HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

368 MICHAEL GOODICHdated between 1383 and 1386. Around the year 1356, a paterfamiliasnamed Bartolo Taviani had returned from the fields to find his wifein tears. 43 Inquiring about the reason for her grief, she replied,“Because our son has become blind”. Asked by his father to cometo him, the six-year-old Blasio raised his arms up in front of him inorder to guide himself. Trying to reach his father, he stumbled, andit was clear that the child was blind. The boy therefore was takento Florence to visit two physicians (medici), who, after consultation,agreed that the child was indeed blind and that there was no naturalcure to restore his sight. Saddened by the news, Bartolo madea vow to the blessed Giovanna that if his son should be cured hewould bring a waxen head as an ex-voto offering to her tomb. Havingso vowed, he returned home only to hear his son cry out, “I canalready see!” The father asked, “Who restored your sight to you?”Blasio replied, “That man whom you sent to me”. The father knewthat the boy believed a physician had cured him, but he himselfattributed the cure to the merits of the Blessed Giovanna. He fulfilledhis vow and heaped thanks on God and the saint for their benevolence.Such miracles, which also provide valuable biographical materialconcerning common folk, reached a wider non-learned public bymeans of frescoes and altarpieces. The frescoes executed at Giovanna’schapel in Signa near Florence in 1441 (perhaps attributable to Neridi Bicci) include an illustration of the restoration of sight to AnselmoFei, although a commentary on the fresco confuses this with theepisode in which Blasio was cured. 44The Franciscans were especially active in the commission of altarpiecesand frescoes in which the life cycle of the saint was basedupon published biographies. The earliest such cycles, like BonaventureBerlinghieri’s scenes from the life of St. Francis (1235) at the Franciscanchurch of Pescia, can be dated to the 1230s and were based uponThomas of Celano’s life. Altarpieces commissioned shortly thereafter,however, reflect the changes introduced into the saint’s life by theorder’s Minister-General Bonaventure. It is thus possible to illustratehow a (non-extant) canonization hearing, summarized in an authorizedbiography, received wider currency through the visual arts.43“Vita e miracoli della B. Giovanna da Signa”, ed. S. Mencherini, Archivum franciscanumhistoricum 10 (1917), 380.44Russo (1986).