Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages - Martyrdom, Popular.pdf

Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, Popular Veneration, and Canonization Ryan, James D.

The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 90, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 1-28 (Article) Published by The Catholic University of America Press DOI: 10.1353/cat.2004.0041

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cat/summary/v090/90.1ryan.html

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The Catholic Historical Review VOL. XC

JANUARY, 2004

No. 1

MISSIONARY SAINTS OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES: MARTYRDOM, POPULAR VENERATION, AND CANONIZATION BY

JAMES D. RYAN*

At the beginning of the thirteenth century,as missionaries were again leaving Europe in the hope of creating a Christian world, the idea of martyrdom cast a powerful spell.The church calendar still gave primary place to holy martyrs, who had accepted gruesome torture and death rather than renounce their faith in Christ and His promise of eternal happiness. Liturgical services commemorated their glorious sacrifices, and their cults made them objects of particular devotion. Many of the mendicant missionaries who ventured into pagan and Islamic realms in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also accepted death rather than renounce Christianity, and their passiones, accounts written to commemorate their sufferings, were cast in terms reminiscent of the passions of early Christian martyrs. Nevertheless, the institutional church was slow to legitimize their cultus and reluctant to honor them as saints, despite efforts by their confreres in Europe to win recognition and canonization for these martyrs. Over time, however, often many centuries later, some of these missionaries were belatedly inscribed among the blessed by the Roman Church. Addressing both the circumstances of early Franciscan missionary martyrdoms and Rome’s indifference to requests for canonization of the martyrs, this paper elaborates cases of the few mission martyrs who did eventually win recognition as saints of the Roman Church. *Dr. Ryan is resident professor of history in the City University of New York (Bronx Community College). His research in Italy and Portugal was partially supported by grants from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.

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Papal indifference toward canonization of mendicant friars killed for professing their faith in the mission field is problematic. Church doctrine maintained that the sins of any who laid down their lives for the faith were deemed to be washed away in their blood, and their entry into Paradise guaranteed.1 Only a cursory inquiry into the facts of such cases ought to have been necessary to establish sainthood. This fact notwithstanding, the canonization process, newly created at the dawn of the thirteenth century,was used to keep martyrs killed in the mission fields from being acknowledged as saints.2 The Roman Church not only insisted on close scrutiny before endorsing the cults of those killed while trying to convert infidels; it also refused to open proceedings that might lead to canonization. Only in the closing years of the fifteenth century did the Church accept thirteenth-century mission martyrs as candidates for sainthood, and the few fourteenth-century martyrs who have been beatified won this recognition centuries later. Although the facts in each case are unique, it will be seen that martyrs who did become beati or sancti seem to have enjoyed both the support of their Orders and an active cult within Europe. Such popular devotion did not guarantee official church sanction, however. Indeed, popular cults seem often to have been stumbling blocks in the path to beatification of martyrs because the Roman Church, in the face of schism and heresy within the western church, became wary of lay enthusiasm for new martyrs’ cults. As André Vauchez has demonstrated, there was a popular predisposition to venerate martyrs, and many clerics and laymen who suffered an undeserved death were acclaimed as such. His Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages cites some twenty-six men, women, and children for whom cults arose in the high Middle 1 “It is the constant teaching of the Church that [in martyrdom] is such an intensity of love expressed as to justify the sinner, baptized or unbaptized, and to bring him the forgiveness of all his sins, removing all guilt with stain, pardoning all debt of temporal punishment, and adorning him with a special crown, or aureole. He who prays for a martyr does him an injury, said Innocent III.” Thomas Gilby and Lawrence S. Cunningham,“Martyrdom,Theology of,”New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (New York, 2003), IX, 230–231, at p. 231. 2 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (originally published 1981), trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge,1997),pp.25–26,surveying relevant literature,concludes that the papal assertion of an exclusive right to canonize dates to the letter of Alexander III (1159–1181) to King Kol of Sweden (Aeterna et incommutabilis) written about 1171. A paragraph of this epistle (commencing with the word Audivimus) was so identified by commentators on canon law when it was inserted in the Decretals in 1234. Vauchez believes that the papcy presumed this right even before 1170, and notes that Innocent III (1198–1216) exercised it confidently ( pp. 27–28). Concerning papal resistance to the canonization of mission martyrs, see below.

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Ages. The sole trait they had in common was an unmerited, violent end.3 Vauchez sees this phenomenon not only as reflecting popular fear of violent death and thirst for justice,but also as attesting to the survival of a basic ideal of primitive Christianity: that the only true saints were martyrs. Whether or not Vauchez’s interpretation of motive is accepted, the fact is that cults venerating perceived victims did arise spontaneously within European society. These new cults, local manifestations of heightened religious ardor, fed ecclesiastical fear of heretical sects, a concern intensified because condemned heretics and schismatics had sometimes received popular acclaim as martyrs.4 It was partly to control popular enthusiasm and to regulate new cults that the papacy took the making of saints into its own hands by establishing rules for canonization. Thereafter the Roman Church closely examined the lives and deeds of men and women, perceived to be holy and popularly venerated as saints, before sanctioning their cults. Such thorough investigations, which seem to have little relevance in the case of orthodox martyrs, were still in the process of development when Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) hailed as a saint his legate to Languedoc, Peter of Castelnau, only one year after his 1208 murder by deputies of the count of Toulouse.5 Castelnau appears to have been declared a saint by papal order, without having been the object of a canonization, and despite the lack of a popular cult.6 The papal bull that Ibid., pp. 147–151.Vauchez assures us that this is not an exhaustive list. Arnold of Brescia,for example,was censured as early as 1139 for his views on absolute clerical poverty and the abandonment of temporal power by the Church. After he was burned by the Prefect of Rome in 1155 (for his role in a short-lived Roman Republic), his ashes were scattered in the Tiber, lest the populace venerate them as relics. George W. Greenaway, Arnold of Brescia (Cambridge, 1931). Similar, if less dramatic, examples could easily be multiplied. 5 This event, which helped foment the Albigensian Crusade, occurred in mid-January, but Peter’s feast was fixed as March 5. Acta sanctorum [hereafter, Acta SS], March 5. 6 Augustin Villemagne, Bullaire du Bienheureux Pierre de Castelnau, Martyr de la Foi (16 Février 1208) (Montpellier, 1917), published Innocent III’s bulls of March 10, 1208, announcing the martyrdom of Peter of Castelnau (Ne nos ejus tangeret, to the archbishops of Arles, Narbonne, Embrun,Aix, and Vienne, and to their suffragans, pp. 292–301; and Rem crudelem audivimus, to counts, barons, and knights of Narbonne, Arles, Embrun, Aix, and Vienne, pp. 306–315). Noting that these were included in the Codex canonizationum (Rome, 1729), pp. 41–48, Villemagne observed ( p. 348),“Castelnau seems not to have been the object of an express beatification, but, nevertheless, had the equivalent by reason of the two bulls.”Hoffman Nickerson asserts (The Inquisition: A Political and Military Study of its Establishment [London, 1923], p. 95) “that, unlike Becket, the martyred de Castelnau was not canonized nor did his tomb at St. Giles [St. Aegidius] become a center of pilgrimage and of miracles.” There was, however, enough of a cult to induce the Huguenots to burn Castelnau’s remains in 1562. In the mid-nineteenth century, Pius IX of3 4

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announced his death, addressed to the counts, barons, and knights of southern France, termed Castelnau a true martyr, who, like the protomartyr Stephen, forgave his attackers: he had told them,“May God forgive you,because I forgive.”7 Although Innocent cited unspecified “clear miracles” as attesting to Castelanu’s holiness, it was his martyrdom,“to advance the faith and in the cause of peace,” which provided grounds for recognizing him as a saint.8 As the process of canonization was articulated, however, the Roman Church endorsed few new saints, and very few new martyrs.9 Saints Stanislaus and Peter of Verona, canonized in 1253, were the only martyrs (other than Castelnau) recognized as beati during the thirteenth century.10 The former,an Archbishop of Krakow,had been killed in 1079 by agents of King Boleslaus II. Stanislaus had become the object of a substantial cult in Poland that Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254) ratified.11 The latter, also known as Peter Martyr, was a Dominican inquisitor assassinated in 1252.12 Perhaps because so many inquisitors were threatened with a similar fate, Innocent IV made Peter’s canonization a papal cause and proclaimed him a saint the next year.13 The 1253 canonizations were unique events,however,despite papal willingness to acknowledge that those who shed their blood for the faith, whether inquisitors or missionaries, were martyrs. Innocent IV, for example, addressed sevficially confirmed his cult ab immemorabili, declaring him Blessed. Bibliotheca Sanctorum, eds. Filippo Caraffa et al. (13 vols.; Rome, 1961–1970), III, 931–932. 7 “Deus tibi dimittat, quia ego dimitto.” Acta SS, March 5, and Villemagne, op. cit., p. 308. 8 Acta SS, March 5. 9 Vauchez, op.cit., presents a list (Table 9, pp. 252–255) of all processes for canonization (seventy-two such were opened) and canonizations proclaimed (thirty-seven) between 1198 and 1431. 10 It should be noted that Castelnau, proclaimed a saint without a formal inquiry, is not included in Vauchez’s Table 9. 11 Acta SS, May 7, gives Innocent IV’s bull Olim a gentilium, along with vitae of St. Stanislaus and testimony concerning his cult. See also W. Urusczak,“Les répercussions de la mort de S. Thomas Becket en Pologne,” in Thomas Becket, Actes de colloque international de Sédières (19–24 aout 1973) (Paris, 1975), pp. 115–125, cited by Vauchez, op. cit., p. 168, n. 36. Stanislaus’s cause was opened in 1250. 12 Acta SS, April 29. 13 Ibid., Innocent IV’s bull Magnis et crebris, March 24, 1253. Process for his canonization was opened shortly after his death, and the inquiry into his cause held the same year. The papacy subsequently fostered and promoted the cult of Peter Martyr; although he had been killed on April 5, in 1586, Sixtus V fixed his feast on April 29, so that it would never be overshadowed by the Easter Cycle.

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eral bulls to mendicant orders, recognizing brothers who had been killed in the name of Christ, and proclaiming his certitude that they were associated to the college of martyrs.14 These sentiments not withstanding, Rome resisted attempts to have them canonized. Medieval missionary martyrs and their sacrifices were not forgotten, even if the institutional church turned a blind eye toward them. The religious orders, primarily the Franciscans and Dominicans, which had sent them to convert the infidel, preserved their vitae and legendae, keeping their memory alive in chronicles and prayers, and providing them with cultus to the present day.The overwhelming majority of mission martyrs from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries still lack official recognition, however. Before turning to a representative sample of the few Franciscan mission martyrs who were eventually declared beati or sancti,an overview of the mission effort of the High Middle Ages and the martyrdoms it engendered will provide background information essential for understanding the contrast between the many unrecognized martyrs and the canonized few. Background on the Medieval Mission

The renewal of mission efforts outside Europe in the High Middle Ages produced scores of martyrs.15 Most of these were from the Franciscans and Dominicans, new religious orders that assumed a prominent role as foreign mission work revived and intensified in the thirteenth century.16 They supplied the cadre of dedicated preachers who again 14 Among those acknowledged as martyrs in papal letters, but not canonized, are the Dominican Conrad of Germany, murdered in 1230 (Galvano Fiamma’s Chronica ordinis fratrum in Annales Fratrum Praedicatorum, 10 [1940], pp. 352–353); the inquisitors and notaries killed in 1243 at Avignonnet (Bull. Franciscana, 1, 305–306); and the Franciscan inquisitor Peter of Arcagnano, assassinated in 1248 (Bull. Franciscana, 1, 720). Cited by Vauchez, op. cit., p. 415, n. 9. 15 For a good overview of medieval mission activity, see Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity (7 vols.; New York, 1937–1945), Volume 2: The Thousand Years of Uncertainty (New York, 1938). Richard Fletcher’s The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997) provides interesting insights into the development of the missionary tradition, but does not address the creation of a foreign mission in the later Middle Ages. 16 For Franciscan mission efforts, see Noe Simonut, Il Metodo d’Evangelizzazione dei Francescani tra Musulmani e Mongoli nei Secoli XIII–XIV (Milan, 1947); E. Randolph Daniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington, 1975); and (for their mission activity in Asia Minor and Greece) Lydia von Auw, Anglo Clareno et les Spirituels Italiens (Rome, 1979). For the Dominicans, see Berthold Altaner, Die Do-

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took up the gospel challenge,“Go, therefore, and make all nations your disciples: baptize them . . . and teach them to observe all the commandments I have given you” (Matthew 28:19–20).17 The mission field they entered had been opened,in the first instance,because of crusader successes. Before the crusades proselytizing had virtually stopped on the southern and eastern flanks of Europe because Islam tolerated no challenge to its faith or the prophet, Muhammad. The re-establishment of Christian rule in the Levant, Mediterranean islands, and Iberia opened those lands to Christian preachers. After the fall of Constantinople in 1204 in the Fourth Crusade, an unparalleled success in terms of territory conquered, the Balkan peninsula was also opened up to Western missionaries.18 In addition, lands surrounding Byzantium, traditionally tied to the Orthodox Church, increasingly looked toward Rome for leadership and protection. At the same time missionaries were busy along the Baltic, working to bring the last of Europe’s pagan peoples into the Christian fold.19 Even the Mongols,who had posed such a threat in the first half of the thirteenth century, sought friendly relations with the West and encouraged mission expansion after 1260,following Kublia’s conquest of China, and his brother Hülegü’s destruction of both the Assassins (1257) and the Caliphate of Baghdad (1258).20 The khans not only allowed Christian missionaries to travel into Asia; they gave them permission to preach throughout Mongol territory, and by the fourteenth century there were Latin mission outposts in Mongol Persia, the Qipchaq Khanate (the Golden Horde), and Cathay (China).21 In addiminikanermissionen des 13. Jahrhunderts (Habelschwerdt, 1924); and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, La Société des frères pérégrinants, étude sur l’orient dominicain (Rome,1937). 17 Several passages from scripture reinforced medieval missionaries’ belief in the Christian mandate to proselytize, e.g.:“This Gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout the whole world, so all nations will have valid evidence. Then will the end come” (Matthew 24:14); and “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). 18 This complex story is ably told in Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571),Vol. 1: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1976). 19 For the Baltic mission see Eric Christiansen,The Northern Crusades,2nd ed.(London, 1997). Most areas on the Baltic littoral were officially converted by the mid-thirteenth century, but Dominican missionaries struggled to combat vestigial pagan practices well into the next century, and Lithuania did not accept even superficial conversion until 1386. 20 David Morgan,The Mongols (London,1986),with its bibliography,provides a good introduction to the Mongols. For the Mongols’ initial impact on Europe see James Chambers, The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (London, 1979). 21 For Western missionary and diplomatic contact with the Mongols and their accommodation of the missionaries, see James D. Ryan,“Conversion vs. Baptism? European Missionaries in Asia in the 13th and 14th Centuries,” in Varities of Religious Conversion in

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tion, the appearance of restored Christian unity helped stimulate zeal for mission activity. Several Eastern churches had recognized papal primacy, while others were in negotiation over union with Rome.22 Lastly, diplomatic contact with Tunis and Morocco had been established by several European courts, including the papal curia, and missionaries ventured to North Africa, both to bring spiritual comfort to Christian captives and mercenaries, and in hope of winning Muslim converts.23 Mission ventures were launched throughout the Eurasian continent and into North Africa, but in this era most martyrs suffered at the hands of Muslims. Islam, like Christianity in its monotheism and dogmatism, stressed the importance of bringing non-believers into the fellowship of faith, and dealt harshly with heretics and blasphemers. It was Muslim abhorrence of blasphemy that brought wrath upon the friars and occasioned martyrdom, because missionary preachers, especially the Franciscans, thought it their task to indict Muhammad as false prophet, heretic, and Antichrist.24 Franciscans delighted in preaching to Muslims, courting confrontation and knowing full well that they offended Islamic sensibilities, and they were free to do this in Tartar territory because they generally received a khan’s yarligh, a grant of privilege, the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainsville, Florida, 1997), pp. 146–167; Felicitas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen, 1994); Jean Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen age (XIII e–XV e siècles) (Rome, 1977); Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (Stanford, 1971); and Giovanni Soranzo, Il Papato, l’Europa Christiana e i Tartari (Milan, 1930). 22 These include the Maronite rite, which established union with Rome shortly after 1215; the Cilician Armenians, whose Catholicus Constantine I (1221–1267) adopted the Roman creed [see Aziz S. Atiya, History of Eastern Christianity (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1968), pp. 333 and 398–399]; and the northern Syrian Jacobite church, which entered formal union in 1245 [Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (New York, 1976), III, 232–233]. Even the Orthodox Church bowed to Rome, at the Council of Lyons, in 1274; see the relevant essays in 1274: Année Charnière, Mutations et Continuités,Proceedings of the 1974 International Colloquium in Lyons and Paris (Paris, 1977). 23 James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 39–41 and 52– 56. See also Karl-Ernst Lupprian, Die Beziehungen der Päpste zu islamischen und mongolischen Herrschern im 13. Jahrhundert anhand ihres Briefwechsels (Vatican City, 1981). 24 According to Robert I. Burns,“Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: The Thirteenth Century Dream of Conversion,” American Historical Review, 76 (1971), 1386– 1434, at p. 1395, the OFM missionary method was confrontation,“outrageous, consciously ineffective, . . . designed to engage the forces of heaven at some mystical level.” For the identification of Muhammad as Antichrist, see, inter alia, Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh, 1960); and Richard W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962).

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allowing them to preach.25 Pascal of Victoria provides a good illustration of confrontational preaching. His exploits in Central Asia are known in some detail because he wrote a lengthy letter home about 1338, shortly before his martyrdom at Almalyq.26 In 1335 he preached outside a mosque in Urgench, in Qipchaq Khanate, haranguing Muslims about the “cheats, falsehoods, and blunders of their false prophet.”27 Because of the khan’s yarligh, this was tolerated for twenty-five days before local authorities moved against Pascal, and even then he was merely beaten and allowed to travel on. If missionaries preached in this fashion without official protection,however,the full weight of outraged Muslim authority fell upon them. The passiones depict missionary martyrs, in these circumstances, as welcoming that consequence. Mission Martyrs from the Thirteenth Century

Saint Berard of Carbio and his four companions provided an early example of aggressive proselytizing.They are doubly interesting;their deaths in 1220 made them the earliest of the Franciscan martyrs, and their canonization in 1481 made them the first missionary martyrs to be officially proclaimed saints since the thirteenth century.28 Sent to Iberia by St. Francis himself in 1219, Berard’s party, with help from the court of Portugal, made their way to Seville.29 There they attempted to preach in the main 25 One yarligh from Qipchaq, for example, issued between 1267 and 1280, and periodically renewed, gave protection “to Latin priests which according to custom are called brothers,” and to their churches and bell towers. Michael Bihl and Arthur C. Moule, Tria nova documenta de missionibus F M Tartariae Aquilonaris, in Archivum franciscanum historicum, XVII (1924), 55–71, at pp. 56–58 and 65. 26 See Anastasius Van den Wyngaert (ed.),Sinica Franciscana,Vol.I:Itinera et relationes fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi,1929) [hereafter,Sinica Fran],pp.501– 506; and Analecta Franciscana [hereafter, Anal Fran], III, Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Minorum (Quaracchi, 1897), pp. 535–555. Henry Yule translates Pascal’s letter, as printed in Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum, 2nd ed. (16 vols.; Rome, 1731–1736) [hereafter, Ann Min], VII, 256–257, in Cathay and the Way Thither, edd. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, 2nd ed. (4 vols.; London, 1913–1916) [hereafter, Yule, Cathay], III, 81–88. 27 Yule, Cathay, III, 86. 28 Berard (also known as Otto Berard and Baraldus) was accompanied by Peter, Odo,Accursio, and Adjutus. See Anal Fran, III, 15–19 and pp. 579–596; Acta SS, January 16; Ann Min at 1220; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, II, 1271–1272; and Butler’s Lives of the Saints, edited, revised and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Atwater (4 vols.; New York, 1956), I, 103. 29 Francis had placed the group under the leadership of Brother Vitale, but, when he became ill in Aragon,leadership devolved on Berard,who spoke some Arabic. Anal Fran,III, 16, and Jules Baudot and P. Caussin, Vies des Saints et des Bienheureux (13 vols.; Paris, 1935–1959), I, 332–333.

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mosque, but were prevented by Muslim worshipers, physically abused, and arrested. Even from their cell, however, they railed against “Muhammad and his damnable law.”30 Sent to Morocco for judgment, they continued to preach Christianity openly, and refused either to return to Europe or to keep quiet.Their persistence was at last rewarded;the sultan himself split their heads with his scimitar on January 16, 1220. These five earliest Franciscan martyrs had a profound effect because they gave substance to ideals St. Francis had incorporated in his rule.31 Francis expressed delight on learning of their heroic endurance:“Now I can truly say I have five brothers.”32 Nevertheless,he forbade the reading of their legenda and vita because “each friar should glory in his own and not in another’s passion.”33 Francis’s wishes notwithstanding, his Order of Friars Minor gloried in the suffering of their fellows abroad and carefully recorded the legends of the missionary martyrs in Franciscan chronicles.The most important of these, the Chronicle of the Twenty-four Generals, is a compilation of annals, archived about 1375.34 It recorded notable events at and between each Chapter General, and inserted a great deal of hagiography, including much of what we know about missionary martyrs. This work is a major source for information about Berard and his associates, recounting their mission and martyrdom and wonders attending their deaths.35 In addition to keeping a record of their sufferings, the Franciscans also showed their protomartyrs, and others of their brethren killed in the fields of the Lord, due reverence, and celebrated their feast days. Berard and his companions are unusual, however, because, unlike other missionary martyrs of this era, they were also the subjects of a Acta SS, January 16. E. Randolph Daniel, op. cit., pp. 37–54, discusses the early rule and the importance of missionary work and martyrdom. Francis’ regula prima enjoined brothers to preach simply, and made example the primary means of conversion, but “the sources describe the early Franciscan missionaries as moved by zeal for souls and the desire for martyrdom, . . . [which compelled] them to go to Spain, North Africa and the Middle East to convert Muslims” ( p. 41). 32 Anal Fran, III, 593. 33 This was recorded by Giordano of Giano, Chronica, sections 7–8, see Anal Fran, I, 3-4, cited by E. Randolph Daniel op. cit., p. 42, n. 26. 34 For a critical edition, edited by the fathers of the College of St. Bonaventure,Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi),see Anal Fran,III.An English translation is forthcoming from the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, New York, but a date for publication has not yet been set. 35 Anal Fran, III, 15–22. Appendix I, pp. 579–596, is their passio. Other notices of the martyrdoms, beginning with Vincent of Beauvais, who mentions them in Speculum historiale, Book 30, Chap. 13, are summarized in Acta SS, January 16, §III (Vitae scriptores). 30 31

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popular cult in Portugal, where they became known as the Santos mártires de Marrocos. The Franciscan protomartyrs won a special place in the Portuguese pantheon of saints because, immediately after their death,their bones were carried to Coimbra,then the capital of Portugal, where royal patronage encouraged their veneration. Royal interest in these friars had begun with their arrival in Portugal, when they had received an audience with Orraca, wife of King Afonso II (1211–1223).36 Berard had so impressed the queen that she secured the king’s support for their mission to Seville. As it happened, another member of the Portuguese royal family, Peter-Ferdinand, a younger brother of Afonso II, accompanied the martyrs to Africa and supported them during their brief mission there.37 After their demise he secured permission from the sultan to collect their relics, which he transported back to Coimbra in two silver chests.38 According to the Franciscan chronicle, which reports numerous signs and wonders following the martyr’s deaths in Morocco, and during their relics’ journey to Portugal, their fame had already spread before they arrived in Coimbra.“The queen . . . with the whole people ran to the sacred relics, and with great devotion and solemnity led them to the [Augustinian] monastery of the Holy Cross and placed them there with honor.”39 The return of relics of Berard and his companions to Europe, and the extensive cult that sprang up around their bones, make them almost unique among mission martyrs.40 36 Anal Fran, III, 11. Orraca, daughter of Alphonso IX of Castile, became a major patroness of the Franciscans. In 1218, when the friars first reached Portugal, they received a frosty reception. Through her intercession, however, Afonso II allowed them to construct two houses in Portugal that year. 37 The Infante, Peter-Ferdinand, was estranged from his brother Afonso and in exile. He was accompanying a Castilian nobleman, apparently on a diplomatic mission to the Almohad sultan, then resident in “Morocco” (the site of modern Marrakech), an administrative center that later gave its name to the surrounding territory. As they traveled the missionaries preached whenever they could and the Infante provided them with food. Anal Fran, III, 16–17. 38 Their relics had, according to their vita, been miraculously preserved from an attempt to cremate them. One chest held the “heads with desiccated flesh,” the other the martyrs’ bones. Anal Fran, III, 20 and 592. 39 Anal Fran, III, 592. This passio was reworked and abbreviated into seven readings by John Tisserand, after their canonization, for the Franciscan Breviary. That version is reproduced in Acta SS, January 16. 40 There were some other early Franciscan martyrs whose bones were returned to Europe and venerated. These include Daniel and his six companions, who were martyred at Ceuta in 1227, and John of Perugia and Peter of Sassoferrato, martyred by Abu Zayd, the Almohad ruler at Valencia, in 1231. These cases did not generate such elaborate cults as that which developed for the martyrs of Morocco. For the former see Anal Fran, III, 32– 33 and 613–616; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, IV, 469–470; and Domenico Zangari, I setti SS. Frati francescani martirizzati a Ceuta (Naples, 1926). For the latter see Anal Fran, III,

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A popular cult for the five martyrs developed and spread throughout Portugal immediately after the arrival of their remains, and, as it expanded, the relics were shared with other areas of that kingdom.41 This process began when Sancha, sister of King Afonso and abbess of the cloistered Cistercian convent of Lorvão, near Coimbra, acquired the heads and bones of two martyrs through negotiations with the Augustinian Canons of St.Cruz.42 The Lorvão convent and the monastery of St. Cruz received requests from all over the kingdom for remains of the holy men, and became twin fonts from which relics were disseminated to other centers in Portugal.43 Records concerning the fabrication of elaborate reliquaries show that costly shrines to the martyrs were located in Porto, Lisbon, and other centers well in advance of the protomartyrs’ canonization in 1481.44 Their cult was strongest in the area of Coimbra, however, where complex rituals developed in connection with the celebration of the martyrs’ January 16 feast. One of the more 186–188; Burns, op. cit., pp. 1396–1397; and León Amorós Payá,“Los santos mártires franciscanos B. Juan de Perusa y B. Pedro de Saxoferrato en la historia de Teruel,” Teruel, 15 (1956),5–142.Leo X endorsed the cult of Daniel and his companions (feast day October 13) in 1516. Their relics were venerated for a time in several cities in Spain, Portugal, southern France, and Italy. John and Peter had a more lasting cult. The place of their execution was considered holy ground, and they were credited with bringing about the subsequent conversion of Abu Zayd,who became a vassal of James I of Aragon after 1233.Their bones were ransomed and carried to Teruel,Aragon,where they became the center of a cult that continues to the present day. For the chronology of James’s conquest see Robert I. Burns, The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), II, 307. 41 Redemptus Menth,“Zur Verehrung der Protomartyrer des Franziskannerordens, St. Berard und Genossen,” Franziskanische Studien, 26 (1939), 101–120, makes an exhaustive survey of testimony concerning the cult of the martyrs in Portugal, tracing its development down to the twentieth century. 42 Ibid., p. 103. Subsequently a beautiful stone casket was made to house the holy bones. The convent of Lorvão was secularized in the nineteenth century, but the convent church still serves as parish church for the local area. When the author visited there in 1999 the sacristan showed him the small, unadorned box that preserves the few remaining fragments of the martyrs’ bones. It is kept, along with other church treasures,in a glass case in the sacristy. The reliquary sarcophagus, some 105x45x37 cm., with richly carved reliefs on one side depicting the five martyrs being greeted by a seated female figure ( probably Queen Orraca), is now in the collection of the Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, in Coimbra, where it was cleaned and beautifully restored in 1999. 43 Ibid., p. 104. 44 Flávio Gonçalves,“A representação artística dos ‘mártires de Marrocos,’” Museu, ed. Carlos da Silva Lopes, 2nd ed., VI (December, 1963), 20–50, identifies many examples of artistically decorated reliquaries fabricated prior to 1481 ( pp.20–28),but most of the precious reliquaries that survived were created in the late 1400’s and after, when treasure from Africa, Asia, and the New World supported artists who gave expression to the enthusiasm for the missionary work that swept Portugal in that era.

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bizarre rites was the “procissão dos nús,” in which hundreds of semiclad men and boys paraded through the streets of Coimbra before entering the church of St. Cruz, where they venerated the relics. This had its origins no later than 1423,a plague year in Portugal,when Vasco Martiz, an obscure devotee, vowed to make an unclad pilgrimage to the martyrs’ relics each year, if his five sons be spared. He and his descendants became the nucleus for the naked processions that continued, despite ridicule from the university community in Coimbra, until they were suppressed in 1798.45 The nakedness of the participants had a direct, if strange, relationship to the cult of the martyrs; by laying aside their clothing, the devotees shared in the humility and degradation that the martyrs had experienced before their execution. In other centers (and in Coimbra, after the procissão dos nús were halted) extravagant displays of devotion continued into the nineteenth century, featuring boys dressed in Franciscan habits, wearing elaborate headdresses with swords that appeared to be cleaving their heads. It ought to be noted that, while the martyrs were Franciscan, and the Franciscan Order clearly encouraged devotion to them, the relics of the martyrs were chiefly housed in monasteries and convents of other religious orders, and the cult which developed was a Portuguese, not a Franciscan, phenomenon.46 Although many valuable silver and gilt reliquaries were lost with the suppression of religious cloisters in Portugal in the nineteenth century, physical evidence of the Portuguese faithful’s devotion to the martyrs of Morocco can still be seen, chiefly in wooden shrines which have survived.47 When, for example, the Augustinian Holy Cross monastery, where their relics originally resided, was suppressed in 1834, the costly silver shrine on the high altar of the St.Andrew chapel, into which their bones had been deposited in 1458,disappeared forever.48 The monastery’s 45 For the history of the “processio nudorum” and attendant rituals, see Menth, op. cit., pp. 106–109. Luke Wadding (Acta SS, January 16, Miracula) reports witnessing a procession of some 300 nudi when he was a student in Coimbra in 1610. 46 Menth notes (op. cit., p. 105) the Augustinian Canons’ important role in spreading devotion to the martyrs, and ( p. 103) that the relics were shared with other congregations of Canons Regular (St. Salvardo in Porto and St. Vincent in Lisbon, for example) even before they were granted to Franciscan convents. 47 There are exceptions to this rule, such as the gilded silver reliquary from 1515 in the Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro (Inventario da colecção Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, ourivesaria sécs. XVI e XVII [Lisbon, 1992], pp. 116–117), described in detail by António Noguiera Gonçalves, Estudos de ourivesaria (Porto, 1989), pp. 124– 126. 48 see Menth, op. cit., pp. 104.

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church was preserved, however, as the Igreja de Santa Cruz, a popular place of worship in downtown Coimbra. The treasury of that church still keeps what is left of the martyrs’ relics in a place of honor.49 There is also a shrine to them in the church itself,a tableau depicting five Franciscans in attitudes of prayer despite their chains.50 Another shrine survives in the Igreja de São Francisco, in Porto, a deconsecrated Gothic church whose interior, overlaid with gold from Brazilian treasure ships in the sixteenth century, makes it a tourist attraction.51 Among its treasures is a fifteenth-century altar dedicated to the martyrs of Morocco, with seven polychromed, life-sized wooden statues depicting the five martyrs in the process of being butchered by two Moroccans wielding swords.52 Less elaborate shrines located throughout Portugal also show how deeply the Moroccan martyrs captured the popular imagination of the Portuguese in the medieval era.53 The Franciscan protomartyrs had no such popular following elsewhere, even within the Iberian Peninsula. Neither the existence of this cult, nor royal support for the cause of the martyrs,was enough to move the papacy to canonize Berard and his companions. Royal requests for canonization of the Moroccan martyrs, such as the petition by King James II of Aragon to Pope John XXII (1316–1334) to begin the process of canonization, were of no avail.54 The papacy resisted pressure from both the Franciscan Order and the 49 The relics now reside in two silver and gilt reliquary busts, prominently displayed in the church’s treasury. They are considered second in importance only to the relics of St. Teofilio, who founded Holy Cross Monastery in the late twelfth century. His more elaborate reliquary bust displays his cranium through a crystal window. 50 This shrine is a shelf at eye-level in the right aisle of the church, near the entrance to the sacristy and the treasury. The five figures are polychromed wood statues approximately fifty cm. in height. When the author photographed the shrine in 1997, it was graced by a small pot of live flowers. 51 In the Church of St. Francis thirteenth-century Gothic architecture is overwhelmed by glitter. The elaborate foliated carvings that surround its numerous altars, extend up its pillars, and overspread the ceiling, are still coated with some 100 kg. of gold leaf. 52 The painted statues of the friars are dressed in cloth habits. One Moor holds a head he has taken from a corpse supine at his feet, the other is in the act of decapitating a kneeling friar, whose head has just begun to fall. The remaining three friars prayerfully and patiently await their deaths. 53 Not all shrines are as well preserved as that in Porto. In the Franciscan Church at Evora, for example, the altar dedicated to the Moroccan martyrs was later redecorated in Baroque style, and, although the five statues are still present, they reside, with other holy images, on marble shelves above the altar, their context lost. 54 Heinrich Finke, Acta Aragonensia (Berlin, 1908), I, 754, cited in Vauchez, op. cit., pp. 416–417, n. 13. Through some error Vauchez gives the date of the Moroccan martyrdoms as 1216.

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crown of Portugal until the late fifteenth century,and,when the martyrs were canonized, the popular cult in Portugal may not have played a significant part in the event. The central element in their canonization appears to have been sympathy for their cause by Pope Sixtus IV (1471– 1481), himself a Franciscan.55 He decreed the sainthood of his order’s protomartyrs in the bull Cum alias animo,on August 7,1481,addressed to his “dear sons” within the Order of Friars Minor.56 Nevertheless, the popular cult for the Franciscan protomartyrs in Portugal, where the authorization of their cult was received with rejoicing, may have played a role in their canonization. The Franciscan chronicler, Nicholas Glassberger, reported that Sixtus IV orally authorized the celebration of the feast of the protomartyrs on November 18, 1480 (almost a year before the issuance of Cum alias animo),“for all peoples . . . as long before there was a special decree by his predecessors”for Coimbra.57 Documentation to demonstrate this is lacking, however. With the suppression of monasteries in Portugal in the nineteenth century records concerning the martyrs’ cult, which might have included correspondence with Rome concerning canonization, were scattered and lost at the same time that the precious metal in reliquaries vanished into private treasuries. Even if the cult for the martyrs of Morocco played no part in their canonization, it is still instructive.As protomartyrs, they loomed large in the pantheon of Franciscan heroes, and that alone might have justified Pope Sixtus’s action on their behalf. Long before that happened, however, they were the objects of devotion in Portugal, where a broadbased cult developed around their mortal remains. This occurred only because their bones were present to be venerated.58 In later decades the suffering of other mission martyrs, Franciscans and Dominicans, did 55 Sixtus IV, born into poverty as Francesco della Rovere, reached high office through his talents as a theologian and preacher in the Franciscan Order.He is chiefly remembered as pope for his nepotism, for efforts to enhance the papacy as an Italian principality, as a Renaissance patron of the arts, and for underwriting lavish construction within Rome (including the Sistine Chapel). Ludwig von Pastor, A History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages,Vol. IV (London, 1894). 56 Cum alias animo (Acta SS, January 16) declares the feast a double major to be celebrated by Franciscans everywhere. 57 Glassberger, Chronica, in Anal Fran, II, 474, quoted at length in Menth, op. cit., pp. 104 and 108. Menth discusses the possible influence of the Portuguese cult in the papal decision on pp. 115–117. 58 The more limited cults that developed around the remains of the martyrs of Ceuta and of Valencia (see note 40, above) also demonstrate this point. Popular cults developed only where relics were returned from the killing fields of the missions.

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not generate similar cults outside the convents of their orders. Berard and his companions achieved martyrdom in Morocco through their fanatical preaching against Islam, but their recognition as saints by the Portuguese rested on an accident of history: that their relics had been carried back to Europe after their martyrdom. Missionary martyrs who perished in Asia in the later thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries were, for the most part, less fortunate.59 Their journeys into lands east of the Black Sea took many months, and those bound for Chaghatai Khanate (in Central Asia) or Cathay were often on the road for more than a year. On these travels they passed through hostile territory, and even on friendly ground the protection of Mongol law occasionally disappeared. Whether accidentally thrown into the hands of the Muslims, or caught in the whirlwind of a political upheaval, there was little chance, after martyrdom, that their relics would be returned to Europe. If they had successfully created Roman-rite Christian communities in Asia, their remains would doubtless have been carefully preserved locally, and cults for them fostered there. The mission communities they established were only temporary, however. By the end of the fourteenth century, after the Mongols were expelled from China and Islam was the triumphant religion in other centers, the medieval Asian mission was effectively over. Although the Asia mission failed to achieve long-lasting results, some of the mission travelers did achieve popular recognition in Christian Europe, as the intertwined histories of two contemporary fourteenthcentury beati, Odoric of Pordenone and Thomas of Tolentino, illustrate. Both men, on their way to China in the 1320’s, were forced to travel by way of India because the road through central Asia was unsafe. The following brief recapitulation of their respective vitae will show how their careers were interwoven, and underline the importance of relics, both for the development of popular cults, and in the making of saints. Fourteenth-Century Examples of Mission Martyrs

When Thomas, born about 1260 in Tolentino, a small city in the March of Ancona, became a Franciscan, he took the side of those zeal-

59 No full list of these mission martyrs has been compiled.Vauchez, op. cit., p. 416, n. 12, mentions some, and Girolamo Golubovich, Biblioteca Bio-Bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Francescano, Vols. I–V (Quaracchi, 1906–1929) [hereafter, BTS], I–III, passim, has several partial lists. Most of these martyrs have no cult outside the Franciscan liturgy and office.

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ous for apostolic poverty.60 Along with a group that included Angelo Clareno,Thomas was condemned to perpetual incarceration about 1278.61 All the members of this group were set at liberty in 1289,and sent east to open a mission in China. That expedition was led by John of Montecorvino, a friar with nine years’ experience as missionary in eastern Anatolia, whom Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292) made his envoy to the Great Khan in Cathay.62 Because of civil war in Mongol Central Asia, the missionaries were detained in Mesopotamia, and, when Montecorvino ultimately pressed on to China, the zealots who had been sent out with him remained in the Levant.63 There Thomas of Tolentino acted as ambassador for the Armenian court, moving back and forth between Cilicia and Italy several times over the next decade. When Montecorvino’s first reports of great success in Cathay reached Persia in 1307, it was Thomas who carried the news to the papal court in France.There he “rehearsed in a wonderful speech before [Clement V and the cardinals] these wonderful

60 Golubovich attempts a chronology for Thomas of Tolentino in BTS, III, 219 ff. The broad outline of Thomas’ life is clear, but his vita in Acta SS, April 1, is fraught with factual error, which derivative hagiographic collections (e.g., Butler’s Lives of the Saints, II, 60– 61), slavishly repeat. 61 The conflict over poverty within the Franciscan Order erupted into an open breach after rumors circulated in the March of Ancona, where many Franciscan zealots had their roots, that the Second Council of Lyon had moderated the rigor of the Franciscan rule. Out of this the Spiritual Franciscans emerged, with Clareno as their spokesman. The only surviving report of these events is by Angelo Clareno in his Historia septem tribulationum (see Golubovich, BTS, II, 466–467). David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2001), gives a nuanced interpretation of the evidence ( pp. 43–46 ff.), terming the Anconian conflict of the 1270’s “an important milestone in the rise of the Spiritual Franciscans” ( p. 45). See also Nachman Falbel, Os espirituais franciscanos (Sao Paulo, 1995), pp. 105– 112;and Paolo G.Pagnani,“Gli Spirituali delle Marche,”in S.Tommaso da Tolentino,ed.Edmondo Casadidio (Tolentino, 1964), pp. 10–11. 62 With the collapse of the Asian mission,Montecorvino was virtually forgotten until the seventeenth century, when Luke Wadding uncovered letters from and concerning John of Montecorvino (a manuscript now in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Latin 5006, of c. 1337, fol. 171r and ff.) and included them in his Ann Min,VI, at 1305, nn. 13–14, and at 1306, n. 6. Modern biographers of Montecorvino include:Anastasius Van den Wyngaert, Jean de Mont Corvin, OFM, premier évêque de Kambaliq (Peking), a.1244–1328 (Lille, 1924); Arthur C. Moule, Christians in China Before the Year 1500 (New York, 1926), chap.VII; and Christian Troll,“Die Chinamission im Mittelalter,” Franziskanische Studien, 48–49 (1966–1967).The texts of relevant documents are printed in Sinica Fran, I, and BTS, I and II. 63 The twenty-seven letters Montecorvino carried east (Registres de Nicholas IV, ed. Ernest Langlois [Paris,1905],nos.2218–2244),show he was to follow the Silk Road through Central Asia. Forced to tarry in the Near East until 1291, Montecorvino finally left for China on the more arduous route through India.

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works of our God so well begun . . . by Brother John, . . . asking the lord Pope . . . to take care that [they] be increased and perfected.”64 In response, Clement V (1305–1314) instructed the Franciscans to select seven friars to be consecrated bishop and sent into China,to anoint Montecorvino archbishop of a newly created See of Khan-baliq (modern Beijing),with authority to organize a hierarchy for the entire Tartar empire.65 Aside from the fact of Thomas’ return to Persia, little is known of his activities until 1320, when,“already sixty years old,” he set out for China in the company of three other Franciscans.66 They sailed along the west coast of India with some Italian merchants and a Dominican, Jordan of Sévérac, whose letters became the martyrs’ passio.67 About the beginning of April, 1321, the friars were driven in at Tana (modern Thana), a coastal city near Bombay administered by Muslims. There they found refuge with Christians who asked that they visit yet another community, to administer baptisms. Jordan went, because he “knew the Persian tongue more fully,” leaving the others behind.68 A domestic disturbance in the household in which they were staying brought three of the Franciscans to the attention of local authorities, who pressed them for details both about their beliefs and their views concerning Islam. It was Thomas of Tolentino who spoke up:“As you are determined that I shall say, I say that Mohomet is the son of perdition and is in hell with the devil, and all who hold his false and profane law are damned.” This sealed their fate.“Then all the Saracens together with the Cadi cried,‘Let him die because he has spoken evil of the Prophet.’”69 Their captors forthwith attempted to put them to death. Translated by Moule, op. cit., p. 182. Moule (op. cit., pp. 182–189) translates the documents that attest to these steps. Clement V thereby initiated a new mission strategy for Asia, concerning which see Richard, op. cit., pp. 123–124 and 144 ff.; and Giorgio Fedalto, La chiesa latina in Oriente (Verona, 1973), I, 396 ff. 66 With Thomas of Tolentino,“iam sexagenarius,” were James of Padua, like Thomas, an ordained priest, and the lay brothers Peter of Siena and Demetrius of “Tafelicium [Tiflis?], a Georgian skilled in languages.” Arthur C. Moule,“Brother Jordan of Sévérac,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1928), pp. 349–376, at 361. 67 The original report of the events was made in two letters sent from India by Jordan of Sévérac to friars in Persia, seconded west from those houses. Various manuscripts in which they were partially preserved caused modern redactors to speak of them as four letters. Moule collated the letters, compiled from several sources, into a critical transcription, with English translation, in “Brother Jordan of Sévérac.”The merchants included two Genoese, Jacobin and Lafranquinus. 68 The catechumens lived in “the city of Parroth (Bharuch), where many were Christian in name but not baptized.” Moule,“Brother Jordan,” p. 362. 69 Ibid., p. 365. 64 65

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Jordan of Sévérac’s letters vividly describe these various attempts— they were placed in fire, first clothed, then naked, but nothing injured them. Although the “Mellic” at first set them free, evil zealots instigated that ruler to send “four satellites of the devil . . . to kill the servants of God,”and they were ultimately hacked to death.70 The fourth Franciscan was also apprehended, tortured, and then killed by being cut in two.71 Jordan returned to find them all dead, and he piously buried their remains. His letters list wonders that attended their deaths, and lament that he had not shared their fate.“Woe to that most evil hour, the hateful hour, in which for the salvation of others I so unhappily separated myself from my holy companions, ignorant, alas for me! of their future crowns.”72 A lengthy account of the Tana martyrdoms was also included in the Relatio of Odoric of Pordenone, a narration of his mission journeys that was much copied and widely read.73 He had learned of their fate in Persia, before departing for Cathay, and stopped at Tana about 1323 to collect their bones and carry them to the brothers in China. The relics were, in fact, installed in one of the Franciscan churches in Zaitun.74 This task, and that of spreading the fame of the heroic martyrs as examples of Christian virtue, seemed so important to Odoric that his Relatio spends far more time recounting their passio and miracles associated with their relics than providing a description of locales in India through which he passed.75 Even before Odoric composed his narrative in 1330, the Franciscans were working for the canonization of the Tana martyrs. This cause was also supported by Jordan of Sévérac, who had returned to Europe and Ibid., pp. 365–368. This was Peter of Siena, who was flogged while being urged to utter “God is one,”then hanged. When he remained unaffected, he was put to death by the sword. Ibid., p. 369. 72 Ibid., p. 373. 73 For Odoric’s Relatio, see Sinica Fran, I, 411–495. Yule, Cathay, II, 97–277, has appendices containing both Latin ( pp. 278–336) and Old Italian ( pp. 337–367) texts of the Relatio.Henri Cordier (ed.),Les Voyages en Asie au XIV siècle du bienheureux frère Odoric de Pordenone, Vol. X of Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l’histoire de la géographie (Paris, 1891), is an exhaustive study of the Relatio and its author. 74 Yule, Cathay, II, 183–184. Montecorvino had established a suffragan diocese at Zaitun (near modern Hsiamen in Fukien province, formerly called Amoy Harbor), a major port in the Yüan era. 75 Odoric’s comments on the west coast of India are rather brief in comparison to other sections of his Relatio. In the passages concerning that region (Yule, Cathay, II, 114– 145) he does remark on its flora, fauna, peoples and their customs, but his retelling of the story of the martyrdoms ( pp. 117–125) and details concerning the translation of the relics ( pp. 126–132) dominate that part of the Relatio. 70 71

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was in Avignon by 1329,where he wrote his Mirabilia Descripta,an account of his travels.76 Clearly,Pope John XXII held Jordan in high regard, for he appointed him as first Bishop of Columbum (Quilon, in southwest India) on August 9, 1330.77 Odoric’s Relatio, which was widely circulated almost immediately,augmented the martyr’s celebrity.It inspired, for example, a painting of the Tana martyrdom, featuring Thomas’ companion, Peter of Siena, installed in the Church of St. Francis at Siena before 1348.78 Nevertheless, requests on behalf of these martyrs, made to John XXII and subsequent popes, fell on deaf ears. The role of the Franciscans in the schism over poverty no doubt militated against exaltation of the Tana martyrs, and proceedings that might have led to their canonization were not opened.79 Many centuries were to pass before an official inquiry into the cause of the Tana martyrs was begun, in the city of Tolentino, where a popular cult had developed around a relic of Brother Thomas. Just as the Asian mission was collapsing, about the end of the fourteenth century, Thomas’ skull was carried to Tolentino by a Pisan merchant and installed in the Franciscan Church of St. Francis, adjacent to the principal square of the commune.80 Numerous miracles were reported at the shrine established around this relic, and Thomas quickly became a major patron 76 Henri Cordier, Les Merveilles de l’Asie par le Père Jourdain Catalini de Sévérac (Paris, 1925), contains a facsimile of the unique manuscript (British Museum,Add. 19513) of the Mirabilia of Jordan, accompanied by a flawed French translation; see comments by Moule,“Brother Jordan,” p. 349. Henry Yule translated Jordan’s Mirabilia, Hakluyt Society, First Series, #31 (London, 1863). Jordan is generally credited with working for their canonization during that period. 77 For fourteenth-century missionary activity in India see James D.Ryan,“European Travelers before Columbus:The Fourteenth Century’s Discovery of India,”Catholic Historical Review, LXXIX (October, 1993), 648–670. 78 See George H. Edgell,“Le martyre du frère Pierre de Sienne et de ses compagnons à Tana, fresques d’Ambrogio Lorenzetti,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 71 (1929), 307–308, cited in Vauchez, op. cit., p. 417, n. 12. It does not appear that there was a popular cult for that martyr in Siena, however. Golubovich summarizes mention made of Peter of Siena in BTS, III, 221–222. 79 Acta SS, April 1. 80 The exact circumstances surrounding the return of the relic by “John, the son of Hugolino of Pisa,” are unknown, but local legend includes harrowing stories of saving the relic from pirates and other threats.Maritza V.Amurri,“S.Tommaso da Tolentino,”in I santi delle Marche, ed. Edmondo Casadidio (Tolentino, 1967), pp. 123–125. It must have been carried west before or at the time of the overthrow of Mongol forces in Zaitun (c. 1360) and the expulsion of foreigners, including the Franciscans, whom the Mongols had supported. Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore praestiti Servo Dei Thomae a Tolentino Ordinis Minorum S. Francisci martyri at sancto nuncupato.

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for his natal city. Tolentino is only a minor city in the March of Ancona, but it is rich in saints. Chief among these is St. Catervo, a baptized Roman martyred at Tolentino, around whose sarcophagus a Benedictine abbey was established.81 The city’s second most important saint is the Augustinian Hermit, Nicholas, a contemporary of Thomas, whose homebound sanctity was rather quickly rewarded with canonization.82 The martyred Thomas became Tolentino’s third most important patron, and he has been venerated there and honored with a feast, the first Sunday in June, through the past six centuries.83 Although the Church of Rome declined to declare Thomas a saint, Pope Boniface IX (1389– 1404) did grant a plenary indulgence to all who contributed for the construction of a special chapel, an addition to the Church of St. Francis where Thomas’ relic was placed.84 Thomas’ association with the religious life of the city was strengthened in the seventeenth century, when the Church of St. Francis became the collegiate church for canons of the diocese of Tolentino, and when a new cathedral, San Catervo,was constructed in 1825, the reliquary bust containing Thomas’ skull was carried into it in solemn procession. That relic is now on display, together with the head of St. Catervo, in the glass-fronted altar employed for daily services.85 It was largely because of the persistence of this local cult that Franciscan efforts to win official recognition for the Tana martyrs finally achieved success in 1894, when Pope Leo XIII beatified Thomas of Tolentino and his companions.86 Yet another opportunity to evaluate the advantages that an active cult, anchored on relics, bestowed on medieval missionary candidates for sainthood is provided by the beatification of Odoric of Pordenone. Odoric was not martyred in Asia, and later became well known through his Relatio, a widely copied travel narrative. He was popularly proPositio super casu excepto (Sacred Congregation of Rites, Rome, 1894), fol. 10v, dates the return of the relic to the early fifteenth century. 81 Edmondo Casadidio, San Catervo (Tolentino, 1967), pp. 7–8. 82 The process of canonization for Nicholas of Tolentino (†1305) was opened in 1325, and he was declared a saint in 1446. Il processo per la canonizzazione di S.Nicola da Tolentino, Critical edition by Nicola Occhione (Rome, 1984). 83 Edmondo Casadidio,“Il culto di S. Tommaso martire a Tolentino,” S. Tommaso da Tolentino, pp. 14–17, presents evidence of an active cult in each succeeding century. Hippolyte Delehaye,“Saints de Tolentino.La Vita S.Catervi,”Analecta Bollandiana,LXI (1943), 5–28, cites the ranking of the patron saints of Tolentino given in a 1797 tract published there. 84 Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore, fol. 11v. 85 This chapel, to the left of the high altar, also features a prominently displayed marble statue of Thomas. 86 Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore.

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claimed a saint, however, immediately after his death, on the basis of the austere self-sacrifice he manifested as a missionary.87 His hagiographic vita reports that “in the sixteen years he was [across the sea] he baptized twenty thousand infidels and subdued them to the Catholic faith.”88 The number of converts is probably a pious exaggeration, but Odoric’s time abroad was spent working in Franciscan convents in the East, where he would have died in obscurity (like so many others) had he not returned to recruit additional friars for work in China.89 After resting a few months in Padua, where he dictated his Relatio in the spring of 1330, he set out for Avignon to request papal permission to lead fifty Franciscans back to Cathay. He never reached Avignon, however; ill, he repaired to Udine, the city where he had first entered the Franciscan Order, and died there on January 14, 1331. The circumstances surrounding his death and burial led to the immediate formation of a cult for Odoric in Udine. His fellow friars were preparing to give him a hurried and private burial, but were prohibited by the local magistrate, a “dear friend” of Odoric’s who demanded a solemn funeral.90 At the rites,which drew a large crowd,a noble woman, the sister of the Patriarch of Aquileia, suffering for seven months from painful contractions of her arm, exclaimed aloud that she had been cured. What the friars had intended as an interment for a humble follower of il poverello quickly turned into an apotheosis. As the bier was mobbed by relic-seekers snatching at Odoric’s robe, hair and beard, one particularly bold matron (heronia) tried to snip off an ear with her scissors, but, miraculously, they would not close. In the midst of this tumult, the funeral was delayed. Fearing some injury might come to Odoric’s corpse, the friars arranged a second, solemn funeral for the third day, 87 To some modern commentators Odoric seems more a footloose adventurer than a missionary. Yule, Cathay, II, 11, characterized the reports that Odoric was a missionary as resting “on the basis of pure imagination only,”an opinion not contradicted by Cordier,Les Voyages . . . du bienheureux frère Odoric de Pordenone,or by the majority of the twentiethcentury editors of the Relatio, some of whom are cited below. In his own time, however, Odoric was revered as a missionary, not an explorer. 88 Arthur C. Moule,“A Life of Odoric of Pordenone,” T’oung Pao, XX (1920), 275–290, at p. 279. Moule translates Odoric’s vita on pp. 278–285. See also BTS, II, 374–393. This vita, probably written by a contemporary, was surely composed while Odoric’s memory was still alive, and Moule ( p. 278) argues that it probably dates to within a few decades of his death. 89 The first eight of Odoric’s sixteen years abroad were spent in Armenia and Persia, and, after an arduous trek east via India, he remained in China for three years before returning to Europe by way of Tibet and Central Asia. 90 Acta SS, January 14. The “carus amicus” in Odoric’s vita was Conrad Bernardiggi, the Gastald of Udine. Yule, Cathay, II, 13.

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employing a distinguished professor of theology of the Order of Preachers to deliver a suitable oration on Odoric’s life and pious works.91 Both the Patriarch of Aquileia, Pagano della Torre, and Udine’s civic officials had become involved, however, and Odoric’s corpse was twice exhumed in the weeks following his death. When it showed no sign of corruption,and as reports of miracles through his intercession increased, the city authorized construction of a shrine at its own expense, and the patriarch ordered a notary to record miracles worked through Odoric’s intercession.92 Odoric was immediately and enthusiastically recognized a saint by the populace of Friuli, the territory governed from Udine, and to the present day his cult is important there. In May, 1332, the patriarch officiated as Odoric’s holy remains were solemnly reinterred in the Franciscan convent church at Udine.93 His shrine was an alabaster sarcophagus, handsomely decorated with reliefs, and, in token of its occupant’s saintly status, standing on pillars.94 Patriarch Pagano also petitioned John XXII to open canonization proceedings for Odoric that same year, a request that was refused. Papal indifference notwithstanding, the patriarch still enjoyed independent authority, and Odoric was officially venerated in Friuli, at Udine and at other shrines. Two of these, one in his native town, Pordenone, another in its suburb, Villa Nova, the actual site of Odoric’s birth, received relics from Odoric’s bones.95 Because Odoric remained a major saint for Friuli, formal proceedings that led to his beatification were opened in the eighteenth century,long after his death. On March 16, 1750, the last Patriarch of Aquileia, Cardinal Daniel Delfino, whose seat was then Udine, petitioned the Sacred Acta SS, January 14. Arrigo Sedran, Il Beato Odorico da Pordenone—la sua figura e il suo paese (Portogruaro, 1993), pp. 26–27; Yule, Cathay, II, 14–15. 93 The patriarch determined that his feast be celebrated on the second Sunday of January.Giuseppe Ellero,Beato Odorico da Pordenone e il libro dei suoi viaggi (Udine,1914), p. 46. 94 Udine’s fiscal records show payment, in September, 1331, for an “Archa . . . nobilior” for Brother Odoric, which the town commissioned from the sculptor Filippo De Sanctis (ibid., p. 46, n. 1). One bas-relief panel depicts Gastald Bernardiggi and Patriarch Pagano attending, with angels present, at Odoric’s burial. Celso Costantini, La beatificazione di Fra Odorico da Pordenone nel suo secondo centenario (Pordenone, an undated publication by the committee to honor Odoric on the 700th anniversary of his birth, i.e., 1965). The bulk of this pamphlet is an expanded version of the author’s article “La beatificazione di Fra Odorico da Pordenone,” Il Noncello—Rivista d’arte e di cultura, V[1955]), 12–13. 95 The tibia that Pordenone received is still venerated there, but the author could find no trace of the ankle bone that Yule (Cathay,II,19) reported to have been given to Villa Nova. 91 92

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Congregation of Rites to initiate proceedings for Odoric’s canonization. Clearly, this was an important matter; before preparing the petition, Patriarch Delfino had written to prelates throughout northern Italy,asking their support.96 His campaign for official recognition of Odoric’s cult was occasioned by the imminent suppression of the Partiarchate of Aquileia, which occurred in 1751, when patriarchal jurisdiction was vested in the newly created archdiocese of Udine and Gorizia.97 Absent patriarchal authority, papal endorsement was necessary to ensure the continuation of Odoric’s public veneration. Rome was now sympathetic to appeals from Friuli, and the Sacred Congregation of Rites initiated a full inquiry into Odoric’s cause, steps detailed in the July 2, 1755, edict of Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758) that explicitly approved Odoric’s cult,“established from time immemorial.”98 Winds of revolutionary change led to secularization and suppression of many religious houses in Friuli soon after Odoric’s beatification. When Venetian authorities took the Franciscan church in which he was originally interred for use as a hospital in 1771, the Franciscans and Odoric moved to the Church “del Carmine,” a recently suppressed (1770) Carmelite convent. The Franciscans were forced to leave Udine when Napoleonic edicts reduced religious houses in 1806, but Odoric remained, kept briefly in the metropolitan church until his corpse was returned, in 1808, to the Chiesa del Carmine, now a diocesan church, where it has resided ever since.99 There sculptural elements of Odoric’s original sarcophagus, which had earlier been broken up, were incorporated in the altar shrine in which Odoric’s relics were placed.100 Despite revolutionary upheavals, his cult continued to draw support from the faithful of Friuli.101 This popularity facilitated fund raising by public subscription, and Odoric’s shrine was rebuilt at the beginning of the twentieth century.102 The missionary’s mummified body now rests in a special 96 Antonio Battistella, VI Centenario del B. Odorico da Pordenone, Anno II (Udine, 1934), p. 37, n. 3. 97 Costantini, La beatificazione di Fra Odorico, pp. 13–14. 98 “Cultu ab immemorabili tempore praedicto Beato praestito.” Costantini, La beatificazione di Fra Odorico, prints the Decretum along with various supporting documents. Yule, Cathay, II, 35–36, also has the Decretum’s text. 99 Ellero, op. cit., pp. 7–9. 100 Yule, Cathay, II, 19, includes a drawing of the shrine as it appeared when he visited Friuli in the mid-nineteenth century. 101 In the nineteenth century, as mass-produced holy pictures became popular objects of devotion in the homes of the humble, prints of blessed Odoric were in brisk demand. Luigi Ciceri, Religiosità popolare in Friuli (Udine, 1980), p. 83. 102 Ellero published Beato Odorico to commemorate the January 14, 1914, reconstruction of Odoric’s tomb.

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glass coffin within the reconstructed sarcophagus, and, during the octave of his January 14 feast, the glass case with Odoric’s corpse is exposed for veneration. Throngs of people from all over Friuli flock to the church each year.103 Odoric’s cult is also maintained in Pordenone, where his tibia, kept in the cathedral in a large silver and crystal reliquary, is displayed for public veneration every January in the parish church of the Blessed Odoric.104 Even the small church at Villa Nova, where a statue of Odoric graces the altar, is touched by Odoric’s popularity.105 Although that parish is very small and far from wealthy, the church’s popularity as a marriage chapel, drawing weddings from all over the district, provides extraordinary funds for its maintenance.106 Conclusions

This essay has concentrated on mission martyrs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who had cults and were beatified or canonized, but it must be remembered that most of their contemporaries, killed in Asia or Africa, have not become objects of popular veneration and still lack official recognition. Among these, for example, are Richard of Burgundy, Bishop of Almalyq, who was martyred in Central Asia with Pascal of Victoria and six others in 1338, and whose legenda is well documented.107 The few whose sanctity and virtue won broader recognition were blessed by circumstances; either their bones were returned to Europe, or, like Odoric, they expired in the midst of the Christian community. It was therefore possible for the tombs of such missionaries to become popular shrines where miracles were recorded,and the groundwork was laid for petitions to Rome to endorse their cults. Martyrs with

103 The author was so informed by the sacristan when he visited and photographed the shrine in 1997. 104 This relatively new parish was established in 1973, its church dedicated in 1991. Sedran, op. cit., p. 31. 105 In addition to the statue on the main altar, there is a painting of Odoric preaching in the East, and, outside the church, a life-size, modern bronze statue of Odoric. 106 Its sacristan,interviewed in 1997,attributes the popularity of the church primarily to its reputation as the birthplace of the Blessed Odoric. 107 Eight were martyred at Almalyq because they refused to renounce their faith. These include six Franciscans (four priests and two lay brothers), an interpreter, and a merchant from Genoa. A brief report of their deaths is included in the Chronicle of the 24 Generals, Anal Fran, III, 531–532, with a more complete passio, drawn from various sources, in Yule, Cathay, III, 31–33; and Sinica Fran, I, 510–511. Concerning Pascal, see p. 8, above.

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tombs in distant lands, who lacked a popular constituency, were less fortunate. It must not be concluded that the mere presence of a martyr’s bones would occasion the creation of a shrine, however. The stories of the martyrs of Morocco,of Thomas,and of Odoric all suggest that their popular cults, which have persisted in varying degrees to the present day, arose because devotion to these beati resonated within their respective communities of believers. The Franciscan protomartyrs seem to have complemented the Portuguese self-image of dedicated warriors for Christ, who had wrested their homeland from the Moors and who countenanced heroic self-sacrifice to bring all lands under the sway of Christ’s church. Odoric of Pordenone, on the other hand, filled an important niche in the somewhat limited pantheon of Friuli saints. He quickly became a special patron for the people of that province, and is still described in those terms today.108 In the case of Thomas of Tolentino, devotion at his shrine seems to have been encouraged by the popular mind-set in the March of Ancona. Local biographers stress both his association with the Spiritual Franciscans and the fact that this sect drew much of its strength from Le Marche, where radical poverty resonated in the populace of its many small and poor communes.109 In addition, local pride in the exploits of a missionary martyr who was also a fellow-citizen has played a large part in fostering and sustaining popular devotion to Thomas in Tolentino. Thus, in each case, there were special circumstances that encouraged the growth and persistence of cults around the relics of medieval missionaries. In the same way that unique, local factors fostered popular devotion to Thomas of Tolentino in the fifteenth century, a new set of conditions has revitalized his cult in the twentieth century. This martyr has become a patron of the Catholic Church in India, and has been adopted as a founding saint by the diocese of Bombay, of which Thana (Tana) is now an industrial suburb. Since the beatification of the Tana martyrs, the Indian church has achieved greater independence, and Thomas of Tolentino has become very important to the faithful in Bombay. On

108 Works stressing Odoric’s regional importance, such as Sedran, op. cit., and Ellero, op. cit., pointedly and repeatedly refer to Odoric as “il nostro Beato” and a patron for Friuli. Costantini, La beatificazione di Fra Odorico, referring to Odoric as “a most illustrious citizen of Pordenone” ( p. 16), notes that his candidacy for sainthood is still active. 109 Professor Edmondo Casadidio stressed this element during an interview in March, 1997, in Tolentino. See also Pagnani (op. cit.), who makes the same point.

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October 24, 1914, the Sacred Congregation of Rites introduced the Office and Mass of Blessed Thomas into the calendars of Indian dioceses for April 9, the date of his martyrdom.110 In November, 1965, Cardinal Valerian Gracias, Indian-born Archbishop of Bombay and the first native Indian created a cardinal, led a delegation of Indian bishops to Tolentino, where they participated in a conference in memory of Blessed Thomas, to honor the martyr whose blood helped pave the way for Catholicism in Bombay.111 As a consequence of that visit a special bond has been created between Tolentino and Bombay, marked by a regular exchange of correspondence. Copies of letters between priests, nuns, and school children of Bombay and Tolentino are prominently displayed on a bulletin board in the Cathedral of San Catervo, to the right of the high altar. This lively correspondence, and the interest it generates in the faithful of Tolentino, is yet another manifestation of the attraction the martyred Thomas still has in a changing world. Near the bulletin board,there is a framed picture of his martyrdom in Tana,a holy image painted in India, and parishioners take evident pride in that land’s devotion to their saint. Special, local circumstances, which played such a large part in fostering devotion to each of the medieval missionary saints discussed above, remain central to the process by which saints are recognized. John of Montecorvino, missionary to the Mongol court and first Archbishop of Beijing (then Khan-baliq ), was almost completely forgotten in Europe after the collapse of the mission to Mongol Asia.112 Nevertheless, he is currently under scrutiny as a candidate for beatification.Pressure for his canonization did not arise in the town of Montecorvino, Italy, but from the Roman Catholic community in China, which now traces its roots to John of Montecorvino and the fourteenth-century missionaries who traveled to that land in his wake.113 Franciscan clerics, whose order has actively supported the China mission over the last 150 years, play a ma-

110 This applied originally to the Archdiocese of Goa and the Diocese of Damaun. The Four Martyrs of Thana (Bombay, anonymous and undated pamphlet), p. 1. 111 S.Tommaso da Tolentino. Martire per la Fede in India onorato nella sua Città natale dall’episcopato Indiano nell’anno del Concilio Ecumenico—20–21 Novembre 1965 (Tolentino, commemorative program). 112 See note 62, above. 113 Gaspare Han,OFM,Giovanni da Montecorvino: Fondatore della chiesa Cattolica in Cina, trans. Tobia Lapolla, OFM (Rome, 1996), pp. 113–130. Originally published in Taiwan in Chinese in 1990, it was translated and reissued to commemorate the “settimo centenario del suo arrivo a Pechino (1294–1994).”

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jor role in this effort. It was initiated, however, at the first plenary synod of the Chinese Church, held at Shanghai in 1924. There some fifty bishops and a greater number of theologians, “with a profound sense of veneration for John of Montecorvino,” petitioned Archbishop Celso Costantini, the Apostolic Legate in China, to request that canonization proceedings be initiated.114 Montecorvino’s cause is still alive because it has been tirelessly pursued by Chinese clerics, such as Father Gaspar Han, and laymen since that time. If John of Montecorvino is beatified in the twenty-first century, it will be because of the petitions and devotion of tens of thousands of Chinese Christians. Similarly, Blessed Thomas of Tolentino, a martyr of the fourteenth century, beatified only one hundred years ago, may yet be enshrined as a saint of the Roman Church in the new century. If this comes about, however, it will be because the faithful of India, and in particular those in Bombay, demand it. Today a fragment of Thomas’ skull, sent from Tolentino to India, is enshrined at Thana, where it is venerated every year on April 9, and throughout the year in special services on the ninth day of each month.115 Now the faithful there have a shrine to Thomas’ memory, and the relic provided from the West has become the centerpiece for an active cult honoring that medieval martyr. Ironically, Thomas would have been all but forgotten had his bones remained in India in the fourteenth century. They were piously carried to China, however, and his cranium returned thence to his native city,where a combination of factors made him the object of veneration by his fellow countrymen, and helped ensure that he would be enrolled among the Blessed of the Roman Church. Thomas’ cause for canonization has been given life again, because another set of special circumstances make his sufferings meaningful to a new group of believers, who venerate his relic and honor his self-sacrifice. As it was in the High Middle Ages, so it remains today; when a congregation find a martyr’s relics relevant to their spiritual needs,the holy bones that spark devotion become the central focus

114 An account of the 1924 synod, from the Acta Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Year 47, July, 1928, Fas.VII), is reprinted in Han, op. cit., pp. 194–195. Costantini’s “Supplication . . . to obtain the Beatification of the Servant of God, John of Montecorvino” is found on p.196.Costantini,who later became the secretary of the Propaganda Fide (1935),and was created a cardinal in 1953, authored articles on Odoric of Pordenone cited above. 115 The Four Martyrs of Thana, p. 4. The relic was sent to Cardinal Archbishop Gracias by the Father General of the Franciscans and is housed in the parish church of St. John the Baptist, Thana.

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of a cult, and occasion pressure for recognition and legitimacy within the larger community of the faithful. The story of the medieval missionaries, and the popular cults their relics have generated, demonstrate how these forces have shaped, and continue to shape, the institutional church.

A life-size bronze statue of Odoric of Pordenone located outside the parish church of Villa Nova, Italy, his birthplace. It was erected in 1995 as a gift of the Latteria di Borgomeduna. Photo by James D. Ryan.