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A New Plague Saint for Renaissance Italy
Suffering and Sanctity in Narrative Cycles of Saint Roch
Louise Marshall, University of Sydney
This essay investigates the ways in which
concepts of the sacred were shaped and mobilised
in a series of fresco cycles to promote the cult of
a new plague saint in Renaissance Italy. As recent
scholarship has demonstrated, veneration of the
French pilgrim Roch as a plague protector was a
late fifteenth-century novelty, documented first
in central and northern Italy in the 1460s and
1470s, then spreading with astonishing rapidity
throughout Europe in the succeeding decades.1
According to his earliest biography, composed and
published in 1479, Roch healed plague victims,
was himself stricken with the disease, endured it
patiently and was cured by divine fiat. Resuming
his travels, he was imprisoned as a spy, was a model
prisoner and on his deathbed was rewarded with
the power to preserve against the plague.2
My focus is a series of little-studied early narrative cycles of Roch’s life and miracles, dating from
the 1480s to the 1540s and found in an arc across
northern Italy, from Piedmont and Lombardy to
the Trentino and Veneto. Most are partly or wholly
unpublished, due to their location in remote rural
and mountainous regions and to the fact that they
are painted by unknown or ‘minor’ masters who
have not been the subject of detailed scholarly attention. The present study is thus the first to analyse the Italian cycles as a coherent corpus, which
can shed light on the diffusion and reception of the
new saint’s cult.3
Analysis of the cycles allows one to explore
the expectations and assumptions brought to bear
upon Roch’s cult, and thus to explain the reasons
for his appeal. This is a particularly vexed question, given that Renaissance worshippers already
possessed an extremely popular and widely venerated plague specialist in the early Christian martyr
Sebastian.4 By examining the choice of episodes,
the particular narrative strategies deployed and the
recourse to supernatural signs to validate the new
cult, one sees the process of moulding and activating the sacred at work. Such an analysis elucidates
Renaissance understandings of the operations of
saintly power and the flexibility of worshippers’
negotiations with the sacred in order to secure celestial protection against the plague.
Investigation of the ways in which Roch’s life
and miracles were first visualised on the walls of
chapels and churches is particularly pertinent in
the light of continuing scholarly debate regarding
the origins and development of his cult.5 The crux
of the problem is the absence of any independent
documentation of Roch’s existence outside the
hagiographic record, which postdates by at least a
decade the earliest appeals to the saint and is distinguished by its lack of specificity and profusion
of hagiographic topoi.6 As the searing critiques of
Belgian scholar Pierre Bolle have demonstrated,
Roch’s hagiography cannot be mined for assumed
kernels of historical ‘fact’ embedded within a more
or less plausible narrative, but must be understood
within the terms of its own specific genre of edifying saintly biography.7 By contrast, the expected
indices of a new cult, miracles and invocations generated by the possession of a venerated body in a
specific locality, are notably absent—at least until
Roch’s relics were produced by the Venetians in
1485, amid deliberately vague statements regarding provenance that modern scholars are still disentangling.8 Bolle’s resolution of these anomalies is
to propose that Roch never existed, but was created by homonymic confusion with another saint,
the bishop and martyr Rochus or Rachus of Autun,
venerated in the south of France on the same feast
day and appealed to for protection against tempests (which by linguistic slippage and meteorological association is suggested as the source of Roch’s
powers against the plague).9 Yet even if this were
so, the enormous distance in terms of character
and narrative imaginary separating Merovingian
bishop from Renaissance plague saint still requires
interrogation and explanation.10
In the face of these uncertainties, it is helpful
to understand the varying means by which Roch’s
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The Sacred across Cultures
Figure 1 Magister Paroto and Giovan Pietro da Cemmo
Funeral of St. Roch, San Rocco, Bagolino, 1483–86
fresco
Photograph Louise Marshall
cult was taken up and promoted in the decades before and after 1500. As scholars have pointed out,
Roch can justly be called the first saint of the printing press.11 Unlike most humanist hagiographic
production, the life of Roch written by Francesco
Diedo, Venetian governor of Brescia, was a bestseller.12 Published concurrently in Latin and Italian
editions in Milan in 1479, Diedo’s Vita Sancti Rochi
was reprinted in both universalising Latin and
particularised vernaculars in all major European
printing centres over the following decades, and
inspired multiple versifications, adaptations and
summaries.13 Directly or indirectly, Diedo’s text is
the source of all the painted narratives, but the variety of episodes and emphases demonstrate how
his account was adapted by differing audiences for
their own purposes. My investigation testifies to the
crucial role played by images, as much or more so
than hagiographic texts, in the promotion of new
cults, by offering persuasive visualisations of the
new saint’s sanctity and his efficacy as intercessor.
The cycles demonstrate an iconographic canon in the process of formation, marked more by
diversity than commonality. Like the written vite,
the pictorial narratives partly rely on hagiographic and artistic tropes. Choosing familiar episodes
from the lives of other saints offers reassurance
of the new saint’s sanctity by aligning him with
his holy predecessors.14 Thus Roch’s birth, which
opens several cycles, reproduces the comfortable
domestic interior and familiar rituals used to depict the birth of the Virgin.15 Similarly, the ‘conversion’ moment of the youthful aristocrat giving away
his property at the death of his parents recalls the
same moment in the life of Anthony Abbot.16
With its demonstrative indices of nascent cult
and spectacle of earthly honours mirroring the
heavenly glorification of the ascendant soul, the
saintly funeral is a favoured conclusion of many
hagiographic cycles. Particularly in the case of
recent saints, such as Francis of Assisi or Nicholas
of Tolentino, the display and care of the earthly
body draws attention to the continuing presence
of the revered corpse at his or her tomb, a magnet
for pilgrims seeking miracles. Two of the earliest
cycles, painted two decades apart by members of
the same Lombard artistic dynasty, include such
scenes. Since Roch was never formally canonised,
clerical participation in his funeral was a significant
measure of official recognition, polemically insisted
upon in an accompanying inscription at Berzo
Inferiore (1504): ‘CO[MO] FV SEPELITO S[AN] R[OCCO]
HONOREVELMENTE DA[L] CLERO’.17 At Bagolino, a
funeral cortege headed by a priest carries Roch’s
body towards a church (see figure 1).18 Inside, one
can just glimpse an open sarcophagus next to the
high altar, with a statue of the new saint alongside,
a clear assurance to viewers that Roch has long
been venerated by the church as a saint.
However, the absence of the traditional saintly
funeral in a majority of cycles (seven out of nine)
is striking. Three omit any reference to the saint’s
death at all. This is not a decision determined by
limitations of space, since one (Volano) is an extended narrative of twelve scenes, but rather mirrors the imprecision and confusion regarding the
saint’s site of death and burial in the printed vite.19
As these cycles confirm, Roch’s cult was untethered
by the specificity of a celebrated tomb and was in
fact not dependent on the presence of a body at all.
Significantly, although most postdate the translation of Roch’s relics to Venice, that episode is never
represented. Instead, those that do include a death
scene focus on the supernatural signs accompanying the discovery of the corpse, such as the pealing
of church bells (Brossasco, 1530) or the unearthly
radiance surrounding his corpse (Borgo Valsugana,
1516) by a trio of mourning angels standing by
Roch’s body with lit candles.20 The presence of
grieving relatives, or a scroll inscribed with Roch’s
name, invokes the miraculous revelation of his identity in the supernaturally produced tablet found in
his cell, which promised that all those fleeing to his
protection would escape the plague. For the composers and audiences of these cycles, the key issue
was not the fate of the body as precious relic but
A New Plague Saint for Renaissance Italy
the divinely provided guarantees of the new saint’s
power to protect against the plague.
In seeking to explain Roch’s popularity, André
Vauchez has demonstrated that his cult conforms
in significant respects to a model of sanctity familiar since the twelfth century—the pilgrim saint—
specifically, the foreign pilgrim who dies en route
and is subsequently venerated in the locality where
he died.21 In medieval society, the pilgrim voluntarily renounced the world, at least temporarily, in
favour of spiritual things, and those who died en
route still occupied that special state of grace. The
importance of Roch’s pilgrim status is confirmed
by the frequency of scenes of departure, travel
and arrival in the cycles, despite the low level of
narrative drama such depictions entail. At Volano
(1525), the saint’s itinerary is carefully plotted with
inscribed Latin place names, and no less than a
third of the narrative (four out of twelve scenes)
is devoted to Roch as wayfarer, arriving, leaving
and on the road.22 Here, as elsewhere, itinerancy
is a leitmotif.
As was the case with other saintly pilgrims,
Roch’s story partly derives its force from the conspicuous renunciation of privilege, which is seen as
marvellous and elicits strong emotional responses
when posthumously revealed. Instead of enjoying
his wealth and elevated social status, the saintly pilgrim embraces a life of apostolic poverty, humility
and reliance on the charity of others. The pilgrim’s
religious vocation and liminal status, at once in the
world and outside it, is made visible by distinctive
dress, a standard feature of Roch’s iconography.
Moreover, as saintly pilgrim Roch offers a model
of lay sanctity, available for imitation by all.
However, although pilgrimage sets the tone of
Roch’s life and character—his self-effacing humility, his patient endurance of trials—it is not in itself
the chief reason for his appeal. Indeed, one cycle
never represents him as a pilgrim at all, but as an elegant, well-dressed young aristocrat.23 Instead, the
narratives characteristically present Roch moving
back and forth across various models of sanctity.
Above all, they invariably celebrate him as both
healer and victim of the plague. This is the charged
dynamic at the heart of his cult, one that is intensely somatic, defined by and approached through the
body of the saint—the actions it performs and the
afflictions it endures.
Nearly all cycles include Roch curing plague
victims, usually hospice inmates (see figure 2).24
At least two cycles were for chapels and churches
associated with such institutions25, and, in a period when many communities built lazarettos and
even the smallest settlement contained at least one
civic hospice, this episode would have resonated
Figure 2 Battista da Legnano
St. Roch Curing Plague Victims in the Hospice at Acquapendente,
Oratorio di San Rocco, Crana, Piedmont, 1534
fresco
Photograph Louise Marshall
directly with viewers’ own experiences. Carefully
particularised details of setting and costume,
from beds neatly ranged along the wall in a row,
to the white nightshirts and caps of the sick and
the sober grey robes of the warden, here holding
a urine specimen and attempting to dissuade the
young man from what he saw as a suicidal disregard for his own safety, give these healing scenes a
veracity and immediacy that distinguish them from
other episodes and speak directly to worshippers’
needs. Naturalistic devices climax in demonstrative displays of the patients’ buboes. Although not
clinically accurate, the buboes are immediately
recognisable and rhetorically compelling, magnetising the gaze as dreaded signs of inevitable death
imprinted on the bodies of otherwise healthy men,
women and children. The pathos of their bared
and disfigured flesh calls upon the saint for cure
and plays on contemporary fears to insist upon
Roch’s proven ability to heal the disease.
The single constant of every cycle is Roch’s
sojourn in the woods outside Piacenza after contracting the plague (see figure 3). He was found by
the nobleman Gotthard, following his dog, which
was stealing bread from the table to succour the
saint. At first fearful, Gotthard soon became the
saint’s devoted follower. Retreating to the ‘desert’
of the contado and sustained solely by divine providence, the pilgrim saint became a hermit, tapping
into contemporary enthusiasm and reverence for
the eremitical ideal.26 Nevertheless, the essential
force of this phase is its dramatisation of physical
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The Sacred across Cultures
Figure 3 Maestro di Pallanza
St. Roch Discovered by Gothard, 1490s?
164 × 210 cm
fresco
Museo del Paesaggio, Pallanza (detached from Oratorio di
San Rocco, Pallanza, Piedmont)
Photograph Louise Marshall
privation: the key is Roch’s sufferings. The healer is
himself now stricken, ostentatiously displaying the
death sign of the bubo to the viewer. Here is a saint
who experiences the very disease that threatens his
worshippers.
Roch’s cure by divine decree offers reassurance that one could survive the plague and provides a model of hoped-for cure. Yet, surprisingly,
this episode was less often represented than his sojourn in the wood. For Renaissance worshippers,
the essential appeal was Roch’s imitatio Christi,
his willing endurance of atrocious physical suffering as a means of experiencing in his own body
something of the torments that Christ suffered at
the Passion. Since it had long been believed that,
lacking the possibility of dying for the faith, the
crown of martyrdom could also be won by heroic suffering, he was hailed as a true martyr of
the plague.27 At Borgo Valsugana, the angel announcing Roch’s cure awards him the palm of
martyrdom.28 At Pallanza, the image of the Man
of Sorrows standing upright in his tomb, inserted
next to the scene of Roch discovered by Gotthard
tending his plague bubo, demonstratively insists
on the parallelism between wounded plague martyr and suffering saviour.
For contemporary beholders, Roch’s patient
endurance of his sufferings also carried a hortatory message. In his prayers, the saint thanked
God for inflicting him with the disease, welcoming
it as a means of participating in Christ’s Passion.
Plague as punishment for sin is here recast as merciful chastisement, a divinely sent opportunity to
translate personal disaster into spiritually uplifting imitatio Christi. Viewing the suffering saint
as a model for their own response to the disease,
viewers could have taken comfort in the assurance
that their bodily ailments would find merit in the
divine sight. Such positive valuation of suffering,
especially physical suffering, was characteristic of
late medieval and Renaissance piety. As Thomas à
Kempis spelled out with great force in his fifteenthcentury bestselling devotional handbook:
To suffer willingly, out of love for Christ—nothing
is more acceptable to God, nothing more to your
advantage in life. If you had the choice, you would do
better to choose to suffer for Christ than to receive
many blessings from him. … Pleasure and comfort win
us no spiritual merit or growth; only sorrows and pain
can do that, if we accept them willingly.29
Moreover, representations of Roch as plague
victim are imbued with the promise of his powers as efficacious plague intercessor. Like Christ,
A New Plague Saint for Renaissance Italy
his sufferings were redemptive, the means of deliverance for others. It was precisely because he
endured his torments without complaint, voluntarily accepting his martyrdom, that he was rewarded
first by a miraculous cure and then, on his deathbed, by the assurance of protective powers against
the disease.
In conclusion, these monumental narratives
vividly actualise the new plague saint for devotees
intent on accessing his protective powers. While
visual tropes linking him to holy predecessors
are sometimes deployed, Roch cannot be categorised within any single model of sanctity. Instead,
the cycles show him moving easily back and forth
across multiple roles, as pilgrim, healer, hermit,
martyr and intercessor. The extent to which such
choices respond to dictates of site, ritual function
and intended audiences must be deferred to a future study. What is clear is the charged dynamic
set-up between the morbidly disfigured bodies of
plague victims, in image and in life, and the similarly marked body of the new saint, who suffered
the agonies of the disease in his own flesh in imitation of Christ and was consequently rewarded
with the power to ward off such torments from his
devotees.
NOTES
1 Research for this article was generously supported
by the University of Sydney and a Samuel H Kress
Foundation Fellowship in Renaissance Art History
from the Renaissance Society of America. For
the earliest documented invocations to Roch,
see Giuseppe Bianconi, Monografia della Terra e
Comune di Deruta, 2nd edn, Unione, Turin, 1889,
p. 8 (Deruta, 1466); Giuseppina de Sandre Gasparini
(ed.), Statuti di confraternite religiose di Padova nel
Medio Evo. Testi, studio introduttivo e cenni storici,
Fonti e ricerche di storia ecclesiastica padovana, 6,
Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, Padua,
1974, pp. 61–89 (Padua, 1467); and Antonio Fappani,
‘Diffusione del culto di San Rocco nel Bresciano’,
in A Turchini (ed.), Lo straordinario e il quotidiano.
Ex voto, santuario, religione popolare nel Bresciano,
Grafo, Brescia, 1980, pp. 371–2 (Brescia, 1469).
For Roch as a new saint in the late quattrocento,
see Heinrich Dormeier, ‘Nuovi culti di santi intorno
al 1500 nelle città della Germania meridionale.
Circonstanze religiose, sociali e materialai della loro
introduzione e affermazione’, in P Prodi &
P Joanek (eds), Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in
Germania prima della Riforma, Il Mulino, Bologna,
1984, pp. 317–52; Heinrich Dormeier, ‘St. Rochus,
die Pest und die Imhoffs in Nürnberg vor und
während der Reformation. Ein spätgotischer Altar in
seinem religiös-liturgischen, wirtschaflich-rechtlichen
und sozialen Umfeld’, Anzeiger des Germanischen
Nationalmuseums, 1985, pp. 7–72; Heinrich
Dormeier, ‘Venedig als Zentrum des Rochuskultes’,
in V Kapp & FR Haussmann (eds), Nürnberg und
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Italien. Begegnungen, Einflüsse und Ideen, Erlanger
Romanistiche Dokumente und Arbeiten, 6, Stauffenburg, Tübingen, 1991, pp. 105–27; Heinrich
Dormeier, ‘Der Rochusaltar in seinem religiösen,
wirtschaflichen und sozialen Umfeld’, in St. Lorenz.
Hundert Jahre Verein zur Erhaltung 1903–2003,
St Lorenz, Nuremberg, 2004, pp. 27–34; Heinrich
Dormeier, ‘Un santo nuovo contro la peste: cause
del successo del culto di san Rocco e promotori della
sua diffusione al Nord delle Alpi’, in Antonio Rigon
& André Vauchez (eds), San Rocco. Genesi e prima
espansione di un culto. Incontro di studio, Subsidia
Hagiographica, 87, Société des Bollandistes, Brussels,
2006, pp. 225–43; Pierre Bolle, ‘Saint Roch de
Montpellier, doublet hagiographique de saint Raco
d’Autun. Un apport décisif de l’examen approfondi
des incunables et imprimés anciens’, in E Rénard
et al. (eds), Scribere sanctorum gesta. Recueil d’études
d’hagiographie médiévale offert à Guy Philippart,
Brepols, Turnhout, 2005, pp. 525–72; and Pierre
Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question de méthodologie’,
in Rigon & Vauchez, pp. 9–56.
For other significant studies, see André Vauchez,
‘Rocco’, Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. 11, Istituto
Giovanni XXIII nella Pontificia Università
lateranense, Rome, 1968, columns 264–73; André
Vauchez, ‘San Rocco: tradizioni agiografiche e storia
del culto’, in San Rocco nell’arte, 2000, pp. 13–19;
André Vauchez, ‘Un modèle hagiographique et
cultuel en Italie avant saint Roch: le pèlerin mort en
chemin’, in Rigon & Vauchez, pp. 57–70; and Paolo
Ascagni, ‘Le piü antiche fonti scritte su san Rocco di
Montpellier. Un excursus comparativo e sistematico
delle agiografie rocchiane’, Vita Sancti Rochi, vol. 1,
2006, pp. 19–57.
Francesco Diedo, Vita Sancti, Rochi, Milan, 1479. For
the Latin text, see Acta Sanctorum [AASS], Augusti,
III, ed. J Pinius, Société des Bollandistes, Antwerp,
1735, pp. 399–410. For the English translation, see
Irene Vaslef, ‘The Role of St Roch as a Plague Saint:
A Late Medieval Hagiographic Tradition’, PhD thesis,
Catholic University of America, Washington, DC,
1984, pp. 179–218. For inaccuracies in the AASS texts,
see Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question de méthodologie’,
pp. 11–12, 34.
German cycles, some contemporaneous with the
Italian examples, have been studied by Dormeier.
Louise Marshall, ‘Manipulating the Sacred: Image and
Plague in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Quarterly,
vol. 47, 1994, pp. 486–500; ‘Reading the Body of a
Plague Saint: Narrative Altarpieces and Devotional
Images of St Sebastian in Renaissance Art’, in B Muir
(ed.), Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval
and Renaissance Art and Patronage, Exeter University
Press, Exeter, 2002, pp. 237–60.
The state of the field is well surveyed in the recent
conference at Padua. See Rigon & Vauchez.
Vaslef, pp. 99–137; Bolle, ‘Saint Roch de Montpellier’,
p. 534.
Bolle, ‘Saint Roch de Montpellier’; ‘Saint Roch, une
question de méthodologie’.
Doremeier, ‘Venedig als Zentrum des Rochuskultes’;
Pierre Bolle & Paolo Ascagni, Rocco di Montpellier,
Voghera e il suo santo, Comune di Voghera, Assessorato all’Istruzione, Voghera (Lombardy), 2001,
pp. 31–41; Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question de
méthodologie’, pp. 49–51.
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The Sacred across Cultures
9 Bolle, ‘Saint Roch de Montpellier’; ‘Saint Roch, une
question de méthodologie’, pp. 42–9. See also Robert
Godding, ‘San Rocco di Montpellier, un doppione
agiografico? Culto e leggenda di san Rocco di Autun’,
in Rigon & Vauchez, pp. 71–82.
10 Noted by Vauchez, ‘Introduction’, in Rigon &
Vauchez, pp. 4–5.
11 Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question de méthodologie’,
p. 35; Dormeier, ‘Un santo nuovo’.
12 Alison Frazier, Possible Lives: Authors and Saints
in Renaissance Italy, Columbia University Press,
New York, 2005, pp. 38–9, 322–3. For Diedo, see
G Tournoy, ‘Francisco Diedo: Venetian Humanist
and Politician of the Quattrocento’, Humanistica
Lovaniensia, vol. 19, 1970, pp. 201–34.
13 Francesco Diedo, Vita Sancti Rochi, Milan, 1479.
Five Latin and two Italian editions of Diedo’s vita
were published between 1479 and 1495. For the most
accurate list, see Bolle, ‘Saint Roch de Montpellier’,
pp. 538–41. For the most thorough analysis of the
complex history of translations, adaptions and
summaries of Diedo (including the Acta Breviora), see
Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question de méthodologie’,
pp. 9–42. See also Francesca Lomastro, ‘Di una vita
manoscritta e della prima diffusione del culto di san
Rocco a Vicenza’, in Rigon & Vauchez, pp. 99–116;
and Ascagni.
14 Julian Gardner, ‘Footfalls Echo in the Memory: Aspetti
della tecnica narrativa negli affreschi del Trecento’,
in Arte e spiritualità nell’Ordine Agostiniano e il
Convento San Nicola a Tolentino, Argos, Rome, 1992,
pp. 47–65.
15 George Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in North
West Italy, Sansoni, Florence, 1985, figure 790
(Berzo Inferiore, 1504).
16 Chiara Maggioni, ‘La fortuna iconografica di san
Rocco nella pittura bresciana di fine Quattrocento.
Due cicli poco noti dalla Vita Sancti Rochi di
Francesco Diedo’, in M Rossi (ed.), La pittura e la
miniatura del Quattrocento a Brescia, Storia dell’arte,
Ricerche, V&P Università, Milan, 2001, figure 91
(Bagolino, 1483–86); Roberto Adami & Stefano
Ferrari, Templum Sancti Rochi. Le vicende storicoartistiche della chiesa di San Rocco e della comunità di
Volano fra il XV e il XVI secolo, Manfrini, Calliano
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
(Piedmont), 1992, p. 122, figure (Volano, 1525). For
Anthony Abbot, see Keith Christiansen
et al. (eds), Painting in Renaissance Siena, 1420–1500,
exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, 1988, pp. 104–11.
Kaftal, figure 795.
Maggioni, pp. 121–30; Federica Bolpagni, ‘Giovan
Pietro da Cemmo e gli affreschi di San Rocco a
Bagolino’, Artes, vol. 11, 2003, pp. 14–50.
For a summary, see Bolle, ‘Saint Roch, une question
de méthodologie’, pp. 32–3, figure 2.
Kaftal, figure 794 (Brossasco). For recent attribution
of the frescoes to Pascale Oddone and dating to 1530,
see Rosella Pellerino & Davide Rossi (eds), Mistà.
Itinerario romanico-gotico nelle chiese delle valli Grana,
Maira, Varaita e Po, Bronda, Infernotto, Eventi, Cuneo
(Piedmont), 2006, pp. 134–5, 212–13. For Borgo, see
Vittorio Fabris, L’Oratorio di San Rocco, Comune di
Borgo Valsugana, Borgo Valsugana (Trentino), 2006,
p. 22, figures.
Vauchez, ‘San Rocco’, pp. 17–18; ‘Un modèle
hagiographique’.
Adami & Ferrari, pp. 118–26.
Maggioni, p. 126.
Paolo Norsa (ed.), Invito alla valle Vigezzo,
Giovannacci, Domodossola (Piedmont), 1970,
pp. 284–6, figure 21 (Crana, 1534).
Francesca Zocchi, Hoc opus fecit. Affreschi del
Quattrocento nel Verbano, Museo del Paesaggio,
Verbania (Piedmont), 2001 (Pallanza, 1490s?);
Adami & Ferrami, pp. 11, 13, 16 (Volano).
Vauchez, ‘Un modèle hagiographique’.
Marshall, ‘Manipulating the Sacred’, p. 505. For this
belief, see Louis Gougaud, Devotional and Ascetic
Practices in the Middle Ages, trans. L Gougaud &
GL Bateman, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London,
1927, pp. 205ff.
Fabris, p. 21.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, book 2,
ch. 12, trans. P Zomberg, Dunstan Press, Rockland,
ME, 1984, p. 80. On the characteristic late medieval
emphasis on suffering as the most perfect means of
imitating Christ, see Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls:
Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1984.
louise marshall