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Storie E Linguaggi-I 2.Indb MEMORIES OF HOLY SITES AND THE PRESENCE OF FRANCISCANS IN THE HOLY LAND IN THE 14-15th CENTURIES Scholarly Communis Opinio vs Pilgrims’ Testimonies* [email protected] Beatrice Saletti Università di Udine Abstract This essay discusses and suggests Franciscan Friars settled in Jeru- to correct the communis opinio salem in the XIVth century regarding the years in which the 1. Despite scholars’ interest in pilgrimages and the not infrequent new editions of texts being published, when I began studying the pilgrimage of Meliaduse d’Este to the Holy Land ten years ago I found it diffi cult to prepare the commentary for my edition.1 Though I had acquired several guides, and between 2006 and 2007 even lived for a few months in Jeru- salem, the accounts of the pilgrims ‒ and not only that of Meliaduse, who visited Jerusalem in 1440, but all of those that I was able to collect and compare, in an attempt to organize my thoughts ‒ told of a Holy Land that I was unable to recognize, not even after having visited fi rst-hand the places described. It seemed that the Christian pilgrims were not de- scribing a physical space, but rather scenes taken directly from the pages of the Bible. Despite the fact that they made their Quests in a real space, references to the environment were either completely absent or extremely limited. A concrete example of this anomaly can be found in the account of Meliaduse’s pilgrimage: * This paper was presented at the conference Shaping Christian Memories and Identi- ties: The Franciscans in the Levant, 13th-16th century which took place in Rome, at the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut, on 9 December 2014. I have conserved its original conversational tone. 1 Saletti 2009. Keywords: History / History of Franciscan Order / Travel Literature / Holy Land / Medieval Pilgrimage Beatrice Saletti Venere a dì 23 de setembrio, da poi deto il vespero a monte Syon, tolto delgi axini a victura, montiamo suxo et andamo verso Bethelem con lo Guardiano et li soi frati. Et da Jerusalem a Bethelem sonno milgia 6 de le nostre. Et a mezo il chamino et in mezo la via publica e communa si è uno pozo; e lì drito si è lo loco in ciello dove la stella apparse a li tri Magi, gli quali vig[n]ando da Herodes.2 Et in quelo loco si è indulgentia de septe anni et septe quarantene. Et quella stella li conduseno poi a Bethelem.3 We immediately note that the pilgrim, a guest of the Franciscans in the convent of Mount Zion, was guided on his trip to Bethlehem by the Custos of the Holy Land and by an unspecifi ed number of friars. The adoration of the Magi, in the Bible, is only found in Matthew 2, 1-12, and the gospel does not mention any well. However, among the most widely circulated Christian texts is Gregory of Tours’ Liber Miraculorum (from the end of the 6th century), which describes a well in Bethlehem where the Virgin Mary is said to have drawn water, and where the pure of heart would miraculously continue to see the star of the Epiphany shining in the water: Est autem in Bethleem puteus magnus, de quo Maria gloriosa aquam fertur hausisse: ubi saepius aspicientibus miraculum illustre monstra- tur, id est stella ibi mundis corde, quae apparuit magis, ostenditur. Ve- nientibus devotis ac recumbentibus super os putei, operiuntur linteo capita eorum.4 This passage allows us to address a fundamental issue. Today we tend to accept the statements of the pilgrims without many problems; the Magi, the star, Bethlehem and many others are all elements that, at least in Christian Europe, are familiar to everyone from a very young age. Indeed, each detail regarding holy places is the fruit of a centuries-long path, and is neither linear nor unambiguous. The details of the Magi, their number, identities, religion, and even the duration of their journey, 2 I have kept the suspended sentence as it appears in the only manuscript, as it can be amended in too many different ways to propose a solution that doesn’t seem arbitrary. The incongruous gerund vig[n]ando likely stands for a fi nite mode of the verb venire. 3 Saletti 2009, pp. 82-83. Emphasis added. 4 S. Gregorii episcopi Turoniensi, Libri Miraculorum, I.1, in PL, LXXI. [ 146 ] Memories of Holy Sites and the Presence of Franciscans in the Holy Land along with many other aspects regarding these fi gures and their role in the Gospel of Mark, and thus in Christianity, represent a complicated historiographical problem.5 Turning back now to the well; the Liber Miraculorum places it in Bethlehem, not along the road to that town. However, following a diffe- rent tradition than that of Gregory of Tours, for example the Homilia- rius of Aymon d’Auxerre and thus also the Otia Imperialia by Gervase of Tilsbury, other pilgrims hold that the star entered the well after the arrival of the Magi: «Sunt qui dicunt stellam Magorum suo completo ministerio in puteum cecidisse Bethlehemicum et illic eam intro videri autumant».6 In the history of holy places, both the events and places themselves have a tendency to multiply. Jacopo da Verona, a pilgrim travelling in 1335, doesn’t associate the star with any well nor does he state that there was a well along the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem; he does, however, signal two wells in Bethlehem. The fi rst of these was in the place where the Virgin Mary drew water before giving birth,7 while the other was the well that King David wanted to drink from when he was in the cave of Adullam (2nd Samuel, 23, 15-16). Others pilgrims give different accounts, linking the well between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to the vision of the star, and during the fi rst crusade there were those, like the Englishman Saewulf, who held that the star had fallen into a well in Bethlehem, and that this well had then been surrounded by the Church of the Nativity. And this list could go on at length. Medieval pilgrims do not distinguish between canonical Gospels, Apo- crypha, and legends. After fi ve hundred years, at times it is impossible to recover the source of a given legend on Christ or the Virgin. This does not mean, however, that it is useless to try; even partial and uncertain results can tell us a great deal. We have testimony to the fact that some pilgrims were learned and had rather precise ideas about holy places, and 5 Trexler 1997; Kidger 1999; Cardini 2000; Molnar 2000; Panaino 2012. 6 Gervase of Tilsbury, Otia imperialia, I.5. 7 In Monneret de Villard 1960, p. 61. A famous well of the Virgin is in Nazareth, ac- cording to the Apocryphal Protoevangelium of James (XI, 1); concerning the well where the Virgin was to have drunk near Bethlehem, there is no trace in the so-called Infancy Gospels. A fountain, brought forth by the child Christ to let his Mother drink, is re- counted in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (Pseudo-Mattheus, XX, 2) three days journey outside of Bethlehem during the Holy Family’s fl ight into Egypt. [ 147 ] Beatrice Saletti that they studied the sacred texts and their commentaries. But very often the legends and miracles that pilgrims write about are not in the Bible or in the writings of the Church fathers. As well as information for pilgrims and directions for the places that they ought to have visited (which we will come back to later), miracles and legends always depended on the choices that somebody made. 2. Holy sites can also be created through contact with other religions. For example, it was only during the Crusades, neither before nor after, that Christian pilgrims visited a holy place known as Balneum Christi. This site was in the extreme southwestern part of what today is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in which a roman-era relic was identifi ed as the cradle of the infant Christ. Christian tradition holds that Christ was born in Bethlehem, fl ed with the Holy Family to Egypt, and only returned to Jerusalem much later. It is the Quran that places the birth of Christ in Je- rusalem where, as the angels had announced to Mary, Jesus talked «to the men from the cradle».8 From the Crusaders’ victory through Saladin’s re- covery (1099-1187) the mosque, built on the spot where «Jesus’ cradle» was found, was converted to a church. Christian pilgrims – like Muslims before them – were shown the relics of Christ’s cradle by their guides.9 Indeed, the pilgrim Theodericus (c. 1160) wrote about the church «of the bath or of the Manger of the Lord our Saviour»: the relic that he saw was «a great basin made of stone lying on the ground, in which it is known that he was bathed as a child».10 After 1187 Jerusalem once again became Islamic and every trace of the Christian use of the building was obliterated. Following the fall of Acre (1291) and the defi nitive dis- solution of the Crusader Kingdom, while Muslim pilgrims continued to visit the balneum, Christian travel accounts would never again deal with this site. A brief text datable to the last quarter of the 13th century, and conserved in British Library, MS Arundel 507, the so-called Summa sta- cionum et dedicacionum, shows that reference to the place had become nearly incomprehensible: 8 Q 3:46; 19:27-33. 9 Boas 2001, p.
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