Santa Maria di Foro Cassio: a recently recovered pilgrims’ place on the last stretch of the Via Francigena

Dr Daniela Giosuè
Dr Daniela Giosuè

Blog-post author Daniela Giosuè, Researcher of English Language and Translation, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, DISUCOM
@danielagiosue

Much of the information in this blog-post comes from an article on the church of Santa Maria di Foro Cassio published in 2008 by palaeographer Carlo Tedeschi and art historian Simone Piazza (see Piazza, Tedeschi 2008). The article contains an extensive and, for the time being, updated bibliography on the church (omissions, if any, are entirely my own) to which reference is made for any further details. It also proved to be an effective contribution to a years-long sensitisation campaign aimed at saving from utter ruin what at that time Carlo Tedeschi rightly termed «the poor remains of […] one of the noblest monuments in Tuscia» (28).

As a result of the campaign, which put an end to several decades of complete abandonment, the structure has recently been secured and the roof and the frescoes restored. These interventions will hopefully help safeguard what remains of the wonderful frescoes dated between the 11th and the 12th centuries described in the article [see images 19 to 20 and 21 to 31 below] (29-33, passim). Other frescoes, mainly dated to a later period and up to the 15th century, and still extant before the restoration, went in the meantime completely lost.

I am much indebted to Carlo Tedeschi for most of the photos and for many clarifications on the state of the art in the studies on the monument.

For those who can read Italian or are interested in the bibliography, the article is available here.

Dating back to the 2nd century BC, the origins of the Roman settlement of Forum Cassii are probably contemporary with the construction of the consular road Cassia. Lying between Viterbo and Vetralla, at about 44 miles northwest of Rome and 0.6 miles from the current route of the road Cassia (SR2 on the map below; image 4), the area on which it stood still retains its name, in Italian Foro Cassio.

Image 4. Aerial view of the area and its surroundings. Source: http://omnesviae.org
Image 4. Aerial view of the area and its surroundings -Source: http://omnesviae.org

While the site originally owed its importance to its being a station on the old Roman road, after the foundation of the early medieval church of Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, the only monument which is still extant, it continued to maintain a key role as pilgrimage station on the Via Francigena throughout the High Middle Ages.

Here are an aerial view and some photos of the exterior of the church after the restoration:

Of the Roman forum, of which – according to contemporary sources – many vestiges were still visible until the 17th century (Serafini 1648: 44-47), nothing remains on the surface.

As well as in many other parts of the surroundings, slabs of the ancient road Cassia can still be seen or found a little under the ground. For more in this regard, see the results of a survey carried out in 2003 by the British School at Rome, available here.

The relevance of Forum Cassii in the course of many centuries is attested by the fact that it is mentioned in four very famous ancient itineraries, namely the Antonine Itinerary (2nd-3rd c. AD) (see Parthey, Pinder 1848: 137), the Peutinger Table (4th-5th c. AD) [here & here],  the Ravenna Cosmography (7th c. AD) (see Parthey, Pinder 1860: 285, 488), and the year 990 Itinerary of Archbishop Sigeric (see Ortenberg 1990) contained in BL MS Cotton Tiberius B V/1, ff. 23v–24r, available here.

It appears respectively as Foro Cassi in the first two texts, as Foro Casi in the third, and as Furcari in the fourth.

A bull issued by pope Leo IV (847-855) on 22nd February 852, in which Forum Cassii is mentioned as massa (great land property), testifies its continuing economic importance during the early medieval period.

Its subsequent history after the foundation of the church, reconstructed with extreme difficulty through rare documents, confirms the function of Forum Cassii as economic stronghold of the Roman Tuscia until the modern age (Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28).

The below fresco from the left absidiole, showing Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – c. 547) on the right (35-37), suggests that for a time the site was run by Benedictine monks.

Although it is well known that in the modern age the church belonged to the Knights of Malta, who held the property until 1807, there is in this respect a question of great interest which is still unresolved; it concerns the lack of authentic evidence for the donations of Forum Cassii to the Knights Hospitallers (28).

Several modern authors, the first of whom was Paolocci, mention three pontifical diplomas by which the church and its lands would have been donated to the Hospitallers (Paolocci 1907: 67). The first diploma would have been issued by Pope Innocent II in 1130, the second by Celestine II in 1144, the third by Eugene III in 1145. The donation would later have been confirmed by Pope Anastasius IV (1153-1154).

The documents cited by Paolocci are unfortunately not published in major collections of papal privileges (Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28, n. 7). For this reason, investigation into these sources has not yet been taken further, but it would definitely be worth other attempts.

As the church used to be the property of the Knights Hospitallers, it must have had, as a rule, a hospice for pilgrims built alongside. A will dated 29 December 1276, which is one of the few documents available for the High Middle Ages, proves that a leper hospital was also annexed to it (Egidi 1906: 236; Piazza, Tedeschi 2008: 28).

Another interesting element highlighted by Carlo Tedeschi is the inscription visible under the striking crucifixion scene on the counterfacade of the church, on the right of the door, reading as follows:

[- – -]s orate p(ro) nobis.

Image 21. Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, counterfacade, particular © 2009 Carlo Tedeschi
Image 21. Santa Maria di Foro Cassio, counterfacade, particular © 2009 Carlo Tedeschi

He states that it is the final part of a common and widely attested formula of apostrophe to the reader which is found in various contexts, including monuments connected with the practice of pilgrimage, and assumes that the complete formula might have read as:

Vos qui transitis / intratis / legitis orate pro nobis

According to the scholar’s epigraphic analysis, the inscription may be assigned to a period between the end of the 10th and the first decades of the 12th centuries (34).

The restoration brought to light new portions of the inscription and fresco, on which studies are still underway.

For the more curious, here are some videos of the church before the restoration:

 

References

  • Egidi, Pietro (1906) ‘L’archivio della Cattedrale di Viterbo’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano 27: 7-382.
  • Ortenberg, Veronica (1990) ‘Archbishop Sigeric’s Journey to Rome in 990’, Anglo-Saxon England 19: 197–246.
  • Paolocci, Francesco (1907) Raccolta di notizie e documenti relativi alla storia di Vetralla, Vetralla: Gerardi-Zeppa.
  • Parthey, Gustav and Pinder, Moritz, eds. (1848) Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitanum, Berlin: Nicolai.
  • Parthey, Gustav and Pinder, Moritz, eds. (1860) Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, Berlin: Nicolai.
  • Piazza, Simone and Tedeschi, Carlo (2008) ‘Le più antiche pitture di S. Maria di Foro Cassio a Vetralla (XI-XII secolo). Nuove indagini in vista della campagna di restauro’, Informazioni 20: 27-39.
  • Serafini, Luigi (1648) Su Vetralla antica cognominata il Foro di Cassio, Viterbo: Mariano Diotallevi.

William Brewyn’s medieval pilgrims’ guidebook

Professor Anthony Bale

Blog-post author Professor Anthony Bale, Birkbeck, University of London
(@RealMandeville) 

The medieval pilgrimage guidebook of William Brewyn of Canterbury.

Medieval map of Rome (in Limbourg brothers 'Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry', c.1415)
Medieval map of Rome (in the Limbourg brothers’ ‘Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry’, c.1415)

In the library at Canterbury Cathedral there is a small vellum volume dating from the later fifteenth century: a guidebook for pilgrims to Rome (now Canterbury, Cathedral Library & Archives, Add. MS 68). It is, plausibly, a book made both for travellers and for travelling – its small dimensions (the size of a paperback, 14cm high and 9.8cm wide) and its contents (almost all of which are concerned with pilgrimage, relics, and travel) suggest as much. This little book has long been thought to be the personal pilgrimage guidebook of William Brewyn of Canterbury, whose name appears at several points throughout the book. Parts of Brewyn’s book were edited and translated in 1933 by the Kent historian C. Eveleigh Woodruff;[1] most modern scholars who have mentioned Brewyn have relied on Woodruff’s incomplete and inaccurate edition, so I took the train to Canterbury to spend the day with the manuscript itself.

Wenceslas Hollar (1607-77) Canterbury Cathedral
Wenceslas Hollar (1607-77)’s view of Canterbury Cathedral

Almost nothing secure is known about Brewyn, other than what he tells us about himself in this manuscript. Brewyn evidently spent a great deal of time in Rome in the 1460s, and was at Canterbury in 1470. Brewyn’s name appears in the text, for example at the end of his account of the Church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere: ‘Deo gracias quod Willelmo. Brewyn capellano’ (f. 37v): ‘Thanks be to God, says William Brewyn, chaplain.’ He says that he was personally present at Pope Paul II’s excommunication of various reprobates which took place at the door of St Peter’s at Easter 1469 (‘Michi Willelmo Brewyn Capellano tunc temporis ibi existenti et audienti’); he goes on to say that he copied the excommunication himself from the bull that the pope hung on the door (ff. 38v-40v). The miraculous gilded pine-cone from the Pantheon, which the devil sought to hurl at the Vatican, ‘can still be seen to this day’ (f. 21v), says Brewyn, in the courtyard at St Peter’s. At some points in the manuscript, the text does indeed read as if Brewyn is locating himself, devotionally, at each site he describes; for instance, at the end of his account of the church of S. Maria in Trastevere he writes ‘Jhesus miserere mei’ – ‘Jesus have mercy upon me’ (f. 37v). The perspective, voice, and soul of the individual pilgrim seem to be present.

Canterbury Cathedral Library (2013) [License: CC BY-SA 3.0]
Canterbury Cathedral Library (2013) [License: CC BY-SA 3.0]
The eye-witness status of Brewyn’s book is suggested more compellingly by his itinerary from Calais to Rome (f. 40r). Here, Brewyn’s annotations certainly suggest not only a local familiarity with the route but also ongoing process of editing and correcting. At the German town of Bonn, Brewyn mixes Latin and English to say that ‘ibi fals shrewys summe’ (f. 40v), with another tart comment added above: ‘nisi meliorantur’: ‘unless they have improved’. At ‘Ulmys’ (Ulm) it pays to show one’s tonsure (‘monstra coronoam capitis pro tributo’) to evade the tax. At Memmingen, a comment has been added in the top margin (f. 41r) that the road is said to be fairly good, but further on the mountains begin (‘incipient montes’). In a list of currency exchanges, Brewyn’s authorial ‘I’ appears: ‘Ego Willelmus Brewyn capellanus’ (f. 42v), who got 2 Roman ducats for 9 English shillings.

William Brewyn's 'Guide to Rome'. CCA-AddMS/68,f.6r. © Canterbury Cathedral. Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury
William Brewyn’s ‘Guide to Rome’. CCA-AddMS/68,f.6r. © Canterbury Cathedral. Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury

Intriguingly, the index to Brewyn’s book includes an itinerary of Jerusalem and the Holy Land (f. 4r). Here, Brewyn writes that he will describe the pilgrimages to be made in Nazareth, Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Zion, Acheldama, the Valley of Jehosophat, the Temple, Bethlehem, Bethany, the River Jordan, Jericho, Mount Quarantine, ‘Galgala’, Cairo (‘Kaer’), Alexandria, Caesarea in Palestine, Acre (‘Acra’), Tiberias (‘Tybiriadis’), Arabia, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut (‘Baruta’). In addition, he says he will include the names of the stations of Jerusalem in English for those who wish to visit and gain the indulgences. He describes how he had read about the pilgrimage sites and indulgences in the Holy Land ut inveni in rotula – that is, found them on a scroll (f. 4r) – and there’s no evidence, or even suggestion, that he made it to Jerusalem himself.

Indeed, the places he mentions in his table of contents – including Acre, Tiberias, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre – would have been difficult to reach for a clerical traveller in the 1460s and ‘70s and suggest an inherited itinerary from an earlier book – such as Mandeville’s Travels – rather than an eye-witness account. Galgala, or Gilgal, appears in several written itineraries but was not a late medieval pilgrimage site of any status, but rather a town near Jericho mentioned in the Book of Joshua.

William Brewyn's 'Guide to Rome'. CCA-Add MS/68,f.10r. © Canterbury Cathedral. Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.
William Brewyn’s ‘Guide to Rome’. CCA-Add MS/68,f.10r. © Canterbury Cathedral. Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.

The pages relating to the Holy Land have been excised from the book – there are stubs where the folios have been removed (after f. 39 and after f. 94). Perhaps this speaks to Brewyn’s own assertion of the primacy of pilgrimage to Rome over that to Jerusalem: ‘if people only knew how great are the indulgences at the Lateran church, they wouldn’t think it necessary to go overseas (‘de ultra mare’) to the Holy Sepulchre’ (f. 16r). It also seems that some of the things Brewyn included in his account of Rome are also places he hadn’t seen himself: in an account of ‘snow balls’ (pilae nivis) on the walls on what was on the entry into Rome, Brewyn says ‘satis credo’, so I believe, or I believe well enough (f. 35r); at the Church of St Laurence outside the Walls in Rome are ‘plures alie quas nestio notiarum’ – ‘many other things I am unable to name’ (f. 35v).

Old St Peter's basilica (H.W. Brewer, 1836 – 1903)
Old St Peter’s basilica, Rome (H.W. Brewer, 1836 – 1903)

Brewyn’s book seems to be both a record of travel and of reading; it is at once a personal record of a journey made and a guide for others yet to make their journey. Large sections of Brewyn’s book are taken from key texts, especially saints’ lives from Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea (ff. 58r-94r) and geographical notes from Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon (ff. 44r-49r), both of them widely-read and much-cited authorities. To be a traveller was not only to take to the road, but also to read and cite the correct authorities, and accordingly to order one’s experience of the world around an established body of textual knowledge.

Further reading

[1] C. Eveleigh Woodruff (ed. and trans.), A XVth. Century guide book to the principal churches of Rome compiled ca. 1470 by William Brewyn (London: The Marshall Press, 1933).

Online images of the manuscript are available to view on the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library website.

 

Pilgrims as readers & writers: some reflections

Professor George Greenia
Professor George Greenia

Blog-post author, Professor George Greenia, College of Wiliam & Mary, Virginia, USA.

Professor Anthony Bale shared a strong vision for our joint project on Medieval Pilgrims Libraries when we met in London December 9-10, 2016. We’re all grateful for his leadership and helpful push in new directions and especially for bringing together researchers from such diverse fields. Here are some reflections based on our initial conversations.

Professor Anthony Bale
Professor Anthony Bale

Many medieval pilgrims belonged to lively lectoral communities. They carried their libra­ries with them on their way to Jeru­sa­lem, Rome or Santiago even when there were no books at hand. Memories of books read before leaving home were fond­ly rehearsed aloud among bands of sacred sojourn­ers, texts that scripted the ex­per­i­ence even while walking and sailing to distant shores. Some deliberately bade farewell to their books for a while as a personal discipline or as part of the acetic rigor of the trip, somewhat like foregoing bathing or haircuts. At op­portune stops along the way they may have read or listened to the recitations of unfamiliar writings, pur­chased souvenir texts, or either made or commissioned copies of admired works to take home. Not a few pilgrims eventually com­posed their own travelogues as itiner­aries, diaries and guidebooks for subse­quent travelers.

English: A Naval Battle; Antwerp, after 1464, from the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, fol. 21. Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), Getty Center
English: A Naval Battle; Antwerp, after 1464, from the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies, fol. 21. Lieven van Lathem (1430–1493), Getty Center

Complementing those who enjoyed full agency as readers – the ones who were personally literate – almost all pilgrims participated in ever rotating com­mun­ities of secondary literacy. Many who could not read for themselves because of lack of education or failing eyesight listened to texts being read aloud and partici­pat­ed in their interpretation.[1] Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages almost all reading was done aloud and routinely by young adults whose eyes were better suited for the task. Pilgrims probably carried few books with them and in any case one literate reader among any given travelers’ band would be enough.

Most importantly there was the internal library shared equally among the literate and illiterate, the vast oral stream they all grew up with. Medieval sojourners carried a rich imaginary of their journey spun out of their memory hoard[2] stocked by prior reading plus all their accustomed folk genres as they moved through their newly fluid discursive landscape. Some of their more pious texts they accessed “from within”: a common stock of Latin prayers and rituals, hym­no­dy in Latin reliably re-encountered at hosting institutions, and verna­cular devotional songs learned by heart back home and happily belted out along the trail or on arrival.[3] To lift their spirits and antici­pate possible spiritual adven­tures there was the reverent recounting of hagiography and miracle stories associated with the shrine sites they visited.

'The Author Hears the Story of Gillion de Trazegnies' by Lieven van Lathem and David Aubert, after 1464. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
‘The Author Hears the Story of Gillion de Trazegnies’ by Lieven van Lathem and David Aubert, after 1464. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

On the secular side were ballads and ordinary walking songs, and epic stories in prose or verse.[4] Some medieval travelers had their recollections of itineraries or topo­graphical plans, but even without them all had mental maps that constituted a “consensus cartography” that fused sites and anticipated encounters. When their accounts of physical geography seem defective, they are probably reporting a traveler’s topography of significance and holiness.

Much of their remaining common oral culture was plainly utilitarian: medical knowledge and techniques (as distinct from miraculous cures), guessti­mates of diverse monetary ex­change, knowledge of equivalents for local weights and measures, calcula­tion of dis­tan­ces, seasons, climate, and folk tales and games to pass the time.[5] Any of these could end up in written records but the bulk of it churned through the living oral stream, the cultural “soup” everyone swims in without recog­nizing one’s conceptual environment always known from within.

The accounts that most attract our attention now – what pilgrims who made it home again wrote down and left unsystematically among family papers and local archives – are their own compositions in the form of itineraries and daybooks. Most are middle brow, repetitive in their sequence of places and sights, and doggedly anonymous.[6] This is probably not because generally poor writers took up the task. It would have been hard to actually compose anything serious while traveling in the Middle Ages. Toting reliable supplies of ink, quills and parchment or paper – much less wax tablets – is pretty much ruled out by the tiny satchels shown in most con­tem­porary painting and sculpture.

Medieval travel accounts were likely put together after a return to a writerly environment and perhaps before the pilgrim company disbanded. For pilgrims returning from Jerusalem, the logic site would be on disembarking at Venice. A troop which had shared the journey could share the reminiscing and the most able scribe among them could stitch together what each individual agreed was true. That would help explain the depersonalized and often pedestrian accounts that come down to us. The stationers’ shops in Venice could also supply enough raw mater­ials to make multiple copies for as many of the companions who wanted a set of reliable notes to embellish orally for family, friends and fellow parishioners. Pro­ducing a “corporate report” from a whole group of travelers usually makes for dull reading but would lend a certain weight and credence to the nar­ra­tive.

Bands returning from Jerusalem en­joyed the advan­tage of a fairly stable party from start to finish, or at least from depar­ture from Venice until their return there. Venice would have also marked a psychological “homecoming” even if individuals had started out from more distant parts of Christen­dom, and no other pilgrim node along the thousands of sacred routes in medi­eval Europe provided the same urban nexus of launch point, site of return and time to linger. There are points of convergence along the trails to Santiago (Ostabat and St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the eastern slopes of French Pyrenees) and to Rome (certain Alpine passes on the descent into Italy) but none in an urban center that invited poten­tial writers to linger and compose. Of course, Rome was the most heavenly and best provisioned writers’ environment of all, but writers in residence on the Tiber did not routinely overlap with visiting pilgrims and they produce different sorts of works.

All these factors would have favored greater numbers of travelogues about the Holy Land, somewhat less so for Rome and relatively few for Santiago and other pilgrim shrines, and extant archival witnesses seem to corroborate this scenario.


Recommended Bibliography

  • Herbers, Klaus. “Peregrinaciones a Roma, Santiago y Jerusalén.” El mundo de las peregrinaciones. Roma, Santiago, Jerusalén. Ed. Paolo Caucci von Sauken. Barcelona/Madrid, 1999. 103-34. Subsec­tion on “Relatos de los peregrinos en el medievo tardío,” 128-34]
  • Herbers, Klaus, y Robert Plötz. Caminaron a Santiago. Relatos de peregrinaciones al »fin del mundo«. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1998.
  • Howard, Donald R. Writers and Pilgrims. Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity. Ber­keley: U of California Press, 1980.
  • Plötz, Robert. “Santiago de Compostela en la literatura odepórica.” Santiago de Compos­tela: ciudad y peregrino. Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Estudios Xacobeos. Eds. María A, Antón Vilasánchez; José Luis Tato Castiñeira. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2000. 33-99. [on mapmaking and the concept of space]
  • Reynolds, Roger E. “A Precious Ancient Souvenir Given to the First Pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela.” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture 4.3 (Spring, 2014): 1-30.
  • Stones, Alison. “Medieval Pilgrimage Writing and its Manuscript Sources.” Encyclopedia of Medieval Pil­grim­age, ed. L.J. Taylor, et al. Leiden: Brill, 395-413. [see bibliography 411-12 for list of travel nar­ra­tives]
  • Stones, Alison, & Jeanne Krochalis. “Qui a lu le Guide du pèlerin ?” Pèlerinages et croisades. Ed. L. Pressouyre. Paris: CTHS, 1995. 11-36.

Notes

  1. Linguistic anthropologists working in Chiapas, Mexico have observed how leaders of base Christian communities (comunidades de base) could be illiterate yet function as the most insightful and trusted commentators of scriptural and inspirational texts. (As reported by Vincent Barletta, now at Stanford, from field work in the 1990s during doctoral studies at UCLA. Personal communication.)
  2.  The phrase was coined by Mary Carruthers in her classic The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990).
  3. The “Pilgrims Guide” in the Codex Calixtinus describes how various nationalities, clustered together in their respective corners of the tribune level of the cathedral in Santiago, would loudly compete as they sang hymns in their native tongues.
  4. The earliest and one of the most intriguing prose epics about the adventures of Charlemagne and Roland in Spain is consecrated in the “Historia Turpini” of the Codex Calixtinus, the twelfth-century master com­pi­la­tion on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The connection to Charlemagne’s supposed devotion to St. James and the saint’s instructions to have the French secure the pilgrimage route against the Muslim foe is tenuous in the narrative, entirely fictional in terms of history.
  5. Folk tales contain many stories about the intervention of saints on behalf of their devotees. A version of hopscotch became the pilgrim game of Juego de la Oca or Goose’s Game, a modern version of which has been laid in the paving outside the church of Santiago the Elder in Logroño along the main route to Compostela.
  6. Anxiously sincere personal narratives of travel along the Camino de Santiago have repopulated this genre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most of them just as artless as their medieval forerunners if more heartfelt.