The Meeting of Saints Francis and Dominic

Abstract

THE MEETING OF SAINTS FRANCIS AND DOMINIC Sometime in the late fourteenth century, the Meeting of Saints Francis and Dominic, a new theme not mentioned in the earliest sources about either saint, was introduced into fresco and panel painting in Italy. This episode was at first inserted into painted sequences about their lives and later occurred also as a separate devotional image. In the full narrative version of the Meeting, Christ is shown brandishing three arrows with which he intends to punish errant humanity. The Virgin Mary, usually seen kneeling at his feet, implores him to have mercy and points toward Francis and Dominic, who will help the world redirect its sinful course. The two saints either kneel together in prayerful observation of the heavenly vision or else they embrace each other. In the abbreviated version, they are shown embracing without the accompanying narrative framework . During the fifteenth century, apparently the period of its widest currency, the subject was treated by such well-known artists as Fra Angélico, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Andrea della Robbia. Inspired in part by the visual images, historians have attempted to determine whether Francis and Dominic ever really met, and if so, then when and where such a meeting could have occurred. One possibility is that both were present at the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome, summoned in November of 1215.1 Another possibility is I wish to thank the University of Vermont for a sabbatical leave in 1987, during which time I completed this paper, and for a Summer Research Fellowship which supported some of the necessary travel. I read an earlier version of my findings to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan , where I benefited from helpful comments by colleagues in several disciplines . 1 Although legend does place Francis in Rome in the winter of 1215-1216, his presence at this Council is not documented by Franciscan chroniclers, but is implied instead in a Dominican account, Gerard de Fracheto's Vitae Fratrum (1260), cited below. This point has been made repeatedly. See, for example, P. Vittorino Facchinetti, San Francesco d'Assisi nella storia, nella leggenda, nell'arte, 2nd ed. (Milan, 1926) 288-289; Hermann Fischer, Der heilige Franziskus von As- The Meeting of Sts. Francis and Dominic219 that Dominic attended one of Francis's General Chapters in Assisi.2 A third possibility is that a meeting occurred at the home of Cardinal Ugolino (later Pope Gregory IX), perhaps in 1220 or I22i.s While it remains impossible to prove that Dominic and Francis knew each other, a legend of friendship between them entered into the hagiographical literature of both Orders within fifty years of the founders' deaths. It appears that the way may have been prepared for accounts linking the two (and the intended mission of their Orders) by Gregory IX's Bull of Canonization for Dominic (1234), which proclaimed that the Dominicans and Franciscans and their generals recently had come forward to help Christ in his struggle with a hostile world.4 Among Dominican writers, Bartholomew of Trent was the first to speak of friendship between the two saints (Legenda S. Dominici, 1245-1251J.5 But a fully developed account of their meeting entered sisi während der Jahre 1219-1221 (Freiburg, 1907) 92-93; and John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968) 29. 2 In his Postilla in Lucam, the Franciscan Peter John Olivi said that while a novice (around 1261), he had heard, from a fellow Franciscan who had known Dominic, that Dominic himself told of meeting Francis and his brethren at a General Chapter in Assisi while on his way to Rome. For this information and also the problems in accepting it, see William A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order: Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500, I (New York, 1966) 155-156. For Olivi's work, see especially Carter Partree, "Peter John Olivi: Historical and Doctrinal Study," Franciscan Studies, 20 (i960) 215-60. According to the Fioretti (part I, ch. 18), Dominic was present at the so-called "Chapter of the Mats" (whose exact date is a matter of dispute). See St. Francis of Assisi...