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The White Madonna


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Fresco on the S wall of the so‑called Oratory in the lower church of S. Francesco, Leonessa.

March 5, 1399 is the first time we hear of them. In the little town of Chieri near Turin, men and women, wearing hooded rope-belted white tunics, with red crosses on their chests, started to process thru the streets, praying and beating themselves with small whips, asking forgiveness for their sins. In the Middle Ages, such demonstrations met with much more success than most would now, and in a few weeks it became clear that a movement had been born: hundreds, then thousands of white-robed penitents were on the roads to Rome, from many cities of northern Italy. They are known simply as the Bianchi, the "white ones".

On July 2, 1399, on the southward route of the penitents, near Assisi, the Virgin appeared to a shepherd and a young boy and ordered them to go into town and tell the people there to put on the white habit. They didn't obey right away; she appeared again to them in an olive grove, and sternly repeated her message, or at least as it is quoted in a contemporary religious poem (reproduced in the fresco above, between her and the kneeling man):

Vane tosto e nō tardare

alla citade anūtiare

tosto debano ripigare

l'abito che ao lassato.

"Go immediately, without lingering, to the city and announce that they must immediately put on the robe I have given them." This is the scene shown here, in the sixth and last room of the lower church of S. Francesco. This fresco of the Madonna dell' Oliva has caused scholars to identify the oratory as the local meeting place of that penitential movement.


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Mary's robe is curiously embroidered or appliquéd with what, based on another stanza of the same poem, has been interpreted as communion hosts; and she wears a stole somewhat like that of a priest, except crossed at the waist. (In our first photo, though: how is it tied? and notice what looks like a first draft of the stole, clearly visible near her left hand.)

The communion host interpretation is bolstered by the placement of the fresco in the chapel, near where the altar would have been, and with the clearly planned insertion of a lockbox, now gone, for the holy oil and vessels — which would include any unconsumed hosts.

For what seems to be an intermediate phase of the restoration, see Fr. Enzo Cherchi's site; while the photographs there, taken before mine, undoubtedly show this same fresco, they include an added band above what you see on this page, as I photographed it in May 2004: it looks as if the restorers decided that the angel and the second walled city, much less well drawn than the rest of the painting, were a later addition — and removed them.


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Page updated: 30 Oct 17