Celebrating the Nativity of St John the Baptist

Yesterday was the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist and the always very well informed and informative Catholic website The Pillar had an article about ways of celebrating the day. I have copied this below:

Traditional St John’s fire, Brittany. Public domain.

Across much of Europe, John the Baptist’s birth was celebrated customarily on St. John’s Eve — last night — the vigil ahead of the feast, on which bonfires were customarily lit on hilltops or in village squares, ostensibly to convey the brilliant light of the prophet, who proclaimed the illuminating Christ himself.

Some countries had customs in which men competed to jump across the bonfires and women danced, others had blessings of herbs, and many customs included countryside picnics, meant to evoke that John himself lived (and ate) outside, in the desert.

I don’t think the picnics featured locusts prominently, but honey was probably a factor, and special brewed honeyed beer shows up in the St. John’s customs of some countries.

Much of this is long past in secularized Europe — and again, it was customarily celebrated yesterday — but St. John’s birthday seems like a good enough time for a liturgically-motivated family or rectory trip to the backyard firepit, especially with a six pack of Honey Brown.

The New Liturgical Movement also had articles about the dat. Their three articles about different aspects of the celebration of this important day in the ecclesiastical calendar can be seen as complementary to each other whilst entirely distinct in what they consider.

The first looks at an early text from the Vigil Mass and at a series of early fourteenth century panel paintings, from the area of Pisa and Luca, and now in Berlin, narrating the story of the Saint’s birth. This can be seen at The Vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist

The origins and history of the liturgy of the vigil and of the feast itself, as well as traditional popular celebrations of the day, notably bonfires, are set out in Liturgical Notes on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

The third is an entertaining account of a revived medieval game of football played in Florence, a city under the patronage of St John, on this day. This can be seen at Florence’s Crazy Soccer Game on the Feast of St John the Baptist

This is not dissimilar, given its particular Italian - or should I say Tuscan - characteristic - to similar rough and tumble survivals in England on religious feasts, such as the Epiphany Haney Hood, or the Shrovetide games at Ashbourne, Atherstone, and Alnwick, or that of the Corfe Marblers in Purbeck. My post Shrovetide celebrations from earlier  this year has links to other articles about these games and their history.

Sta Maria Novella in Florence

Recently I came upon a video about the great Dominican church of Sta Maria Novella in Florence. It can be seen at Santa Maria Novella - Florence - Churches and Museums - Virtual Walk 

The Wikipedia account of the church is detailed and can be seen at Santa Maria Novella

Despite its Renaissance facade the building is late medieval Florentine gothic. Inside it is  decorated with many works by major artists of the early generations of later fourteenth and fifteenth century Florence. 

It was at this time that Sta Maria Novella was of great importance not just as the Dominican church in so important a centre as Florence, but as the administrative centre of the Catholic Church. From 1418-20 the newly elected Pope Martin V resided in a hastily constructed palace attached the north east of the church. This was a lengthy pause on his journey to Rome. This Papal building now serves as the provincial police academy. 

One of the people who either lived with the Pope or must have frequented the palace was Richard Fleming, who had been appointed as a Chamberlain to the new Pope immediately upon his election in 1417 at Constance. It was doubtless here that in 1420 Pope Martin “with wonderful piety”, as Fleming was to recall it later when he wrote his own epitaph, consecrated as a bishop on his appointment to the diocese of Lincoln. 

Amongst the paintings in the church is the famous fresco by Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze which is sometimes termed The Triumph of the Church but is more accurately The Allegory of the Active and Triumpthant Church and o the Dominican Order. This was painted in 1365-7. It must have been seen by Richard Fleming when he was in residence at Sta Maria Novella.

In addition to the figures mentioned in the main Wikipedia article it includes in the foreground a young man wearing the Garter of a Knight of the Order, and thought to be the earliest representation of the insignia. Given the date of the work the most likely candidate must be Lionel of Antwerp, first Duke of Clarence, who married a Visconti and died soon after in Italy in 1368.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise that part of the painting forms the masthead at the beginning.

Image:  Wikipedia

Epiphany

Today is the Epiphany of Our Lord, a wonderful event in the earthly life of Christ, and a wonderful event in the annual life of the Church, full of meaning and one which has shown itself to be a rich source of inspiration to artists in fulfilling commissions over many centuries.

Two of the most famous, and which regularly features on Christmas cards are in Florence. The earlier in date is Gentile da Fabriano’s The Adoration of the Magi from 1423 which was commissioned by the Strozzi family for the church of Sta Trinità, but is now in the Uffizi. The second is Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco cycle of the journey of the Magi, which was painted in 1459 on the walls of the private chapel of the Medici Palace.

Smarthistory has two illustrated pieces about these famous works Which placed them in their historical context and bring out some of the details which draw you ever deeper into homage of the Magi, with all their wealth, as depicted for two very wealthy and cultured Florentine banking families. In one aspect these paintings are extravagant celebrations of the wealth and lifestyle that the two families had or aspired to. They are an insight, a vision indeed, of an exclusive and privileged world for fifteenth century Florentines. Yet the very fact of their having commissioned them indicate an awareness on their part that they were fortunate and both able and anxious to place themselves as humble suitors before the infant King of Kings. One difference is that the Strozzi commission was for a parish church, but the Medici chapel was very much private sacred space.That also applies to Gozzoli’s painting of the Adoration which he painted in the cell created by Cosimo de Medici for private meditation at San Marco in Florence. This is also discussed in the relevant article. In temporal terms the Medici at least had made money out of the institutional Church,  yet both commissions suggest an awareness that all the good things in the Strozzi and Medici families came from God.

The Strozzi Adoration is discussed at Smarthistory – Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi (reframed)

The Medici chapel is described at Smarthistory – Benozzo Gozzoli, The Medici Palace Chapel frescoes