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San Ranieri of Pisa: The Power and Limitations of Sanctity in Twelfth-Century Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Colin Morris
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Extract

Studies of medieval society in recent years have laid increasing stress on the effectiveness of the power of the saints. They enriched their churches, defended their possessions, created great centres at once of pilgrimage and commerce and provided for the healing of the sick and the care of the poor. The cults of the saints formed a model for secular government. Kings appeared before their people as walking reliccollections and exercised the power of healing, and patron saints (like St Mark at Venice and St Denis in France) helped to define the identity of the political communities over whose well-being they were thought to preside. Often such saints, even those whose cults were rapidly developing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were figures from the New Testament or from the ages of conversion: St James at Compostella, Mary Magdalen at Vézelay, and Benedict at Fleury. On occasions, however, a charismatic figure in contemporary society emerged as the centre of a healing cult and a focus for widespread devotion.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1994 , pp. 588 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

This article began life as a paper for the London Medieval Society, and I am grateful to the audience for the perceptive comments made during the discussion. Dates are Common Era throughout, and disregard the contemporary Pisan convention for the start of the year.

1 A reliquary made about 1200 to contain portions of his clothing survives in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, and from the fourteenth century the episodes in his life were being illustrated by a series of splendid works of art, including a marble altar by Tino da Camaino, who died in 1339, and the magnificent sequence in the south range of the Campo Santo, in which Andrea di Buonaiuti participated.

2 San Ranieri di Pisa in un ritratto agiogrqfico inedito del secolo XIII, ed. Grégoire, R., Pisa 1990Google Scholar(hereinafter cited as Vita with the page reference). Grègoire's text is based on the Livorno manuscript (L). The Bollandist edition used a longer manuscript, now preserved at Pisa (P), which is printed in Acta sanctorum, June III, Antwerp 1701, 426–65, cited below simply as AASS followed by chapter number. In Grégoire's edition, the L text is printed complete, but the paragraphs are numbered as in Acta sanctorum, so that the numbers do not run in sequence. He prints all significant P variants for the material common to the two manuscripts, but sections peculiar to P are not printed there. They are summarised on pp. 35–8. For the relationship between these two texts, see the Appendix to the present article. I am specially grateful to my colleague Marco Tangheroni, of the University of Pisa, for drawing my attention to the preparation of this edition and for his guidance about the history of Pisa in the period. There are recent accounts of Ranieri in Farmer, D. H., Dizionario dei santi, Padua 1989, 374–5Google Scholar, and Sumption, J., Pilgrimage, London 1975, 175Google Scholarff., the latter with special reference to Ranieri's sojourn in the Holy Land.

3 Benincasa, , canon, and deacon, , appears in Vita, 178Google Scholar, unfortunately in a sentence in broken-backed Latin, but clearly cited as a miracle witness. It is reasonable to suppose that this record was written before his nomination as imperialist archbishop in 1167, although, even if the miracle record was written then, it does not determine when it was incorporated in the Life. Archbishop Villano is described as ‘venerable’ during the account of Ranieri's funeral ceremonies (Vita, 175), and this suggests that the Life was completed before the attempt to displace him in 1167, which is nowhere referred to in the text. For another view, see the editorial comments at Vita, 97.

4 Cited in Vauchez, A., La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age, Rome 1981, 102nGoogle Scholar. Grégoire approves the older view that Ranieri must have been canonised by Alexander III (Vita, 65–6), but it seems very unlikely that Visconti was wrong on such a point.

5 There is no evidence of the date of his birth: all his dates have to be calculated from his death on 17 June 1160, using mentions of chronology in the Life which are sometimes approximate.

6 For Henry, , see Vita, 116Google Scholar. In later life Ranieri prayed for his soul as well as for his own parents and sister (p. 142).

7 Ibid. 108–13. Clairvaux is the most likely identification for ‘Clareuallis’, but there are other places, such as Vauclair, which are possibilities.

8 Vita, 120. In the context it is natural to understand ‘partes ad transmarinas’ as meaning Outremer or Palestine.

9 The summary sermon at the beginning of the Life is clearly a construct, acceptable in contemporary convention but giving little indication of Ranieri's preaching methods: Vita, 103, 105. One unusual miracle also testifies to Ranieri's public preaching, when a member of the audience explains to Ranieri, ‘ego veni ad tuam praedicationem’: AASS, ch. 112.

10 Vila, 104.

11 Ibid. 124–5.

12 Ibid. 143.

13 Ibid. 239.

14 Ibid. 105.

15 Ranieri's spiritual experiences are specifically related to God's special vocation for him: there is a sweet odour from him ‘qui in eo habitaculum facerat [sic] Deus’, and he has a vision, inspired presumably by illustrations of a famous vision of Gregory the Great, in which the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, entered into his right ear: ibid. 119, 134. The question of Ranieri's visions, auditions and perception of sweet smells is a fascinating one, but cannot be examined in the course of this article.

16 Ibid. 123–4.

17 Ibid. 127. The reference to the stripping of Christ in the Passion is only barely biblical. Presumably it is a sort of compound of Matthew xxvii. 28, ‘et exuentes eum, clamydem coccineam circumdederunt ei’, with the story in Luke xx. 30 of the good Samaritan who ‘incidit in latrones, qui etiam despoliauerunt eum’.

18 Vita, 140.

19 Ibid. 141.

20 Ibid. 48–51.

21 The figures are necessarily approximate, because there are multiple and interlocked healings which can be variously counted. They do not include the exorcisms, nor the healings at Sant'Andrea, which were incorporated in the Life and do not strictly form part of the miracle collection; but the figures include the items from the miracle collection which appeared only in the Pisa text, as well as those common to it and Livorno.

22 Healing of a dead boy, Vita, 179; of blindness, AASS, ch. 106 and Vita, 244–5; stomach pain, 209; severe headache, AASS, ch. 109; swollen arm and hand, Vita, 213–14; swollen mouth, 220–1; flux of blood, 230–1; withered hand, AASS, ch. 128; hiccough, ch. 134; retention of urine, ch. 138; scrofula, Vita, 224.

23 Rescues in storm, Vita, 178, 216ff; from Saracens, 186–90; from imprisonment, 221–2, 245ff.; a successful fishing trip provided, AASS, ch. 131; a stuck anchor, chs 132, 139; a fall from an upper floor in a tower, Vita, 136.

24 Vita, 228–9; the citation is from Psalm xxxvi. 6 (English style).

25 P text only, AASS, chs 82–6.

26 Vita, 195–6, 202–3 (where an ‘incredulus’ is confounded), 234–5. The close link between San Vito and the tomb is confirmed by a number of instances when beneficiaries came to the tomb to report healings which they had previously received from Ranieri himself.

27 Ibid. 152, reading ‘male’ before ‘habentes’. With one or two exceptions, Benincasa did not report the miracles done at Sant'Andrea because, he says, ‘we were not present, and did not hear about them expressly from him’: pp. 163–4.

28 Ibid. 248, based on Isaiah lxi. 1–2 and Luke iv. 18–19.

29 Vita, 191–2. A devotee who was rescued from a hail of arrows was hit by one because he had fired back: ‘iste fecit quod non debuit’: pp. 206–7.

30 Ibid. 245–8. See also p. 211, where Ranieri saved a Pisan ship from a storm in the harbour at Genoa by deflecting the wind so that it blew down many houses instead.

31 Ibid. 204, 242 (where Berta was ‘fidelis ualde beato Raynerio in uita corporali eiusdem sancti Raynerii’); AASS, ch. 132.

32 Vita, 180–1, 186; AASS, chs 109, 134, 138, 149–50, etc. Examples of offerings in cash are Vita, 196–8, AASS, ch. 146.

33 Vita, 211–12.

34 Ibid. 237–8.

35 Ibid. 216–17 (Jerusalem), 189 (North Africa); AASS, ch. 144 (Compostella).

36 Vita, 251.

37 Details of the manuscripts are given in ibid. 13–19. For references to the P manuscript, and the way in which the texts are presented in Grégoire's edition, see n. 2 above.

38 P text only: AASS, ch. 87.

39 Vita, 38.