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Dominican Friar, Lay Saint: The Case of Marcolino of Forlì

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Daniel Bornstein
Daniel Bornstein
Affiliation:
professor of history at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
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Extract

The years surrounding the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) witnessed a historiographical revolution that transformed the study of medieval Christianity. One might say that both a new Vatican ecclesiology and the new religious history sprang from the same conceptual root. Even as the Council articulated a definition of the Catholic Church as the people of God rather than simply a hierarchical institution, a number of important scholars were rediscovering the religious history of the Christian people. Shifting their focus away from the traditional monastic treatises on the contemplative life, scholars argued that all believers, and not just clerical specialists in the sacred, had a spiritual life that constituted a proper object for historical study. This new understanding of the history of Christian spirituality rapidly proved enormously fecund, opening as it did novel and exciting prospects for the study of popular religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 252 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1997

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References

Research for this essay was supported in part by a Faculty Development Leave from Texas A & M University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Newberry Library.Versions of it were presented at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and at the 1995 conference of the Texas Medieval Association. I am grateful to the audiences on those occasions, and especially to Joanne Maguire, John Martin, Martha Newman, and Frank Reynolds, for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1. See the decree “Lumen Gentium” from the fifth session (21 November 1964), in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Alberigo, Giuseppe et al. , (Bologna, Italy, 1991), pp. 849–898, esp. chap. 2, “De populo Dei” (pp. 855–862).Google Scholar

2. For a thorough survey of recent literature and perceptive analysis of the leading issues, see Van Engen, John, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. This position has been stated forcefully by Schmitt, Jean-Claude, “ ‘Religione popolare’ e cultura folklorica,” Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa 6 (1977): 9–27;Google Scholarand by Goff, Jacques Le, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago, 1980), esp. pp. 153–188.Google Scholar

4. Van Engen, p. 529.Google Scholar

5. Schmitt, , Religione, folklore e società nell'Occidente medievale (Rome, 1988), pp. 7, 11. In the introduction Schmitt responds to Van Engen's charge that he and Le Goff claimed that “the people had a wholly distinct religious culture, not somehow amalgated into Christian practice” (Van Engen, p. 530).Google Scholar

6. See, for instance, Faire croire: Modalités de la diffusion etdela réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe síècle, ed. Vauchez, Andre (Rome, 1981);Google Scholarand the critical (and appreciative) assessment of this volume by Tender, Thomas N., “Seventeen Authors in Search of Two Religious Cultures,” Catholic Historical Review 71 (1985): 248–257.Google Scholar

7. Gurevich, Aaron, Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, ed.Howlett, Jana (Chicago, 1992), p. 51.Google ScholarFor other examples of this approach, see Gurevich, , Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception (Cambridge, U.K., 1988);Google Scholarand Bornstein, Daniel, “The Shrine of Santa Maria a Cigoli: Female Visionaries and Clerical Promoters,” Mélanges de l'ecole Francaise de Rome, Moyen Age-Temps Modernes 98 (1986): 219–228.Google Scholar

8. See, for instance, Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. Tedeschi, John and Tedeschi, Anne (1980; repr. Baltimore, Md., 1982);Google Scholarand Ginzburg, , The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Tedeschi, and Tedeschi, (Baltimore, Md., 1985).Google Scholar

9. Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), p. 78.Google Scholar

10. Vauchez, , La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age d'après les procès de canonisation el les documents hagiographiques (Rome, 1981), pp. 470–472.Google ScholarFor some examples of “lay sanctity” in a Franciscan context, see Vauchez, , “Frères Mineurs, érémitisme et sainteté laïque: les Vies des saints Maio († v. 1270) et Marzio († 1301) de Gualdo Tadino,” Studi medievali ser. 3, 27 (1986): 353–381;Google Scholaravailable also in Italian translation in Vauchez, , Ordini mendicanti e società italiana, XIII-XV secolo (Milan, Italy, 1990), pp. 274–305.Google Scholar

11. Kleinberg, Aviad M., Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992), pp. 31–36.Google Scholar

12. See Bertucci, Sadoc M., “Amanni, Marcolino,” in Biblioteca Sanctorum, vol. 1, cols. 926–929;Google Scholarand Pasini, Adamo, Nel V Centenario delta traslazione del Beato Marcolino da Forli (Forli, Italy, 1957).Google Scholar

13. Calandrini, Antonio and Fusconi, Gian Michele, Forlì e i suoi vescovi: Appunti e documentazione per una storia della Chiesa di Forlì, vol. 1: Dalle origini al secolo XIV (Forlì, Italy, 1985), pp. 942–944 n. 59.Google Scholar

14. The events surrounding Marcolino's death and burial are described in a letter by Dominici, Giovanni, published in Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae venetae anliquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae (Venice, Italy, 1749), vol. 7 (Decade 11, part 1), pp. 187–192.Google ScholarAll subsequent references to Corner are to this volume. An Italian translation of the letter, preceded by a brief narrative of the episode, has been published by Folli, Vincenzo, “II Beato Marcolino da Forlì in una lettera del B. Giovanni Dominici,” Memorie Domenicane 39 (1922): 20–27.Google Scholar

15. Similar demands for access to the body of a putative saint were made when Margaret of Città di Castello died on 13 April 1320: the friars sought to bury her in the cloister, but the crowd insisted that she was a saint and so should be buried in the church, not the cloister. To comply with their wishes, the friars carried her corpse into the church, and there a mute and stooped girl was immediately cured by Margaret's intercession. In gratitude, the girl assumed the Dominican habit.Google Scholar“Vitae Beatae Margaritae virginis de Civitate Castelli,” Analecta Bollandiana 19 (1900): 26–27;Google Scholarand Laurent, Marie-Hyacinthe, “La plus ancienne légende de la b. Marguerite de Città di Castello,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 10 (1940): 126.Google ScholarOn Margaret, see Menestò, Enrico, “La iegenda' di Margherita da Città di Castello,” in II movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli XIII-XIV, ed. Rusconi, Roberto (Florence, Italy, 1984), pp. 219–237;Google Scholarand Margherita da Città di Castello e la memoria santa della famiglia perduta,” in Menestò, Enrico and Rusconi, , Umbria: La strada delle sanie medievali (Turin, Italy, 1991), pp. 139–150.Google ScholarSee also Andric, Stanko, “The Making of a Saint: John of Capistrano's Death and Funeral,” Annual of Medieval Studies at the CEU1 (1993–1994): 81–99.Google Scholar

16. Corner, p. 190.Google Scholar

17. Of course, only a single night had passed, allowing little time for decomposition; entombment in a stone sepulcher in January was probably the best form of refrigeration then available in the Romagna, and one might guess that the body had been balsamed prior to burial, which would explain the waft of perfume when the tomb was opened.

18. The layman Franco Sacchetti observed that the bodies of those who died excommunicate, like those of saints, were held to remain uncorrupt: “Beato Ugolino e Beata Margherita da Cortona si mostrano per gran reliquie il dì loro, e che '1 corpo è intero, e per questo quel corpo sia santificato; da l'altra parte dicono li religiosi che '1 corpo scomunicato sta sempre intero”;Google ScholarSacchetti, , La Battaglia delle belle donne; Le Lettere; Le Sposizioni di vangeli, ed. Chiari, Alberto (Bari, Italy, 1938), p. 102.Google ScholarIn this he was in full agreement with the famous thirteenth-century canonist, Henry of Segusio; see Hostiensis, , ad X 3.45.2 In III librum decretalium commentaria, fol. 173, s.v. extra capsam: “Nam ex hoc sumunt [laici] materiam detrahendi et blasphemandi, videntes enim ossa nuda dicunt: truphae sunt, si enim sanctus esset, non esset sic consumptus" (cited from Kleinberg, p. 35).Google Scholar

19. “Paternitati vestrae, quam novi ex spiritualibus donis quamplurimum congaudere, significare compellor, quod cum diebus proxime elapsis circa mensem, de hoc saeculo migrasset quidam homo simplex, rectus et castus, peritus, et humilis de ordine Fratrum Praedicatorum, nomine F. Marcolinus de Forlivio, qui per annos sexaginta, et ultra in dicta Fratrum Praedicatorum Religione laudabiliter vixit. Ipse Benedictus Deus, qui non scientiam, quae inflat, sed per charitatem, quae aedificat hominem afficit et beatificat, dignatus est meritis dicti Beati Fratris miracula ostendere infinita. Nam mutorum os aperuit, auresque surdorum; claudos erexit, contractos absolvit, gibbosos, et impetiginosos similiter liberavit, et caetera, quae per ordinem et explicate opportunitate capta eidem Paternitati vestrae curabo seriosius iudicare”; Corner, p. 186.Google Scholar

20. Corner, pp. 187, 207. Soranzo was a Venetian noble and a close associate of Giovanni Dominici; the party also included “Limetto nunc Fratribus de Poenitentia B. Dominici Forlivium,” who may have been the only native of Forlì in the group (p. 207).Google Scholar

21. “Miracula eius quae nota sunt vulgo, aliqua faciam scribid”e multiset si nonessem injanua quadragesimae, ipse libenter notarem, ni forsitan etiam obstaret verborum penuria et ignorantia devoti styli; Corner, p. 191. Giovanni may also have chosen to downplay Marcolino's miracles in deference to Raymond's thinking on that subject. In addition to being master general of the Dominican order, Raymond of Capua wrote the biography of St. Catherine of Siena, a work which was well known to Giovanni, since Raymond brought it to Venice in 1395. Raymond duly recorded the multitude of striking miracles that marked Catherine's life; but in his epilogue, he noted that wonders and miracles are inherently ambiguous and cannot provide absolute proof of sanctity, even if they do “generate a strong presumption in favour of the sanctity of the person concerned, especially when they are performed after that person's death.” He concluded that before declaring someone a saint, the church should pay more attention to the putative saint's accomplishments and behavior while alive than to the miracles attributed to him or her.Google ScholarRaymond of Capua, Vita de S. Catharina Senensis, virgine de poenitentia S. Dominici, in Acta Sanctorum, April, vol. 3 (Paris, 1866), pp. 959–960 (paragraphs 395–396);Google Scholarfor an English version, see Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena, trans. Kearns, Conleth (Dublin, Ireland, 1980), p. 362. This opinion was shared by the Franciscans, as well; see Vauchez, “Frères Mineurs, érémitisme et sainteté laique,” p. 359.Google Scholar

22. In contrast, when Giovanni Dominici described the death of Niccolò di maestro Giovanni of Ravenna on 16 November 1398, he declared that “tibi narro quod vidi”; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 15237 (olim Bologna, Arch. conv. S. Domenico A), fol. 141v.Google Scholar

23. On Giovanni, see Orlandi, Stefano, Necrologio di S. Maria Novella (Florence, Italy, 1955), 2:77–126;Google ScholarCracco, Giorgio, “Giovanni di Domenico Banchini,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1963), 5:657–664.Google ScholarOn the work of reform that sprang from his efforts, see Alee, Venturino, “La riforma dell'ordine domenicano nel '400 e nel '500 veneto,” in Riforma delta chiesa, cultura e spiritualità nel Quattrocento veneto, ed. Trolese, Giovanni B. Francesco (Cesena, Italy, 1984), pp. 333–343.Google Scholar

24. Bornstein, , “Giovanni Dominici, the Bianchi, and Venice: Symbolic Action and Interpretive Grids, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23 (1993): 143–171.Google Scholar

25. Dominici, Giovanni, Lucula Noctis, ed. Hunt, Edmund (Notre Dame, Ind., 1940).Google ScholarSalutati's, reply is found in his Epistolario, ed. Novati, Francesco, Fonti per la storia d'ltalia, 15–18 (Rome, 1891–1911), vol. 4, part 1, pp. 205–240.Google Scholar

26. “[L]ibrorum usus generat inordinatum affectum, a servitio mentes impedit Creatoris”; letter of 16 November 1398 in Corner, pp. 220–225; the passage quoted is on p. 221. The letter is a heartfelt eulogy of the recently deceased Niccolo di maestro Giovanni of Ravenna, to whom Giovanni ascribes this statement.Google Scholar

27. Corner, p. 192.Google Scholar

28. “O misera ambitio nostra! Aut quaerimus famam, aut non fugimus. Regnare volumus in terra, vel terram, sicut decet, non contempnimus. Ecce quod indocti rapiunt coelum, humiles ad ipsum accedunt, simplices ipsum mercantur, acquirunt pauperes, paenitentes assequuntur. Ast nos miseri, ambitiosi, superbi, et elati, noti hominibus Deoque ignoti, quo pergamus, nescimus; vereor dicere, ad inferna demergimur”; Corner, p. 192. This passage obviously echoes Matthew 11:12: “A diebus autem Iohannis Baptistae usque nunc regnum caelorum vim patitur et violenti rapiunt illud”—a passage that also, as Paul DeHart alertly pointed out to me, finds an echo in Augustine's words to Alypius in the garden conversion scene (Augustine, Confessions VIII, chap. 8).Google ScholarFor comparison with another of Giovanni's letters, see letter 21 in Lettere di santi e beati fiorentini, ed. Biscioni, Antommaria (1736; repr. Milan, Italy, 1839), pp. 201–202.Google Scholar

29. Corner, p. 186. Giovanni's major devotional treatise was dedicated to the love of charity: Dominici, II Libro d'amore di carità, ed. Ceruti, Antonio, Collezione di opere inedite o rare dei primi tre secoli della lingua 67 (Bologna, Italy, 1889).Google Scholar

30. For Niccolò di maestro Giovanni of Ravenna's lasting devotion for Marcolino, see Corner, p. 208. When Niccolò was reprimanded for revering an uncanonized person as a saint, he persisted anyway, saying that he was sure that Marcolino was in the presence of Jesus.Google Scholar

31. Corner, pp. 190 (“puto, ut ordinat Ordo noster”), 191 (“jam octuagenarius, et quasi surdus indesse jejunabat omnibus diebus ab Ecclesia constitutis, et etiam ab Ordine”).

32. See Sorelli, Fernanda, “La production hagiographique du dominicain Tommaso Caffarini: exemples de saintete, sens et visees d'une propagande,” in Faire croire, pp. 189/N200;Google Scholarand Sorelli, , “Imitable Sanctity: The ‘Legend of Maria of Venice,’” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Bornstein, and Rusconi, (Chicago, 1996), pp. 165–181.Google Scholar

33. Thomae Antonii Senensis, Historia Disciplinae regularis inslauralae in Coenobiis Venetis Ordinis Praedicatorum, nec non Tertii Ordinis de Poenitentia S. Dominici, in Civitatem Venetiarum propagati, in Corner, pp. 167–234 (which includes Giovanni's letter, pp. 187–192).Google Scholar

34. On the devotional use of religious images, see Baxandall, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, U.K., 1972), pp. 40–56;Google Scholarand Frugoni, , “Female Mystics, Visions, and Iconography,” in Women and Religion, ed. Bornstein, and Rusconi, , pp. 130–164.Google ScholarIt is thoroughly fitting that the image of the Virgin and child traditionally linked with Marcolino remained until 1985 in the meetingplace of the Dominican Third Order: Calandrini and Fusconi, Forli e i suoi vescovi, p. 941 n. 56; the painting is reproduced on p. 943.Google Scholar

35. On confraternities affiliated with the Dominican order, see the studies collected in Meersseman, Ordo Fraternitatis.Google Scholar

36. The attestations of the beneficiaries of Marcolino's miracles were originally recorded by various notaries; 22 of these parchments, describing 115 miracles, are preserved in the Archivio Capitolare, Forlì. I wish to thank Don Franco Zaghini for his extraordinary courtesy in making it possible for me to consult these parchments.Google Scholar

37. To these can be added one other, undated but clearly from the last days of February, whose witnesses include Cecco Ordelaffi, lord of Forlì. Giovanni Dominici's seemingly casual reference to “plusquam octuaginta miracula” was in fact quite exact. A sixteenth-century manuscript (which also includes a copy of Giovanni Dominici's letter) lists in very summary fashion precisely eighty miracles, which raises the suspicion that this number was chosen to match the figure mentioned by Giovanni; Biblioteca Comunale of Forlì (henceforth BCF), MS 111/10 (formerly 274), fols. 24r–35r: “Miracula quedam facta a B. Marcolino Foroliviensis ex diversis autenticis extracta.”Google ScholarFor a description of this manuscript, see Mazzatinti, Giuseppe, Inventari dei manoscritti nelle biblioteche d'ltalia (Forlì, Italy, 1890), 1:57–58.Google Scholar

38. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Congregazione dei Riti, Processo 772: Marcolini Amanni Processus ordinarius Forolivien, ff. 21r-v: “omni debita diligentia legaliter exemplare miracula et gestis beati fratris Marcolini de Forolivio ordinis predicatorum Sancti Dominici prout et sicut inveniet et reperiet eadem miracula et gesta predicta scripta, rogata, et publicata in quibusdam cartis et instrumentis publicis originalibus, existentibus in sacristia capituli et conventus fratrum predicatorum de Forolivio per manus plurium notariorum.” The manuscript of thirty-seven folios containing the resulting compilation has since been lost (so far as I have been able to determine), but according to Giorgio Viviani Marchesi (Vitae Virorum Illustrium Foroliviensium [Forli, Italy, 1726], p. 28), a careful copy of a collection of 188 miracles was made by Giovanni Zanfuschi in 1571. This was presumably the basis of the manuscript copies of the “Miracula beati Marcolini de Forolivio” that survive in Processo 772, fols. 21r–122r, and in BCF, Raccolte Piancastelli, MS IV/16: Vitae Sanctorum quorum corpora quiescunt Forolivisii ex variis exemplaribus antiquis quaeper urbem circumferuntur in unum collectae. Alexandri Paduanij phisici Foroliviensis liber, fols. 101–141. The author of this last manuscript, the seventeenth-century physician, chronicler, and passionate student of local history Alessandro Padovani, says on fol. 140v that he copied this compilation from a manuscript dated 1571; Padovani also copied (fols. 70–79) the “Miracula quedam facta a B. Marcolino Foroliviensis” from MS 111/10, noting in the margins correspondences between the two collections. Notes on the backs of the parchments in the Archivio Capitolare refer to the corresponding folios of the manuscript collection derived from them; and the copy in the canonization proceeding similarly includes marginal notations of the folio number, making it easy to fill in the gaps caused by missing parchments and reconstruct the complete collection. The descriptions of the miracles from the canonization proceeding have been published in Sacra Rituum Congregatio. Forolivien. Canonizationis B. Marcolini a Forolivio Sacerdotis Professi Ordinis Praedicatorum. Summarium super dubio An sit signanda Commissio Reassumptionis Causaein casu et adeffectum de quo agitur (Rome? 1748?), pp. 23–86.1 consulted the copy of this work in BCF, Forlivesi, Cart. III/41.Google Scholar

39. A man suffering from a hernia “ut audivit miracula que quottidie sanctus vir faciebat” promised that he would donate a candle and “faceret pingere in ecclesia ubi est sepulcrum suum illius imaginem”; BCF, MS III/10, fol. 30v.Google Scholar

40. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Riti, Processo 772, fol. 22r, corresponding to Archivio Capitolare, Forli, parchment 52.Google Scholar

41. Archivio Capitolare, Forlì, parchment 50.Google Scholar

42. This friar Girolamo has been identified with the chronicler Girolamo of Forli, who opened his chronicle of Forli with a notice of Marcolino's death: “Anno Domini 1397 die 24 mensis januarii, scilicet in vigilia beati pauli Apostoli, feria 4, hora tertiarum, mortuus est venerabilis pater et frater Marcolinus de Forlivio, ordinis predicatorum… Que autem contigerunt post mortem prefati fratris et miracula alibi scripta sunt, et ideo hie plura non posui”;Google ScholarChronicon fratris Hieronomymi de Forlivio ab anno MCCCXCVII usque ad annum MCCCCXXXIII, ed. Pasini, Adamo, in Rerum Halicarum Scriptores, new ed., vol. 19, part 5 (Bologna, Italy, 1931), pp. 3–4.Google ScholarIf this identification is correct, one wonders why the chronicler had so little to say about Marcolino. And even if this is a case of two friars with a single name, the chronicler Girolamo of Forlì's reticence about Marcolino remains striking, and puzzling: by his own account (p. 39), he entered the Dominican order in 1360, at the age of twelve, and so must have spent several decades in Marcolino's company and come to know him very well.Google Scholar

43. Archivio Capitolare, Forlì, parchment 53 (16 July 1397); the canonization proceeding records his presence at another deposition on the following day, though the original of this deposition has been lost. Girolamo of Forlì also notes the celebration of a provincial chapter in Forlì shortly after the death of Marcolino: “Celebratum est capitulum post mortem beati Marcolini per magistrum Thomam de Firmo in Forlivio.” Chronicon fralris Hieronomymi de Forlivio, p. 4.Google Scholar

44. “Breve compendium in vita Beati Fratris Marcolini de Forolivio,” in Vitae Sanctorum quorum corpora quiescunt Forolivisii, fols. 90r–93v; published in Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì e i suoi vescovi, pp. 1177–1182. The miracles are recounted on pp. 1178–1180; linking them (on p. 1180) is the statement: “Aliud quoque insigne et per omnia laude dignum opus non multo post egit seruus Dei B. Marcolinus, quod ad notitiam plurium ipso uiuente deuenit et multi etiam nunc sunt presentes et in came uiuentes, qui huius rei sunt testes fideles.” These two miracles open the “Miracula quedam facta a B. Marcolino Foroliviensis”: BCF, MS III/10, fols. 24r–26r.Google Scholar

45. “Et quia eadem die plura fecit Deus miracula, qui gloriosus est in sanctis suis, propter merita huius sancti patris, ideo illico die supradicta maximus concursus populi huius ciuitatis, et iam sepulturae traditum corpus, inuitis fratribus, de sepulchro, quod est in loco capituli, exhumatum corpus in choro posuerunt debita cum reuerentia, ubi tribus diebus stetit, absque foetoris alicuius exhalatione, imo odoris suauissimi emanatione”; Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì e i suoi vescovi, p. 1181.Google Scholar

46. BCF, MS III/10, fols. 21r–23v; this text is published in Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì ei suoi vescovi, pp. 945–947. In the manuscript, the copy of Giovanni's letter follows one of the letter by Bello of Forlì, which is also extensively altered. The copyist states (fol. 23v) that Giovanni's letter was transcribed “pro ut refert frater Hyeronymus Bursellus bononiensis ordinis predicatorum in gestis clarorum virorum eiusdem ordinis,” that is, from the Tabula de viris illustribus Praedicatorum written around 1500 by the Bolognese Dominican friar Girolamo Albertucci de' Borselli, on whom see the entry by Giuseppe Rabotti, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1960), 1:763. Since this work has been lost, we cannot say whether the changes were introduced by Borselli or by the copyist in Forli. The earliest known manuscript of Giovanni's letter, in Vat. lat. 15237, fols. 138–140, was probably produced in the scriptorium of San Zanipolo in 1402, and corresponds almost exactly with the version in Corner, Ecclesiae venetae.Google ScholarFor a description of this manuscript, see Laurent, Marie-Hyacinthe, “Un legendier dominicain peu connu, Analecta Bollandiana 58 (1940): 28–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. Scarpetta's attempt to seize power in 1402 failed, and he died in prison soon after—not without suspicion that his death had been ordered by his victorious rival, his nephew Cecco. On Scarpetta, see Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì ei suoi vescovi, pp. 1037–1054.Google Scholar

48. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Riti, Processo 772, fol. 121v; BCF, Raccolte Piancastelli, MS IV/16, fols. 140v–141r; Sacra Rituum Congregatio. Summarium, p. 86.Google Scholar

49. On Bello's connections with Scarpetta, see Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì e i suoi vescovi, pp. 1038–1039, 1046–1047.Google Scholar

50. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Riti, Processo 772, fols. 49–50: “quia inddelis non credens hoc Beatum fratrem Marcolinum fore sanctum et cum plura miracula fecisset.”Google Scholar

51. Over the following decades, bishops and Dominicans continued to cooperate in promoting the cult of Marcolino. According to the chronicler Giovanni di maestro Pedrino, in a rubric entitled “Memoria de la facenda de mudare el corpo del biato Marcholino frade predicadore da Forlì, e del capitole fatto in quello tenpo,” the translation of Marcolino's body into a new marble tomb took place in conjunction with a provincial chapter of the Dominican order; the tomb, carved by Antonio Rossellino, was paid for by Niccolo dell'Astc, bishop of Recanati and Macerata, but a native of Forlì. Giovanni di m.°Google Scholardepintore, Pedrino, Cronica del suo tempo, ed. Borghezio, Gino and Vattasso, Marco, with notes by Pasini, Adamo, 2 vols., Studi e Testi 50 and 62 (Rome, 1929–1934), 2:314 (rubric 1769).Google ScholarThis translation, or one the following year, was accompanied by an official recognition of Marcolino's relics (rather than the spontaneous exhumation described by Giovanni Dominici), which was recorded in a note bearing the date 27 October 1458 and placed in the tomb: see BCF, Raccolte Piancastelli, MS IV/16, fol. 99r; edited in Calandrini and Fusconi, Forlì e i suoi vescovi, p. 945.Google ScholarOn the tomb sculpture see, Viroli, Giordano, “II ‘finitissimo Marmo, con intaglio di bellissime figure’ che fu sepoltura al Beato Marcolino da Forlì,” in II monumento a Barbara Manfredi e la scultura del Rinascimento in Romagna, ed. Ferretti, Anna Colombi and Prati, Luciana (Bologna, Italy, 1989), pp. 156–163.Google Scholar

52. Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident, p. 253. Thus, the great miracle-workers of the fifteenth century tended to be members of the Observant movements.Google ScholarFor studies of the miracles ascribed to two leading exponents of the Franciscan Observance, see Jansen, Philippe, “Un example de sainteté thaumaturgique à la fin du Moyen Age: les miracles de St. Bernardin de Sienne,” Mélanges de l'Ecole Franfaise de Rome, Moyen Age-Temps Modernes 96 (1984): 129–151;Google Scholarand Andric, Stanko, “The Early Cult of John of Capestrano: A Contribution to the Portrait of a Late-Medieval Miracle-Worker” (M.A. thesis, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, 1994).Google Scholar

53. On those rare occasions when Marcolino is mentioned in chronicles from outside Forlì, it is only to record his reputation as a miracle-worker. See Corpus Chronicorum Bononiensium ed. Sorbelli, Albano, in Rerum Ilalicarum Scriptores, new ed., vol. 18, part 1, vol. 3 (Città di Castello, Italy, 1916), p. 461 (Cronaca A).Google ScholarThe frequency of cures declined sharply after March 1397: an average of five miracles a month are recorded through the spring and summer of 1397, and that figure trails off still further, to only one or two a month, in 1398. I have not found records of later miracles in any substantial numbers. Marcolino's thaumaturgical powers seem to have been soon exhausted; and the reasons why his miracles were collected in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a formal request for canonization was presented to the post-Tridentine papacy, and approval of his cult was finally obtained in 1750, form part of a different story than that told here.Google Scholar

54. According to Schmitt, peasants in one area of eastern France were even willing to address their appeals to a dog: Schmitt, , The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, U.K., 1983).Google ScholarFor a study of “rescue miracles” as a desperate response to the troubled conditions of the late Middle Ages, see Goodich, Michael E., Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century: Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago, 1995).Google Scholar