NIVEL 1: Trabajo fin de máster .1 Datos Básicos del Nivel 1

1. Of course, even acquisition by a library or museum cannot guarantee survival of ephemeral items. For example, De Ricci and Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, vol. 2, p. 2080, no. 368, lists a Wfteenth-century amulet based on the Measure of Christ (with drawings in lead point and color) among miscellaneous leaves and cuttings in the John Frederick Lewis Collection, Free Public Library of Philadelphia. Lewis was said to have acquired it from the Munich antiquarian Ludwig Rosenthal in 1910. See Rosenthal’s Catalogue 120. Manuscripts—Handschriften—Manuscrits, 800–1500 (Munich: Ludwig Rosenthal’s Antiquariat, [1910]), p. 24, no. 201. Unfortunately, the item cannot be found. Despite the reference in De Ricci, the Free Public Library has no bibliographic record of the item ever having been in its collections.

knowledge of textual amulets would be far more limited because our documen-tation would be largely limited to the testimony of medieval writers and manu-scripts containing exemplars of amuletic texts. In this chapter, we will analyze nine extant English and Italian written amulets dating from the thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries, three other amulets described in contemporary sources, and extant printed amulets. In case studies of particular amulets, we will focus on the material assembly and interplay of textual elements to serve multiple functions with enhanced magical efWcacy. We will attempt to localize and date extant amulets, trace their provenance and subsequent modiWcation, and show the inXuence of contemporary trends in magic, ritual practices, and the culture of reading. Reserved for Chapter 5 are professionally produced textual amulets, particularly small rolls and folded sheets comprised of separate text cells, chieXy for women and often with a devotional component.

The Chartula of St. Francis of Assisi

Among the earliest and best known textual amulets offering speciWc protec-tion is St. Francis of Assisi’s well-known folding prayer amulet, containing the Laudes Dei altissimi and Benedictio Fratris Leonis (Wg. 2), which he prepared for his close spiritual associate Brother Leo (d. 1271). Contemporaries described the amulet as a chartula, litterula, or schedula. St. Francis wrote it on a small piece of parchment in September 1224, when he and Brother Leo were on Monte Alverno (also Alverna or La Verna). Eleven years earlier, Count Orlando of Chiusi had granted this mountain in the Apennines near Arezzo to St. Francis and his followers.²Also on Monte Alverno in September 1224, with Brother Leo faithfully at his side, St. Francis had received the Stigmata, bodily marks matching the Five Wounds of Christ on the Cross. In Christian iconography, Brother Leo is often depicted as being either asleep or blinded by the light of the Christ-like seraph on the Cross. St. Francis wrote the Laudes on the Xesh side of the parchment. He seems to have composed these two brief texts in his mind,

2. For studies and editions of the chartula, see Duane Lapsanski, “The Autographs of the Char-tula of St. Francis of Assisi,” Archivum franciscanum historicum 67 (1974): 18–37; Kajetan Esser, ed., Die Opuscula des Hl. Franziskus von Assisi, Spicilegius Bonaventurianum, vol. 13 (Grottaferrata:

Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1976), pp. 134–46; Giovanni M. Boccali, ed., Opuscula S. Francisci et scripta S. Clarae Assisiensium, Pubblicazioni della Biblioteca Francescana, vol. 1 (Assisi: Editore Porziunsola, 1978), pp. 258–63; Enzo Lodi, ed., Enchiridion euchologicum fontium liturgicorum, Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae, Subsidia, vol. 15 (Rome: Edizioni Litur-giche, 1979), p. 1686, no. 3373; Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “Gli scritti da Francesco: L’autograWa di un illitteratus,” in Frate Francesco d’Assisi: Atti del XXI Convegno internationale, Assisi, 14–16 ottobre 1993, Atti dei Convegni della Società internazionale di studi francescani e del Centro interuniversi-tario di studi francescani, Nuova serie, vol. 4, directed by Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994), pp. 103–59; and Langeli, Gli autograW, pp. 30–41, 79–82.

Fig. 2 Chartula of St. Francis of Assisi (verso), Sacro Convento, Assisi

Image not available

then wrote them down from memory on the recto and verso of a small piece of parchment, now irregularly shaped and measuring approximately 13.5 × 10.0 cm. It was folded down to a very compact size of 6.7 × 5.0 cm. The Laudes was written on the Xesh side, which faced outward when the amulet was folded, so that it came to be badly rubbed and abraded over time. As a result, the sixteen lines of text in the Laudes can be read in part only under ultraviolet light, with missing words and variant readings being supplied from later manuscript copies of the text.

The text is chieXy comprised of praises to God and brief quotations from Psalms, the Gospels, and the Pauline Epistles. Years of prayer and meditation had made the scriptural phrases part of St. Francis’s own devotional vocabulary, easily recalled from memory (if imperfectly), residing in the heart, as though they were his own words. According to Thomas of Celano (d. ca. 1255), St.

Francis said that the words he wrote on the parchment sheet were those that he had meditated in his heart (“meditatus sum in corde meo”).³His text thus resembled an almost-improvisatory patchwork, like the memory-assisted monas-tic compositional method called centonization.⁴The praises essentially consti-tute a litany of about forty divine names, chieXy consisting of Latin words for the attributes of God; for example, Defensor, Dominus, Omnipotens, Salvator, Sanctus, and Spes. As we have seen, the amuletic use of divine names was deeply rooted in Christian tradition and magic. While some of these names also appear in standard amuletic lists of divine names during the thirteenth to Wfteenth cen-turies, St. Francis did not include any of the Greek or Hebrew names (generally interspersed with crosses) that had such a central role in textual amulets. While his text was not overtly amuletic, St. Francis appreciated the spiritual power of divine names and believed that any piece of writing was precious because it might contain the name of God or at least letters of the alphabet, which could be scrambled and sorted to spell out the divine name. St. Bonaventure (d. 1274)

3. Thomas de Celano, Vita secunda Sancti Francisci, chap. 20, sec. 49, in Fontes franciscani, ed.

Enrico Menestò and Stefano Brufani, Medioevo francescano, Testi, vol. 2 (Assisi: Edizioni Porziun-cola, 1995), p. 490.

4. Concerning centonization, see Cabrol, Dictionnaire, vol. 2, pt. 2, cols. 3255–59. Meditative reading was based on bits of text Xuidly and uncritically assembled with the goal of inspiring contem-plation and faith, like the sacra lectio prescribed in religious houses since St. Benedict ordained it in his Rule. Memory of sacred text found spontaneous expression in thoughts and writings that evoked words and images from scripture. James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), vol. 1, p. 18; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monas-tic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), pp. 90–99: “The memory, fashioned wholly by the Bible and nurtured entirely by biblical words and the images they evoke, cause them to express themselves spontaneously in a biblical vocabulary. Reminiscences are not quotations, elements of phrases borrowed from another. They are the words of the person using them; they belong to him. Perhaps he is not even conscious of owing them to a source” (pp. 93–94).

recorded that St. Francis occasionally asked his followers to gather up all sheets of parchment with writing (schedula scripta) wherever found, lest the Lord’s name written thereupon might be trampled on the ground.⁵

Scholars have long appreciated the amuletic character of the chartula. St.

Francis was not the Wrst saint who used amuletic texts to exorcise demons and effect miraculous cures of people. In the sixth and seventh centuries, as we have seen, Merovingian holy men like St. Marculfus and St. Eligius of Noyon had orally recited exorcism formulas and prayers over the demon-possessed.

Church-ordained exorcists in the minor orders could also perform exorcisms.⁶ St. Francis was also a holy man, whose words were reputed to have power over demons. Early Franciscan texts such as Umbertino of Casale’s Arbor vitae cruci-Wxae Jesu Christi (1305) and the Speculum perfectionis status fratris minoris (1318), the latter once thought to be by Brother Leo himself, portray St. Francis as a holy man who lived his life in imitation of Christ and who, when preaching or praying, could turn demons to Xight by the power of his spoken words. While St. Francis was wont to lump personal book ownership, even of psalters and other devotional books, with material possessions that detracted from the purity of a mendicant life, he did value the power of sacred words, whether spoken or written.⁷St. Francis could have simply said blessings over Brother Leo but must have realized that binding sacred words to the body offered advantages over oral presentation. He wanted Brother Leo to keep the chartula folded up on his body as a physical source of divine protection.

In no way was the chartula designed to replace a devotional book such as a breviary, and surely Brother Leo would have had no trouble recalling such a

5. St. Bonaventure, Legenda maior sancti Francisci 10.6, in Menestò and Brufani, Fontes fran-ciscani, pp. 867–68. Gellrich, Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages, p. 35. “Like the relics of a saint in the cathedral, letters themselves were intrinsically sacred to Saint Francis of Assisi, who is said to have collected and saved every shred of parchment that he found during his travels because ‘litterae sunt quibus componitur gloriossimum domini Dei nomen’ (‘letters are the things from which the most glorious name of God is composed’).” Gellrich cites Thomas of Celano, Legenda prima, in S. Francisci Assiensis vita et miracula (Rome: Desclée, Lefebure, 1906), p. 83.

6. John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 25, 299. In an illuminated Italian pontiWcal of the early fourteenth century (Prince-ton University Library, Prince(Prince-ton MS 7), the exorcist is shown receiving a libellus as part of his ordi-nation by the bishop (fol. 7v). Accompanying a litany of the saints, the pontiWcal also provides an exorcism text for oral delivery (fol. 88v). Franz, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter, vol. 2, p. 549.

7. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short, eds., St. Francis of Assisi:

Early Documents (New York: New City Press, 1999), vol. 3, pp. 176, 304, 865–66. In a saint’s life written around 1275 by an anonymous Benedictine monk from Oberaltaich, Germany, St. Francis is said to have practiced bibliomancy by opening the Gospels on the altar. St. Francis ostensibly did so several times, each time Wnding a passage that revealed the Lord’s will.

brief prayer-like text from memory without having a written version to read.

SpeciWcally, St. Francis told Brother Leo to keep the chartula, presumably on his person, for the rest of his life (“accipe tibi chartulam istam et usque ad diem mortis tue custodias diligenter”). In offering protection against demons, St.

Francis gave his companion a textual shield and exorcistic device, something akin to Irish loricae, rather than just a portable prayer sheet for meditative read-ing.⁸ Like earlier Christian holy men, St. Francis provided divine names and blessings in writing, without monetary compensation, unlike errant clerics and charlatans, in order to exorcise demons from a tormented soul. Sacred words functioned here as a textual shield against the Devil’s unspeciWed temptations, as they had with the temptations faced by Christ and St. Anthony of Egypt. Such temptations were only to be expected in a demon-plagued wilderness; that is, a remote location of uncultivated land or desert, ideal for a hermit’s voluntary retreat, not unlike Monte Alverno.⁹

On the verso, St. Francis wrote out a Wve-line benediction (Benedictio Fratris Leonis), chieXy quoting Aaron’s Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24–26). St. Francis wrote in a rather common script, showing little training or practice, and in equally imperfect, Italicism-Wlled Latin. Brother Leo was far more literate than St. Francis and annotated both sides of the chartula in a well-formed Gothic book hand, providing details about St. Francis’s role in its preparation.¹⁰ On the verso, along with the benediction, is a Tau cross (signum thau) rising from Golgotha, with a crudely sketched head, most likely representing that of Adam, which lies horizontally in a grave or a cave. In Italian CruciWxion scenes and cruciWxes of the twelfth century, Adam’s skull is depicted at the foot of the cross.

In effect, Christ was the “New Adam.” Though the Tau cross could symbolize the Trinity, it was popularly associated with divine power and protection from demons and plague, and was therefore included in many textual amulets of the fourteenth and Wfteenth centuries.

Christians traced the use of the Tau cross as an emblem of divine power and protection back to the symbol that God Wrst gave to protect the Israelites against the tenth and Wnal plague (the deaths of the Wrstborn). In Christian iconography, the Tau cross was used to represent the apotropaic signum that the Israelites

8. Lapsanski, “Autographs,” p. 19; Esser, Die Opuscula, p. 135; Langeli, Gli autograW, pp.

34–35 nn. 11–12.

9. One may compare Richard de Bury’s gleaning from the Gospel of Matthew (4:1–14) about Christ girding on the “shield of truth” for protection against the Devil. The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, ed. and trans. Ernest C. Thomas (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1888), p. 18: “Hoc autem est veritas libris inscripta, quod evidentius Wguravit Salvator, quando contra tentatorem praeliaturus viriliter scuto se circumdedit veritatis, non cuiuslibet immo scripturae, scriptum esse praemittens quod vivae vocis oraculo erat prolaturus” (2:34).

10. Langeli, Gli autograW, pp. 23–29; Esser, Die Opuscula, pp. 137, 140, 143–44.

marked, using the paschal lamb’s blood, on the lintels and doorposts of their homes (Exodus 12:12–13). Aaron was often shown painting Tau crosses on doorposts. In this way, the plague that God visited upon Egypt “passed over”

their houses. So when dispensing the Tau cross and the Priestly Blessing, St.

Francis effectively acted in place of Aaron, high priest and worker of miracles, who was sometimes depicted as a forerunner of Christ.¹¹Coincidentally, in Chris-tian numerology the letter T stood for the sacred number 300, symbolizing the victory of God over the Devil. Exorcism formulas and Tau crosses were essential Franciscan weapons to combat the Devil, a recurrent theme in the writings of St. Francis and his followers. The Tau cross served as a reminder that the forces of good would triumph over evil.¹²

After the intended use of the prayer amulet by Brother Leo during his life-time, it continued to have an apotropaic function as a sacred relic for the Chris-tian faithful rather than as a personal amulet. St. Bonaventure said that the chartula remained effective and provided miraculous healing after the death of Brother Leo in 1271. By 1338 the chartula was stored among the relics in the sacristy of the Sacro Convento in Assisi, where it was preserved in a Xat wooden reliquary that had a glass window for viewing by the faithful. The chartula was housed in a silver shrine by 1473 and in various reliquaries in later centuries.¹³ As a relic of St. Francis, the chartula was not unlike medieval books such as the Cathach of St. Columba, enjoying special status because of an association with particular holy persons who had copied, owned, or used them. Similarly, letters written by saints were popularly believed to possess healing powers and could be applied to the body therapeutically, like scripture, sacred relics, and consecrated objects.¹⁴ Scribal copying of the Laudes underscores its standing and reputation. At least twenty-one manuscripts of the fourteenth and Wfteenth

11. The scriptural authority of Tau crosses may also rest on Ezekiel 9:4, in which God said to the prophet, “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that shall be done in the midst thereof.” See Damien Vorreux, “Tau,” in Dizionario francescano: Spiritualità, ed. Ernesto Caroli (Padua: Edizioni Messaggero, 1995), cols. 2004–5; Husband, “Winteringham Tau Cross,” pp. 22–23.

John V. Fleming, “The Iconographic Unity of the Blessing for Brother Leo,” Franziskanische Studien 63, no. 3 (1981): 203–220, discusses the Adamic iconography and use of the Tau cross; he notes,

“the Hebrew taw, the Wnal letter in the alphabet, actually means ‘sign’ or ‘mark,’ and what the Vul-gate renders as signum Thau is called more simply a ‘sign’ in the Septuagint and other translations”

(pp. 216–17).

12. DeleXie, Thibaut de Langres, p. 54; Andree-Eysn, “Das Tau und die Pestamulette,” in Volks-kundliches, pp. 63–72; Marie-Odile Andrade, Les porte bonheur (Paris: Christine Bonneton Éditeur, n.d.), pp. 62–63, 129; Antonio Blasucci, “Demonio,” in Dizionario francescano: Spiritualità, cols.

353–68; Damien Vorreux, “Tau,” in ibid., cols. 2003–12.

13. St. Bonaventure, Legenda maior sancti Francisci 11.9 and Legenda minor sancti Francisci 4.6, in Menestò and Brufani, Fontes franciscani, pp. 876, 990. Langeli, Gli autograW, pp. 80–82.

14. Vezin, “Les livres,” pp. 101–15; Poulin, “Entre magie et religion,” p. 137.

centuries include copies. Some might have served as exemplars for further copy-ing, though there are no extant examples of the text having been copied onto single sheets for use as textual amulets.¹⁵

Italian Amulets for Domenico and Calandrino

Single-purpose textual amulets composed from memory, like those by St. Francis of Assisi and St. Hildegard of Bingen, coexisted with equally ordinary looking amulets copied from written exemplars. The makers of such amulets are rarely known. Late medieval Italian textual amulets for speciWc protection must have been very common. Two related paper amulets dating from the Wrst quarter of the Wfteenth century (Pisa, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 736, nos. 2–3) are prob-ably representative of everyday amulets, simple enough to be disposable (Wg. 3 a-b). The Wrst of these two examples from Pisa is a thirteen-line Latin plague amulet dedicated to St. Sebastian, whose intercession with Christ is sought by the supplicant Domenico (Dominichus). St. Sebastian (d. ca. 290) was a Roman soldier from Narbonne and a member of the Praetorian Guard under the emperor Diocletian (284–305). In the late Middle Ages and especially after the Black Death began to ravage Europe in 1348, St. Sebastian acquired cult status and was depicted as bravely defending the ancient city of Rome against a hail of plague arrows delivering pestilence, just as textual amulets with the name of God had once offered Christian crusaders a spiritual shield against Muslim arrows and bolts. The text of Domenico’s amulet is conWned to the recto of a rectangular piece of paper measuring 17.7 × 20.5 cm. At the end of the text is a row of Wf-teen crosses, which reminded the supplicant to make the right devotional ges-ture, just as the Wfteen large beads in a rosary prompted prayers. Of course, the number Wfteen has a numerological role in the Measure of Christ and Fifteen Mysteries.

Preserved along with the thirteen-line plague amulet is a twenty-seven-line Latin plague amulet, also copied for Domenico. The second amulet is written in a semi-Gothic cursive hand similar in style and date to the Wrst (pointed a, both long and short s, hooks and loops) on a piece of paper measuring 23.5 × 20.5 cm. It has virtually the same text as the Wrst, except for minor differences in orthography (for example, Eloi instead of Elloj) and abbreviations. This text is followed by a row of Wfteen crosses, beneath which is written a prayer appeal-ing to St. Vincent for intercession with Christ against the plague. An

Preserved along with the thirteen-line plague amulet is a twenty-seven-line Latin plague amulet, also copied for Domenico. The second amulet is written in a semi-Gothic cursive hand similar in style and date to the Wrst (pointed a, both long and short s, hooks and loops) on a piece of paper measuring 23.5 × 20.5 cm. It has virtually the same text as the Wrst, except for minor differences in orthography (for example, Eloi instead of Elloj) and abbreviations. This text is followed by a row of Wfteen crosses, beneath which is written a prayer appeal-ing to St. Vincent for intercession with Christ against the plague. An