St Margaret of Cortona

Had yesterday not been the first Sunday in Lent it would have been the Feast of the Chair of Peter, about which I have posted before in The Chair of St Peter at Rome - some reflections  three years ago and in The Chair of Peter two years ago. In addition to that it is also the feast day of St Margaret of Cortona. She is one of those later medieval female saints who abound in central Italy, and in her case her story is well worthy of a Verdi opera. John Dillon has posted the following about her on the Medieval Religion discussion group site:

St Margaret of Cortona (Margherita da Cortona; d. 1297). The lay penitent and visionary Margaret had previously lived for nine years with a wealthy man whose murder (and it was she who discovered his bloody corpse), followed by her father's refusal to take her back into his home in the Umbrian village of Laviano, precipitated her turn to a life of religious service. Establishing herself in Cortona (AR) in Tuscany she lived ascetically, volunteered as a midwife, and persuaded a donor to create a hospital for the poor that she then directed assiduously. The community of religious women that she organized survived her and promoted her cause by means of the Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona (BHL 5314). The latter is a work of multiple authorship including a lengthy record of Margaret's visions as recounted to and as written down by her confessor G., now generally identified as the Franciscan friar Giunta Bevegnati. The Legenda also incorporates matter from a later confessor and from various locals offering miracle accounts. Margaret's immediately posthumous cult was confirmed for Cortona in 1515. She was canonized in 1728.

Margaret of Cortona at rest in the mostly nineteenth-century basilica di Santa Margherita at Cortona:

http://tinyurl.com/pzfla8l

http://tinyurl.com/nk24jvj

Some medieval images of Margaret of Cortona:

a) Margaret of Cortona and scenes from her Legenda as depicted by a follower of Margarito of Arezzo in a late thirteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1298) in the Museo diocesano di Cortona:

http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/xunk_it/xunk_it0/07marga.jpg

Detail view of Margaret:

http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/xunk_it/xunk_it0/07marga1.jpg

Grayscale views of the smaller panels will be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/p2vglh6

The individual scenes are identified here (in Italian):

http://tinyurl.com/pjwdczv

b) Margaret of Cortona as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (betw. 1320 and 1340) attributed to Ugolino da Siena or to some other follower of Segna di Bonaventura (to whom this painting has also been attributed), now in Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon:

http://www.medievalportland.pdx.edu/sites/default/files/cath.jpg

c) Margaret of Cortona (at far right) as depicted by Sassetta in his earlier fifteenth-century San Domenico di Cortona altarpiece (ca. 1434) in the Museo diocesano di Cortona:

http://tinyurl.com/pselm26

The Chair of Peter

Today's feast of the Chair of Peter, which I have posted about in Chair of St Peter last year, clearly has a particular significance this year, falling as it does less than a week before the present Pope lays down the Petrine burden. At Mass this morning the homily urged us to keep both the Pope and the College of Cardinals in our prayers, as well as the man who will be elected to fill the See of Peter - not that, I am sure, we are not so doing.

There is an informative post about the way the feast is celebrated in St Peter's Basilica in an article from 2011 on the New Liturgical Movement website which can be seen at Decorations of the Vatican Basilica on the Feast of St. Peter's Chair. This site as well as  another one on the same theme can be found in my post from last year More on the Chair of St Peter.

There is information about the history of the enthroned statue of St Peter attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio from the Vatican website here.

 The enthroned statue of St Peter in the Vatican as vested for today's feast

Image: Panoramio

For those who have not read it here is the second lection from the Office of Readings for today in the Divine Office. It is from one of the homilies of Pope St Leo the Great (440-461), who was, I think it fair to say, the first Pope or indeed Father of the Church to fully outline the responsibilities of the Papal office.

" Out of the whole world one man, Peter, is chosen to preside at the calling of all nations, and to be set over all the apostles and all the fathers of the Church. Though there are in God’s people many shepherds, Peter is thus appointed to rule in his own person those whom Christ also rules as the original ruler. Beloved, how great and wonderful is this sharing of his power that God in his goodness has given to this man. Whatever Christ has willed to be shared in common by Peter and the other leaders of the Church, it is only through Peter that he has given to others what he has not refused to bestow on them.

  The Lord now asks the apostles as a whole what men think of him. As long as they are recounting the uncertainty born of human ignorance, their reply is always the same.

  But when he presses the disciples to say what they think themselves, the first to confess his faith in the Lord is the one who is first in rank among the apostles.

  Peter says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replies: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” You are blessed, he means, because my Father has taught you. You have not been deceived by earthly opinion, but have been enlightened by inspiration from heaven. It was not flesh and blood that pointed me out to you, but the one whose only-begotten Son I am.

  He continues: And I say to you. In other words, as my Father has revealed to you my godhead, so I in my turn make known to you your pre-eminence. You are Peter: though I am the inviolable rock, the cornerstone that makes both one, the foundation apart from which no one can lay any other, yet you also are a rock, for you are given solidity by my strength, so that which is my very own because of my power is common between us through your participation.

  And upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. On this strong foundation, he says, I will build an everlasting temple. The great height of my Church, which is to penetrate the heavens, shall rise on the firm foundation of this faith.

  The gates of hell shall not silence this confession of faith; the chains of death shall not bind it. Its words are the words of life. As they lift up to heaven those who profess them, so they send down to hell those who contradict them.

  Blessed Peter is therefore told: To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth is also bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven.

  The authority vested in this power passed also to the other apostles, and the institution established by this decree has been continued in all the leaders of the Church. But it is not without good reason that what is bestowed on all is entrusted to one. For Peter received it separately in trust because he is the prototype set before all the rulers of the Church."

The text has been downloaded from the Universalis site, and is, I think, a different translation from that in the Divine Office as used in this country, Ireland, Australia etc.

The Chair of St Peter at Rome - some reflections

As this year we shall lose the feast of the Chair of Peter as it fall on the same day, February 22 as Ash Wednesday it seems appropriate to say something about it on the day which was for long observed as that of the Chair of Peter at Rome, as opposed to that of the Chair of Peter at Antioch, celebrated on February 22 under that title until the changes resulting in the Novus Ordo effectively combined both celebrations.

Bernini's Cathedra Petri of 1647-53

Image:Wikipedia

There is an online history of the observance and the physical relic and reliquary here. The original date appears to be February 22, and that was the day observed as a feast in Rome until the post-Tridentine reforms of the calendar. Some places celebrated it as a feast on January 18th to avoid losing the observance with it often falling in Lent, and from this arose the idea of commemorating both of St Peter's cathedra - Rome in January, Antioch on the original feast day.

My two posts from February last year on the subject can be read at Chair of St Peter and More on the Chair of St Peter.

The feast is, of course more about the continuing Petrine ministry of the Papacy than about a tangible relic or past event, and that point gives me the opportunity to post one of my favourite quotations from an historian. It comes from Walter Ullmann's introduction to his A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, first published in 1972 and still available in new editions, and, having made his essential point that the history of the Papacy is the history of an idea - the Petrine claim - this is what he then says...

the papacy is the only institution in the European or Western orbit of civilization which links the post-Apostolic with the Atomic age

Ullmann continues:

as an institution it has witnessed the birth, growth, prosperity, decay and disappearance of powerful empires, nations and even of whole civilizations; it has witnessed radical transformations in the cosmological field evidenced by bloody revolutions, intercontinental wars and popular upheavels of such magnitudes and dimensions that wholly novel political and social structures appeared in their train.

I think that the first phrase I have quoted, which I first read in 1994, and has stayed with me ever since, was working away at the back of my mind and was a contributory factor to my conversion.