Saint Blaise: Protector of Dubrovnik and Patron Saint of Throat Illnesses

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by Reliquarian in "Speaking" Reliquary

Tags

auxiliary saints, Charlemagne, Croatia, Dubrovnik, Festivity of Saint Blaise, Fourteen Holy Helpers, Germany, Rothenburg, Saint Blaise, speaking reliquary, St. Blasien, Venice

Saint Blaise Group, Dom Sankt Blasien (Cathedral of Saint Blaise), Sankt Blasien, Germany. This statute group, which depicts Saint Blaise's most famous miracle, dates to circa 1740. It originally stood in an Ursuline monastery in Vienna.

Saint Blaise Group, Dom St. Blasien (Cathedral of Saint Blaise), St. Blasien, Germany. This statute group, which depicts Saint Blaise performing his most famous miracle, dates to circa 1740. It originally stood in an Ursuline monastery in Vienna.

Saint Blaise and the City of Dubrovnik

For over a thousand years, the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia has celebrated the feast day of Saint Blaise by staging one of the grandest and most impressive annual festivals in the world: the Festivity of Saint Blaise (Festa svetoga Vlaha).[1] The festival commemorates Saint Blaise’s salvation of the city on the eve of a surprise attack in 971. According to tradition, Saint Blaise’s miraculous intervention thwarted a planned invasion of the city, and in gratitude, the people of Dubrovnik enthusiastically embraced the saint’s cult, proclaiming him their patron and protector. Over the centuries, the relationship between city and saint flourished, and the identities of both became virtually inextricable. The annual Festivity of Saint Blaise, which has been celebrated in some form since at least 1190, only reinforced this association.[2] Meanwhile, succeeding generations have adapted the festival to their own needs, which has kept it vibrant and relevant in changing times.[3] Today, Saint Blaise’s likeness can be found virtually everywhere in Dubrovnik, and his spirit continues to imbue the city with a touch of mystery and a sense of the sublime.

Dubrovnik, Croatia. View of the rooftops with the Church of Saint Blaise in the foreground.

Acknowledging its great historical and cultural significance not only to the people of Dubrovnik, but also to the people of the world, UNESCO formally recognized the Festivity of Saint Blaise as an example of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.[4] Who, though, was Saint Blaise? And how did he come to save Dubrovnik from disaster?

The Origin of the Festivity of Saint Blaise

The night of February 2, 971, began quietly enough in city of Dubrovnik. It was Candelmas, the feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. A fleet of Venetian ships lay at anchor beyond the city walls, taking on provisions before continuing east. And the city’s pastor, a man named Stojko, was out for a walk.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

As Stojko approached the church of Saint Stephen that night, he noticed something odd: the doors to the church had been left wide open. Stojko entered the darkened church and discovered an old, gray-haired man who introduced himself as Saint Blaise, the 4th-century bishop and martyr of Sebaste.[5] Saint Blaise gravely explained the reason for his visit. “I come to warn you of great danger for the city,” he said. The Venetians anchored outside the city walls had arrived under pretext, and they intended to take the unsuspecting city, a flourishing commercial power and potential rival to Venice, by surprise.[6] Alarmed by Saint Blaise’s message, Stojko rushed to the city council and warned them of the impending attack. The gates to the city were quickly secured, and the mighty walls of the town were manned for the city’s defense.[7] Seeing these preparations, the Venetians abandoned their plans and departed, leaving Dubrovnik – then known as Ragusa – in peace.[8] Significantly, the next day, February 3rd, was the feast day of Saint Blaise.

The Festivity of Saint Blaise in Modern Times

Today, the Festivity of Saint Blaise is celebrated over the course of several days, although preparations for the festival begin many weeks in advance.[9] The Festivity officially opens with much fanfare on Candlemas, February 2nd, when the banner of Saint Blaise is raised atop Orlando’s Column in front of the Church of Saint Blaise. (Orlando’s Column, also known as Roland’s Column, commemorates the knight and hero of the famous medieval poem The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland), who died in the service of the emperor Charlemagne at the Battle of Roncevaux in 778.) The raising of the banner – a white standard embroidered with an image of Saint Blaise as a gray-haired bishop – is accompanied by the ringing of church bells, the discharging of historic firearms, and the release of white doves.[10] Joyous shouts of “Long live Saint Blaise!” follow from the cheering crowd.[11] In the evening, Vespers to honor Saint Blaise are sung in the cathedral.

Church of Saint Blaise, Dubrovnik, Croatia

The festival resumes early the next morning, the official feast day of Saint Blaise, with the ringing of church bells, the clamor of brass bands, and more volleys from thecity’s historic musketeers, the trombunjeri.[12] About mid-morning, a public mass is held outside Dubrovnik Cathedral (Cathedral of the Assumption). At its conclusion, a grand procession of celebrants – including trombunjeri, banner-bearers, priests, nuns, musicians, First Communicants, pilgrims, residents in national costumes, and specially appointed festanjuls (celebrators) – wends its way from the cathedral down the Stradun, the city’s main thoroughfare, and through the heart of the Old City.[13] The procession is one of the most colorful and most striking elements of the festival. In the words of one book on Saint Blaise, “the Stadun becomes a magnificent cathedral under the open skies” during the procession.[14]

Stradun, Dubrovnik, Croatia

One of the highlights of the parade includes the procession and display of Dubrovnik’s most prized relics, including the head, right hand, foot, and throat of Saint Blaise.[15] Housed in glittering reliquaries of gold and silver, the relics have been described as the “greatest cultural and artistic treasure” of Dubrovnik Cathedral[16]. The Reliquary of the Head of Saint Blaise is shaped like a Byzantine crown and likely dates to the 11th century.[17] The Reliquary of the Right Hand of Saint Blaise is slightly more modern. Crafted in the 12th century by Dubrovnik goldsmiths, the reliquary is shaped like a hand and features a large blue stone surrounded by filigree, pearls, and precious stones embedded on the back of the hand. The Reliquary of the Foot of Saint Blaise, like the hand reliquary, is a “speaking reliquary.” Crafted by Byzantine goldsmiths in the 11th century, the reliquary is shaped like a leg and foot and is covered in intricate gold filigree.[18] The Reliquary of the Throat of Saint Blaise contains the saint’s larynx, which is visible through a crystal window. Shaped like a monstrance, the reliquary is made of embossed silver decorated with enamel and dates to the 15th century.[19] Lastly, the Diapers or Swaddling Clothes of Jesus, housed in an ornate silver chest, are given a place of honor in the parade.[20]

Who Was Saint Blaise?

According to tradition, Saint Blaise was a 4th-century bishop of Sebaste in Armenia who was martyred in approximately 316.[21] He was born to a wealthy Greek or Armenian family in about 280, and he studied medicine, which he practiced with great skill and gentleness.[22] After treating his patients, he often added a sign of the cross.[23]

During a persecution of Christians in the region, Saint Blaise withdrew to a cave on Mount Argeus.[24] The cave was frequented by wild beasts, which Saint Blaise healed when they were sick or wounded. Hunters sent to the mountain to obtain wild animals for the amphitheater eventually discovered Saint Blaise, surrounded by the animals, and “though greatly amazed, they seized him and took him to Agricola,” the Roman governor of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia.[25] En route, Saint Blaise performed a number of miracles in the presence of the hunters.

Fountain Statute of Saint Blaise, Domplatz (Cathedral Square), Dom St. Blasien, St. Blasien, Germany. The statue was carved by Josef Schupp in 1714. The fountain was designed by Walter Schelenz in 1966.

First, the group encountered a poor woman whose pig had been seized by a wolf. Saint Blaise commanded the wolf to return the pig, and the wolf immediately complied, returning the unfortunate animal unhurt. For this act, Saint Blaise gained a reputation as a protector of pigs and of animals more generally.[26]

Second, Saint Blaise healed a sick boy who was choking on a fishbone. The boy was at the point of death when his mother brought him to Saint Blaise. Saint Blaise placed his hands on the boy’s throat, prayed to God, and healed him. On account of this miracle, Saint Blaise has since been invoked as a protector against throat illnesses, including sore throats, and other associated maladies, such as tonsillitis (also known in Spain as the curse of Saint Blaise) and respiratory problems.[27]

The Martyrdom of Saint Blaise

When Saint Blaise was finally presented before Agricola, Saint Blaise refused to deny his faith. Consequently, he was imprisoned without food and was scourged. During his imprisonment, the woman whose pig Saint Blaise had saved brought him food and gave him candles to lighten his gloomy cell. Candles would later become a common attribute of Saint Blaise.[28] Crossed in an X either against the throat or over the head of an applicant, two candles are used to deliver the traditional Blessing of the Throat and are said to recall the tapers brought to the saint by the grateful woman.[29] The prayer that accompanies the Blessing of the Throat is Per intercessionem Sancti Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutturis et a quovis alio malo (“Through the intercession of Saint Blaise, may God deliver you from illness of the throat and every other illness”).[30]

Relic of Saint Blaise, Dom Sankt Blasien, Sankt Blasien, Germany

Relic of Saint Blaise, Dom St. Blasien, St. Blasien, Germany

Eventually, Agricola had Blaise tortured and scourged with iron carding combs, which scraped and tore his flesh. Because carding combs are also used to card wool, Saint Blaise’s association with these instruments of torture oddly led to his adoption as the patron saint of wool combers. Additionally, because the iron combs viciously shredded his skin, Saint Blaise also became a protector against skin ailments, such as blisters, pimples, and leprosy, which was much feared during the Middle Ages.[31]

Saint Blaise depicted above a city gate, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

After these tortures, Saint Blaise was beheaded and was buried near the walls of Sebaste.[32] He is commonly portrayed as a bishop with a gray or white beard, and he is often shown holding a crosier, an iron comb, or candles. In Dubrovnik, he frequently holds a miniature version of the city in his hands.

Fourteen Holy Helpers

Saint Blaise is also a member of the Fourteen Holy Helpers or Vierzehn Nothelfer (“fourteen helpers in need”), which has been described as “a potent group of saints invoked collectively in times of near death or dire calamity.”[33] Veneration of the Fourteen Holy Helpers originated in Germany in approximately the 13th century, though the cult did not gain a wide following until the 15th century, when a shepherd declared seeing the Christ Child accompanied by fourteen older children near the Benedictine Abbey at Banz.[34] According to the shepherd, the Christ Child described his companions as the Nothelfer and stated that they wished to work miracles from the site.[35] A small chapel was built on the spot, though it was later replaced by a much grander pilgrimage church, the Wallfahrkirche Vierzehnheilgen, designed by Balthasar Neuman.

Cathedral of Saint Blaise in the Black Forest (Sankt Blasien), Germany

Dom St. Blasien (Cathedral of Saint Blaise), St. Blasien, Germany

Meanwhile, Saint Blaise (Sankt Blasien) continues to be revered throughout Germany, both individually and as an auxiliary saint of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Many of the traditions associated with the saint’s feast day, however, have begun to fade or have disappeared entirely in Germany. For example, notched breadsticks (Blasiusbrot) and trachea-shaped loaves of bread (Bubenschenkel) used to be common offerings during the saint’s feast day but have become increasingly difficult to find.[36] Meanwhile, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Blasiustag used to involve the blessing of horses.[37] Blessed horses were given bronze combs of Saint Blaise, which were attached to their ears.[38] In more modern times, a few farmers even had their tractors blessed before the custom died out completely.[39] Germany still has a number of churches dedicated to Saint Blaise, including the imposing Dom St. Blasien, or Cathedral of Saint Blaise, located in the Black Forest town of St. Blasien. (Dom St. Blasien is pictured above.)

Živio sveti Vlaho! Long live Saint Blaise!

In his last poem, The Bells of San Blas, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes of a past when religion and faith still held power and when church bells served as the “voice of the church.”[40] The Bells of San Blas, Mexico, “[h]ave a strange, wild melody, / and are something more than a name,” he writes.[41] They have “tones that touch and search / The hearts of young and old,” yet they are “a voice of the Past, / Of an age that is fading fast.”[42] The chapel that “once looked down / On the little seaport town” has “crumbled into the dust” and the oaken beams that support the bells have become “green with mould and rust.”[43] “Is, then, the old faith dead?” he asks.[44] And the saints: “Ah, have they grown / Forgetful of their own? Are they asleep, or dead . . . ?”[45]

In Dubrovnik, at least, tradition and faith endure. The Festivity of Saint Blaise is proof that Saint Blaise has not been forgotten and remains integral to the life and culture of the city. Živio sveti Vlaho!

Interior Dome of the Cathedral of St. Blasien in the Black Forest, St. Blasien, Germany. The ceiling frescoes are by Walter Georgi.

Interior Dome of the Dom St. Blasien, St. Blasien, Germany. The ceiling frescoes are by Walter Georgi.

[1] See, e.g., Nomination for Inscription on the Representative List 2009: The Festivity of Saint Blaise, the Patron of Dubrovnik, Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2 Oct. 2009; Thousand Year Old Celebration of the Dubrovnik Patron, St Blaise, Dubrovnik Tourist Board Website, Feb. 3, 2012, http://visitdubrovnik.hr/en-GB/Events/Event/Town/Dubrovnik/Thousand-Year-Old-Celebration-of-the-Dubrovnik-Patron-St-Blaise?ZXZcNjUz; Saint Blasius Church–Dubrovnik, DubrovnikCity.com, http://www.dubrovnikcity.com/dubrovnik/attractions/st_blaise_church.htm.

[2] See The Festivity of Saint Blaise, the Patron of Dubrovnik, UNESCO.org, http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?RL=00232. Other sources claim the festival is much older.

[3] See id.

[4] Id.

[5] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries 105 (Adriana Kremenjaš-Daničić ed., Biserka Simatović trans., 2012).

[6] Id.

[7] Saint Blasius Church–Dubrovnik, supra note 1. Fans of the television show “Game of Thrones” may recognize the stout defensive walls of Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik has doubled as King’s Landing and Qarth in various episodes of the popular show. See Natasha Geiling, On the Ultimate “Game of Thones” Tour, Apr. 10, 2014, Smithsonian.com, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/iceland-croatia-go-ultimate-game-thrones-tour-180950450/?no-ist.

[8] The Venetians would eventually conquer Dubrovnik, also known as Ragusa, centuries later.

[9] A lectures series called “In Expectation of Saint Blaise” held in January marks the beginning of the preparations for the festival. Europski Dom Dubrovnik, Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries 107 (2012).

[10] Musketeers known as trombunjeri are responsible for firing the volleys that accompany the raising of Saint Blaise’s banner. See, e.g., id.; Nomination for Inscription on the Representative List 2009, supra note 1.

[11] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 107.

[12] See, e.g., Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 107; Nomination for Inscription on the Representative List 2009, supra note 1.

[13] See Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 108.

[14] Id.

[15] See, e.g., Nomination for Inscription on the Representative List 2009, supra note 1 (“Priests in the procession carry many saintly powers in reliquaries, an exceptional cultural and historical treasure, which mostly contains the relics of Blaise and the holy martyrs from the first centuries of Christianity.”).

[16] The Dubrovnik Cathedral (Don Stanko Lasić ed., n.d.) (pamphlet describing Dubrovnik Cathedral).

[17] Id.

[18] Id. Additional decoration was added to the reliquary in subsequent centuries. For example, an enamel medallion featuring the coat of arms of the Republic of Ragusa was apparently added to the reliquary in the 17th century. An inscription around the medallion reads “SANCTUS 1684 BLASIUS.”

[19] Id.

[20] See, e.g., Tom Kelly, A Party for the Patron Saint of Sore Throats, Telegraph (UK), Jan. 27, 2007, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/croatia/739995/A-party-for-the-patron-saint-of-sore-throats.html. The author mistakenly identifies the relic as “a fragment of Jesus’s loincloth.” In fact, the silver reliquary is said to contain the diapers or swaddling cloths of the baby Jesus.

[21] See, e.g., 1 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 239 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956); Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 10–16.

[22] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 13.

[23] Id.

[24] Id.

[25] Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 21, at 239.

[26] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 13; see also Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 21, at 239.

[27] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 14, 17.

[28] Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 21, at 239.

[29] Id.

[30] Id.

[31] Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries, supra note 9, at 17.

[32] Id. at 15.

[33] Id. at 19.

[34] Id.

[35] Id.

[36] Id. at 54.

[37] Id.

[38] Id.

[39] Id.

[40] Henry Wadworth Longfellow, Complete Poetical Works (1893).

[41] Id.

[42] Id.

[43] Id.

[44] Id.

[45] Id.

Saint Charles Borromeo: A Tale from the Crypt of Milan Cathedral

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Reliquarian in Music History, Tomb / Sarcophagus

≈ 4 Comments

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cathedral, crypt, Italy, martyr, Milan, Milan Cathedral, Palestrina, relic, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Blaise, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Denis, sarcophagus, tomb

Sarcophagus of Saint Charles Borromeo, Milan Cathedral, Milan, Italy. The sign to the right reads, “Reliquie di San Carlo Borromeo, Cardinale Arcivescovo di Milano.”

A Poem Wrought in Marble

In 1867, Mark Twain spent several months touring Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamship Quaker City. He recorded his observations of the trip, which he later published as his first book, The Innocents Abroad, one of the great travelogues of the English language and one of the bestselling travel books of all time. Among his impressions are those of Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano), the majestic seat of the Archbishop of Milan and currently the fifth largest cathedral in the world. Milan Cathedral simply mesmerized him. “What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath! . . . It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!”[1]

Twain was awed by Milan Cathedral’s spires,[2] its luminous windows,[3] its sculptures,[4] and its sheer mass. He called the cathedral “the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived”[5] and could imagine no greater church building in the world.[6] “They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome,” he remarked. “I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.”[7]

Altar of San Giovanni Buono, Milan Cathedral

Nevertheless, despite his obvious and unbounded enthusiasm for the cathedral, Twain managed to devote nearly half his chapter on the cathedral to a subject unrelated to the aesthetic merits of the building—namely, saints and holy relics. In particular, he dwelt on the earthly remains of Saint Charles (Carlo) Borromeo, a former Archbishop of Milan, who was displayed in the cathedral’s crypt in a “coffin of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere.”[8] “To us it seemed that so a good a man . . . deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of prying eyes,” he rued, “but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.”[9]

Twain on Saints and Relics

Twain did not have a particularly positive opinion of saints or relics. In The Innocents Abroad, for example, he criticizes “coarse” depictions of saints as suffering martyrs[10] and he decries the veneration of relics as “Jesuit humbuggery.”[11] In his book The Reverend Mark Twain, Joe B. Fulton explains that Twain questioned not only the “theological concept of a saint,” but also the “aesthetic practices of martyrology.”[12] Twain found “visual depictions of the saints unintentionally grotesque, using his own ‘grotesque realism’ to undermine their reverential seriousness.”[13] In Italy, for example, Twain complained of the “huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs” he found painted on the facades of roadside inns.[14] Twain, who rejected the “ideology inherent in the martyrological form,”[15] wryly noted that “[i]t could not have diminished their suffering any to be so uncouthly represented.”[16] Twain was similarly disturbed by the statue of Saint Bartholomew at Milan Cathedral (pictured below), which depicts the martyr with his skin flayed. “It was a hideous thing,” he wrote, “and yet there was a fascination about it somewhere. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes.”

St Bartholomew - Milan Cathedral Still, Twain complained “less about the idea of sainthood than about relics and the depictions of them.”[17] To Twain, the veneration of relics was an irrational, antiquated practice, a holdover of the “peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time.”[18] As Fulton observes, “[r]elics of the saints trigger comedy rather than reverence” for Twain, and relics are a frequent target of his irreverent humor in The Innocents Abroad.[19] While recounting his visit to Genoa, for example, he paused to ruminate on the multiplicity of relics he had encountered. “But isn’t this relic matter a little overdone?” he begins skeptically.[20] “We find a piece of the true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre Dame. As for the bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary.”[21] (Saint Denis, pictured below from Rheims Cathedral, is commonly depicted carrying his decapitated head in his arms.)

St Denis - Rheims Cathedral

Twain is not the only one to have expressed exasperation at the multitude of saintly relics displayed throughout Europe. A French anti-clerical cartoon from the early 1900s, for example, “reconstructed” Saint Blaise—complete with five heads, six arms, and six legs—from “authentic” bones displayed in various cities.[22] Twain’s avowed skepticism of relics, however, did not preclude a certain fascination with the sainted figures who supplied them. Later in his career, in fact, Twain would actually engage in hagiography, although he arguably never really altered his view of saints, sainthood, or Catholicism generally.[23]

Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, published in 1896, is a fictionalized account of Saint Joan of Arc’s life as retold in the (fictional) memoir of her page, Louis de Conte. The book’s seriousness and the “air of absolute reverence” with which Twain portrays Joan of Arc represent such a stark break from his previous work that he initially published it anonymously.[24] Years later, however, Twain fully acknowledged his authorship and embraced the book as his greatest work. “I like the Joan of Arc best of all my books and it is the best,” he declared.[25] “[I]t furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; 12 years of preparation & 2 years of writing. The others needed no preparation, & got none.”[26] Twain valued Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc even more highly than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[27]

Good Saint Charles Borromeo

Twain manifested an interest in the life of another saint, Saint Charles Borromeo, in his much earlier The Innocents Abroad. Twain described Saint Charles with reverence and admiration, characterizing him as “a good man, a warmhearted, unselfish man,” even though he bristled at the way the saint’s corpse had been placed on public display.[28] Inviting readers to descend with him into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan Cathedral, he prepared them to “receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.”[29]

St Borromeo - Crypt3 “The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle,” Twain begins. He and his companions now stood in Saint Charles’s tomb. Recognized as one of the great 16^thcentury reformers of the Catholic Church, during a period known as the Counter Reformation, Saint Charles was responsible for, among other things, establishing seminaries to educate priests and ministering with great compassion to victims of the plague.[30] He was born an aristocrat and could easily have taken advantage of the ease and luxury his station afforded. Instead, he showed little interest in worldly goods and devoted his life to serving others.

Saint Charles was born on 2 October 1538 at Arona Castle on Lake Maggiore. His father, Count Gilbert Borromeo, was a “man of talent and sanctity,” and his mother, Margaret, was a member of the Medici family, one of the most power and influential families of the Renaissance.[31] He received the tonsure at the age of twelve and after his uncle’s election to the papacy in 1559, he served in various offices in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1563 and was subsequently appointed Archbishop of Milan in 1564.

Spires of Milan Cathedral, as seen from roof

After arriving in Milan, he immediately set to work reforming the diocese. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, “[w]hen St Charles came first to reside at Milan he sold plate and other effects to the value of thirty thousand crowns, and applied the whole sum for the relief of distressed families.”[32] Meanwhile, despite earning a considerable income from various sources, he chose to live modestly. Francis Panigarola, Bishop of Asti, recounted how he once found Saint Charles on a very cold night studying “in a single tattered cassock.”[33] He said, “I entreated him, if he would not perish with cold, to put on some better garment. He answered me smiling, ‘What if I have no other? I am obliged to wear a cardinal’s robes in the day; but this cassock is my own and I have no other, either for winter or summer.’”[34]

St Carlo Borromeo Tended by an Angel, by Francesco Caccianiga, oil on copper (early 18th century) (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

To curb the gross abuses he discovered in his diocese, Saint Charles established strict regulations governing the clergy, who he found “lazy, ignorant and debauched” upon his arrival.[35] He also established seminaries to “remedy the disorders engendered by the decay of medieval life.”[36] His broader reforms, however, were not always well received, and they created many enemies.

On 26 October 1569, a priest by the name of Jerome Donati Farina was sent to murder him while he attended evening prayers. As Saint Charles kneeled before the altar and a choir performed a motet by Orlando di Lasso—“It is time therefore that I return to Him that sent me,” they sang—Farina fired an arquebus, striking Saint Charles in the back.[37] Believing himself mortally wounded, Saint Charles “commended himself to God.”[38] However, as the Lives of the Saints explains, “it was found that the bullet had only struck his clothes in the back, raising a bruise, and fallen harmlessly to the floor.”[39] A painting titled Farina’s Assassination Attempt by Gian Battista della Rovere (Fiammenghino) located in the south transept of Milan Cathedral depicts the event.[40]

Reliquary (St Borromeo) - Krakow Saint Charles died many years later in Milan on 4 November 1584 at the age of forty-six. He had celebrated his last mass at Arona, his birthplace, several days earlier, and arriving in Milan, he immediately took to bed and asked for the last rights. After receiving the final sacrament, he whispered Ecce venio (“Behold, I come”), and expired. He was canonized by Pope Paul V in 1610.[41] (The reliquary, pictured left, contains a relic of Saint Charles. It is located at the Archdiocesan Museum in Krakow, Poland.)

The Vanities of Earth

Twain was clearly familiar with Saint Charles’s story, and he alludes to several of the saint’s virtues, particularly his generosity and his compassion, in The Innocents Abroad.[42] Twain writes, “His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open,” and he imagines the saint’s “benign countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city.”[43] In the presence of Saint Charles’s corpse, however, Twain’s thoughts turn to death and the impermanence of earthly things.

Relics of Saint Charles Borromeo, Milan Cathedral

The body, he states, was “robed in costly habiliments covered with gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems.”[44] Meanwhile, Saint Charles’s “decaying head was black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the bones, the eyes were gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile!” After describing other treasures arrayed about the body, Twain declares, “How poor and cheap and trivial these gewgaws seemed in the presence of the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death!”[45] Saint Charles’s “sermon,” delivered by silent lips and still hands, was this: “You that worship the vanities of earth—you that long for worldly honor, worldly wealth, worldly fame—behold their worth!”[46]

In the end, the body of Saint Charles—the relics of Saint Charles—had greater power over Twain than perhaps he realized.

Post Script: Charles Borromeo and Palestrina, the “Savior of Church Music”

View of the Roman Forum. Palestrina’s music has been called the “soundtrack” of Rome. He composed over 100 masses and 250 motets here during his lifetime.

One of the issues taken up by the Council of Trent, the 16^th century Ecumenical Council convened to debate and implement extensive reforms in the Catholic Church, was the future of sacred music. By the mid-16^th century, liturgical music had grown so elaborate and unintelligible in its complexity that the Council considered banning polyphonic music from the liturgy altogether. According to popular legend, Cardinal Borromeo, then a member of the Council, commissioned Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina to compose a Mass to convince the Council otherwise.[47] The result was the extraordinary Missa Papae Marcelli (Mass for Pope Marcellus). Palestrina’s Mass demonstrated that polyphonic music could be simultaneously beautiful, pure, and textually clear, and it changed the minds of those on the Council, which ultimately abandoned the movement to ban sacred music from the liturgy.

In reality, Palestrina likely composed the Missa Papae Marcelli years earlier, probably in 1555, eight years before the Council of Trent sought a resolution on the fate of sacred music. Nevertheless, regardless of whether the Missa Papae Marcelli was commissioned for the purpose, Palestrina’s music, and the Missa Papae Marcelli in particular, were undoubtedly highly influential in saving polyphony. As Will Durant has noted, “by its fidelity to the words, its avoidance of secular motives, and the subordination of musical art to religious intent” Palestrina’s music “played a part in leading the committee to sanction polyphonic music.”[48]

Milan Cathedral, as seen from roof

For a fantastic overview of Palestrina and his music, see the BBC’s extraordinary series Sacred Music, series 1, episode 2, on “Palestrina and the Popes.” Presented by Simon Russell Beale with music performed by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, the episode originally aired on 28 February 2008.

[1]Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad 124 (Signet Classic 1980) (1869).

[2]Id. (“Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond.”).

[3]Id. at 125 (“We loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work has all the smoothness and finish of a painting.”).

[4]Id. at 124 (noting that the bas-relief carvings on the cathedral’s doors were “so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures—and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest”).

[5]Id.

[6]Id. at 130.

[7]Id.

[8]Id. at 129.

[9] Id. at 128.

[10] See id. at 149. During his journey through Italy, Twain observed, “Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. Id. at 149.

[11] Id. at 43.

[12] Joe B. Fulton, The Reverend Mark Twain: Theological Burlesque, Form, and Content 106 (2006).

[13] Id. at 105.

[14] Twain, supra note 1, at 149.

[15] Fulton, supra note 12, at 106.

[16] Twain, supra note 1, at 149. Twain concludes dismissively, “We were in the heart and home of priestcraft—of a happy, cheerful, contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting unaspiring worthlessness.” Id.

[17] Fulton, supra note 12, at 105 (internal citations omitted).

[18] Twain, supra note 1, at 179. Twain described the veneration of relics as a belief in “the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy by contact with holy things.” Id.

[19] Fulton, supra note 12, at 105.

[20] Twain, supra note 1, at 119.

[21] Id. at 119–20. Later, while exploring Milan Cathedral, Twain is shown, among other relics, “two of St. Paul’s fingers and one of St. Peter’s,” a “bone of Judas Iscariot (it was black),” “part of the crown of thorns (they have a whole one at Notre Dame),” and a “picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the veritable hand of St. Luke,” the second he had seen. Id. at 129.

[22] See, e.g., Europski Dom Dubrovnik, Saint Blaise: Veneration Without Boundaries 21 (2012) (featuring an illustration titled “Les Reliques Authentiques”).

[23] Fulton, supra note 12, at 107–08. Twain published Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, a novel about Joan of Arc, in 1896. Fulton argues that since “Twain’s attitudes toward Catholicism remained negative before, during, and after the writing of the work, one must find some other, more reasonable, explanation to make sense of it. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc marks no sea change in Twain’s attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church, or indeed toward religion generally.” Id. at 108.

[24] See 17 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature 29 (A.W. Ward et al. eds., 1907–1921) (2000) (“Recognizing that the book was quite out of his customary vein, Mark Twain published it first anonymously . . . .”).

[25] Id. at 29.

[26] Id.

[27] Fulton, supra note 12, at 108 (explaining that Twain ranked Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc above Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

[28] Twain, supra note 1, at 127.

[29] Id.

[30]4 Butler’s Lives of the Saints 255–62 (Herbert J. Thurston, S.J. & Donald Attwater eds., 2d ed. 1956). Butler’s Lives of the Saints declares that “with Pope St Pius V, St Philip Neri and St Ignatius Loyola, he is one of the four outstanding public men of the so-called Counter-reformation.” Id. at 255.

[31] Id. at 255.

[32] Id. at 257.

[33]Id.

[34] Id.

[35] Id. at 258.

[36] Id.

[37] Id. at 259.

[38] Id. at 259–60.

[39] Id. at 260.

[40] See Ernesto Brivio, The Life and Miracles of St. Carlo Borromeo: A Pictorial Itinerary in Milan Cathedral (2006), fig. 11.

[41]Butler’s Lives of the Saints, supra note 30, at 261–62.

[42] Twain, supra note 1, at 127.

[43] Id.

[44] Id. at 128.

[45] Id.

[46] Id.

[47] Will Durant, 6 The Story of Civilization: The Reformation (1957). Importantly, another major reason for the movement to ban sacred music was the realization that some composers drew inspiration for their compositions from common, often bawdy, popular songs of the day. In addition to rejecting the unintelligibility of polyphonic compositions, which regularly resorted to overlapping melodies and multiple, interwoven lines of text, the Council sought to “exclude from churches all such music as . . . introduces anything of the impure or lascivious, in order that the house of God may truly be seen to be . . . the house of prayer.” Id.

[48] Id.

Saint Silvan

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Reliquarian in Glass Reliquary

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church, Croatia, Dubrovnik, incorrupt, martyr, relic, Saint Blaise, Saint Silvan

Saint Silvan

The incorrupt body of Saint Silvan (pictured here) is located in the Church of Saint Blaise in Dubrovnik, Croatia. A number of Silvans have been canonized as saints, and it is unclear which Saint Silvan is entombed at the Church of Saint Blaise. Most sources claim the Saint Silvan at Dubrovnik was martyred in the 4th century — a gruesome scar on his neck suggests the manner of his martyrdom — which may indicate he was Saint Silvanus, Bishop of Emesa, Phoenicia, martyred c. 311. Other Saint Silvans died in ways (e.g., thrown off a cliff or of natural causes) or at an age suggesting they cannot be the Saint Silvan at Dubrovnik. Still others are believed to be buried elsewhere (e.g., Saint Silvin or Silvinus, who died in Auchy-lès-Hesdin and is likely buried at the Abbaye de bénédictins d’Auchy).

One other Silvanus of note should be mentioned, although his body is probably not the one enshrined in Dubrovnik. A Silvanus, also called Silas, appears in chapter XV of the Acts of the Apostles when the Apostles and elders chose delegates to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas and Silas, “both leading men in the brotherhood.” Saint Paul later refers to Silas by his full name, Silvanus, in two of his letters to the Thessalonians. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, “Nothing more is known of him, but traditionally he lived the rest of his life in Europe and died, as the martyrology says, in Macedonia.” Saint Silas may also have been the same Silas whom Saint Peter mentions in 1 Peter 5:12.