition and found Orthodox.
The 1Baptistery is linked
with 22San Miniato, both
among the oldest structures in Florence, the 1Baptistery thought to be converted
from a Roman Temple to the pagan god Mars, 23San
Miniato, the Armenian prince executed in 10Piazza
Beccaria, whose Legend may be crafted from the Coptic Saint Minas,
and the Benedictine tales of miracle-working St Denis and St
Alban, all of stories of saints who were beheaded by pagans, who
then swam across rivers and carried their heads to their burial
places at Montmartre and St Albans. One can smile at such Legends.
Executions were carried out in Piazza La Croce, now named Piazza
Beccaria because of Cesare Beccaria's book, On Crime and
Punishment, which condemned the death penalty, causing
Tuscany to abolish it in 1787. As you walk up Borgo La Croce
on your left you will see a fresco with Jesus and Mary leaning
towards the condemned criminals (us), going to our deaths down
that street, with mercy. America still has the barbaric death penalty. Florence’s Calimala, her merchants of global trading,
adorned both the Baptistery and San Miniato with marble and
mosaic.
Florence’s Cathedral was first dedicated to 2Santa Reparata, who led
Christian armies to victory, and to 2Saint
Zenobius, an early Florentine bishop whose body, transported
from 3San Lorenzo to the
Duomo, touched a dead elm tree, resurrecting it. Botticelli
painted Saint
Zenobius’ miracles of healing and Giovanni Duprè and his
daughter, Amalia Duprè, sculpted them on either side of the
present Duomo’s door. Their descendant is Amalia Ciardi Duprè
who continues their work sculpting the Bible, Saints and others.
Saint Ambrose, who composed Ambrosian chant for
the liturgy in Milan and who converted St Augustine at the
prayers of his mother, St Monica, came here and founded the
church dedicated to 3San
Lorenzo, the Early Church martyr who was burned on a grill.
Later the Danish physician, geologist and theologian, Niccolò
Stenone, would be associated with the church of San Lorenzo.
Another church is named for St Ambrose in the market place,
while the Augustinian 18Santo
Spirito in the Oltrarno celebrates Saints Monica and Augustine.
This is where Martin Luther, formerly an Augustinian friar,
preached before going on to Rome and losing faith in the
Catholic Church.
Giovanni Villani tells us that Florence was
largely pagan, the Christians hiding in the countryside in caves
in the mountains. Christian Rome had collapsed from its bridges
and aqueducts being broken, from cooking with lead, and from
invasions, and it became learned Irish monks who restored Europe
to Christianity with their setting forth as pilgrims from that
far isle, 19San Frediano
coming to Florence and Lucca in the sixth century, 21San Donatus, likewise, a
pilgrim from Ireland, being elected bishop of 21Fiesole in the ninth century,
composing a poem about Saint Bridget of Ireland hanging her
rain-drenched cloak on a sunbeam to dry, having Irish
Sant’Andrea be his Archdeacon at 22San
Martino a Mensola, who then lived as a hermit at 25Sasso, his sister, another
Bridget, living in a cave beneath the church of 25Santa Brigida, all of these
teaching the people the Bible. As would later the Madonna,
appearing at 25Sasso to two
Ricoveri shepherd girls, 2 July 1484, tell them to tell the
Florentines to study the Bible, then, when they weren’t
believed, she appeared to the grownups, too. A Renaissance
Bishop of Fiesole from the Corsini family was another
Sant'Andrea who died in 1374.
Another mountain over, at Montesenario, the
Madonna also appeared to seven young rich merchants’ sons who
gave up all to be Servi di Santa Maria, the niece of one of
them, Santa Giuliana Falconieri, founding the Servites’ Third
Order, of which I am one. Their church in Florence is the 7Santissima Annunziata of the
Sette Santi and Santa Giuliana Falconieri, with its miracle
working fresco of the Angel and Mary at the Annunciation, the
Legend being that the painting was finished by an angel. Its
marble pavement in front says in Latin, copying the words in the
Bible for the pavement of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, that
Robertus Pucci adorned it with precious stone and gave it to the
people of Florence. In this same beautiful square is the 8Hospital of the Innocenti,
founded to care for the orphans, Florence's children unwanted in
their families due to poverty and scandal.
During the thirteenth century Saint Dominic
founded the Dominican Order and Saint Francis the Franciscan
Order, the Dominicans building 4Santa
Maria Novella and later 6San
Marco, which would be decorated by Beato Angelico, where
Savonarola came to be Prior, declaring Florence’s King to be
Jesus, not the Medici princes, and where the saintly Mayor of
Florence, Giorgio La Pira would come to live.
At the same time as Dante, Santa Umilta,
their children dead, persuaded her husband to become a monk, she
a nun at Faenza’s convent of Saint Perpetua, which she then left
to become an anchoress, healing a Vallombrosan monk’s gangrenous
leg, next with her nuns coming to Florence where she set to work
building her church dedicated to St John the Evangelist, which
Duke Alexander de’ Medici would tear down to build his 5Fortezza da Basso. Her life and
miracles were painted in a polyptych by Pietro Lorenzetti and
her statue by Orcagna, the panels now in the Uffizi and Berlin,
the statue in San Salvi, her body in Bagni a Ripoli.
The Franciscans split between the Spirituals,
vowed to Gospel poverty, and the Conventuals, the Conventuals
building the vast 11Santa
Croce, the Spirituals Peter John Olivi and Ubertino da Casal
protesting and leaving to foster a strong lay movement with the
Compagnie dei Laudesi such as that which built 15Orsanmichele, the great
granary to feed even the enemy in time of famine, and to which
Brunetto Latino, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, Francesco da
Barberino belonged. All the lay guilds participated in adorning
this structure with the Bernardo Daddi Madonna in the Orcagna
tabernacle, with frescoes, stained glass and statues of saint
after saint, at which miracle after miracle occurred as also
happened at the 7Santissima
Annunziata, the 4Dominicans
and 12Franciscans jealous
about this, Villani and Guido Cavalcanti tell us.
Saint Agnes, Saint Clare’s sister founded the
Clarissan monastery at 23
Monticelli, and kept St Francis’ saio there. Piccarda
Donati, Dante’s relative by marriage, would be seized from that
convent by her violent criminal brother, Corso Donati. Later,
Filippa de' Medici and Caterina de' Pazzi, from the two feuding
Florentine noble houses, as nuns there, reconciled
their families.
Saint Birgitta of
Sweden, the mother of eight children, who prophesied to Popes
and Emperors, bringing them together in Rome, in Naples had a
vision of the dying Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s soul only being saved
from eternal damnation for his sins at the last moment because
of the Carthusians praying together with the Dominican Friends
of God and others under the Madonna’s cloak of Mercy at the 24Certosa in
Galluzzo that he had founded. The Paradiso Brigittine convent
would be founded by Florence’s Alberti family at Bagni a Ripoli
and their gardener’s daughter, Domenica del Paradiso, would live
a saintly life with miracles and writings in Via Laura by the 7Santissima Annunziata.
Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a Carmelite nun,
whose fellow nuns wrote down her visions, wrote many letters,
all of these suppressed until after her death and canonization.
Her convent was later moved from 19San
Frediano to Borgo Pinti where the young Teresa del Bambini Gesù
stayed on her way to Rome to ask the Pope to allow her to enter
her Carmel in Normandy. The Carmel, now at Careggi, treasures a
manuscript of Dante’s Vita nova.
Popes John XXIII and Francis I have taught us to
be ecumenical. Saint Bridget of Sweden had warned that if the
Catholic Church did not follow the Gospel and continued to
be corrupt the Protestant Reformation would occur. Later, Grand
Duke Leopold II, to break the power of the Catholic Church,
allowed non-Catholics after 1827 to be buried in Florence,
instead of in faraway Livorno, a small Swiss church obtaining
the hill outside Arnolfo di Cambio's medieval wall and inside
that of Michelangelo he had hastily built against the returning
Medici, for what is called the 'English' Cemetery, now in
Piazzale Donatello. Here are buried many who worked against
slavery, and for the rights of children and women, for nations
oppressed under Empires. We have English, Swiss, Americans,
Russians and many others among our burials, including suicides,
atheists, Freemasons, deserters, paupers and a king's son and a
queen's relative. Among our burials is Nadezhda who came
to Florence at 14, a Nubian slave, then baptized in a Russian
Orthodox family with name meaning 'Hope'. While Sara Parker
Remond, Afro-American, with a letter from Giuseppe Mazzini,
studied cutting edge obstetrics at Folco Portinari and Monna
Tessa's 9Santa Maria Nuova
Hospital.
6Giorgio La Pira and 19Fioretta Mazzei worked
tirelessly together for Florence and also for World Peace,
exuberant Sicilian Giorgio La Pira living with the Dominicans in
6San Marco, Fioretta from
the noble and rich Mazzei, whose ancestor Lapo Mazzei worked as
notaio for 9Santa
Maria Nuova Hospital, choosing the poverty and austerity of 20San Frediano. So also did Paolo
Coccheri, living in San Filippo Neri’s birthplace, whose church
is 13San Firenze. Brunetto
Latino, Dante Alighieri, Girolamo Savonarola, Robertus Pucci,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Giorgio La Pira,
Fioretta Mazzei, Paolo Coccheri, all saw Florence as the New
Jerusalem, as the Kingdom of Heaven amongst us, here and now. It
is through the love of God and neighbour, even the love of our
enemy, that we make Florence holy. And who is our
neighbour? He and she are also the Samaritan, the leper, the
cripple, the Syro-Phoenician woman, the elderly woman with
osteoporosis who can't climb the synagogue stairs to the women's
quarter, the slave, the thief, the prostitute, the publican, the
pilgrim, the tourist, the addict, the poor. For these people,
strangers, the sick, Florence built countless hospitals in the
Middle Ages. Giovanni Michelucci, the architect who built Santa
Maria Novella Station, spoke of Florence as the city of
'accoglienza', of welcoming. The Mass for the Poor, started by
Giorgio La Pira and continued by Fioretta Mazzei, meets in the 14Badia fiorentina near Dante's
House, each Sunday at 9,00 a.m. This living the Gospel was the
inspiration for Florence's beautiful art and architecture. Not the grim palaces and
the tourist museums about power and money. The exquisite art
that is in the museums, not only in Florence but looted to other
museums world wide, was once in the Florentine churches for the
people, for saving souls, for free. It was not the wealth and power of the Medici and their
'subiti guadagni' that made Florence great. Nor was it the
Church and her hierarchy. Instead it was the lay people, the
craftspeople, the merchants, the bankers, the Arte della
Calimala adorning the Baptistery and San Miniato, the Arte della
Lana building the Duomo, the Arte delle Sete, the Hospital of
the Innocenti, all of the Arti, Orsanmichele, with the
Misericordia, the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, the Bigallo,
the Buonuomini of San Martino, voluntarily providing social
services. It was Florence's living out Mary's Magnificat, as in
the medieval Podestà's sworn oath of office to protect the
widow, the orphan, to mend roads and bridges, as in Niccolo
Stenone's caring for the sick, as in Giorgio La Pira
and Fioretta Mazzei's Republic of San Procolo, as in Don
Lorenzo Milani's educating peasant children, as in Don Cuba's
prison ministry, as in Paolo Coccheri's indefatigable Rondo
della Carità, all living the Gospel. It was and is Florence's
wisdom that we are, in our Common Humanity, in God's Image. For
this the anatomy of our Body was carefully studied at Santa
Maria Nuova Hospital by the world's greatest artists, Donatello,
the Della Robbia, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, who
empathically portrays Nicodemus in the Pietà in his own image as
a Misericordia worker, supporting the widowed sorrowing Mary in
Jerusalem, in our Florence.
1.
Baptistery, John the Baptist 2. Duomo, Santa Reparata,
San Zenobio, Santa Maria del Fiore, Bigallo, Madonna della
Misericordia, 3. San Lorenzo, San Zenobio, St Ambrose, Saint Augustine,
San Lorenzo, Niccolò Stenone 4. Santa Maria Novella, St
Catherine of Siena 5. Fortezza da Basso, Santa Umilta 6. San Marco, Fra
Angelico, Savonarola, Giorgio La Pira 7. Santissima Annunziata,
Sette Santi, San Filippo Benizi, Santa Giuliana Falconieri 8. Hospital of the Innocenti 9. English
Cemetery 10. Piazza Beccaria 11.
Santa Maria
Nuova Hospital, Monna Tessa, Folco Portinari, Sara Parker
Remond 12. Santa Croce 13.
San Firenze, San Filippo Neri 14. Badia, Torre della
Castagna, Chiesa di San Martino, Dante House 15.
Orsanmichele 16. Santa Trinità,
Vallombrosan, San Giovanni Gualberti, Sant’Umilta
Ponte Vecchio -> Oltrarno
17. Santa
Felicita, Santa Felicita, Santa Perpetua 18. Santo Spirito, Saint
Augustine, Santa Monica, Martin Luther 19. Carmine, Santa Maria
Maddalena de’ Pazzi (Borgo Pinti, Santa Teresa del Bambno Gesù)
20. San Frediano d’Irlanda,
Fioretta Mazzei, Paolo Coccheri 21. No 7 bus San
Domenico, Fiesole, San Romolo, San Donato, by car Sasso, Santa
Brigida d’Irlanda, A Renaissance Bishop of Fiesole from the
Corsini family is also a Sant'Andrea 22. No 10 bus San
Martino a Mensola and Settignano, Sant’Andrea d’Irlanda, Don
Divo Barsotti 23. No 12/13 bus
Piazza Beccaria, San Miniato 24. No. 37 bus
Certosa, Santa Brigida di Svezia, Bagni a Ripoli, Domenica del
Paradiso, Via Laura 25. bus to Santa
Brigida, then walk the pilgrim path up the mountain to Sasso
Matthew 6.19. Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal:
20. But lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves do not break through nor steal:21. For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Dante Alighieri, Girolamo Savonarola, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning and Giorgio La Pira all saw Florence as potentially a
new Jerusalem. It's not money, but
knowledge, it's the Seven Acts of Mercy, that made her
beautiful,
