A halfway report with examples from the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.
The Graff-IT project, which started in January 2022, has now passed the halfway mark. The aim of the project is to create the conditions for medieval and early modern graffiti to be studied as a historical source, alongside other sources that are more familiar to historians, from a long-term perspective and in a sufficiently large territory such as Italy. In the first three years of activity, in addition to its PI, the working group has grown to number 15 collaborators, including researchers, junior researchers and PhD students, as well as technical personnel, such as photographers and restorers. A network of external correspondents from various areas of the Italian peninsula, although not structurally involved in Graff-IT, actively cooperate with the project, especially in detecting and reporting unknown cases.We have so far surveyed hundreds of sites preserving medieval and renaissance graffiti, spread in 16 out of 20 administrative regions in Italy. We have already published 26 scientific articles and one monograph (https://graffitproject. eu/publications/); organised 16 meetings among workshops, seminars and one international conference; participated in 40 conferences organised outside the project; set up a touring exhibition in several towns in Umbria. Alongside a small number of graffiti dating back to the early Middle Ages, most of the graffiti recorded belongs to the final centuries of the Middle Ages, from the 14th century onwards, with a peak between the 15th and 16th centuries. The overwhelming majority of graffiti surveyed so far is unpublished or only marginally studied, mostly in local publications.Many graffiti belong to small, unknown country or mountain churches. Exploring them allows us to understand the social function of a huge number of often overlooked ‘minor’ buildings and their relationship with their natural and social environment. Other graffiti belong to famous monuments, but the popularity of the artworks on which they were executed has not been conducive to their recognition and exploitation so far. In all cases, studying graffiti allows us to bring to light fragments of their often-forgotten history: meteorological, astronomical and telluric events, births and deaths of high-ranked figures, popular proverbs, prayers, fragments of literary texts that had become part of the mainstream oral culture, and so on. Beyond the intrinsic significance of each text, all this speaks of a living relationship and a close dialogue between monuments and their users through the centuries. Last but not least, this gives us a new insight into the function of works of art in medieval and early modern societies.
One of the case studies that the Graff-IT team—namely, one of its members, Pier Paolo Trevisi—has tackled in the past three years is that of the graffiti preserved in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi. After the body of St Francis was buried there in 1230 (Figures 1–2), the church quickly became one of the major religious hubs in Europe, a true landmark of the whole of late medieval Christianity. As a result, one of the largest religious communities of the time settled at the Sacro Convento and travellers and pilgrims from all over Europe began to flock to Assisi. Both members of the resident community and occasional visitors left extensive traces of their passage on the walls of the basilica through graffiti: we found more than 600 of them, spanning from the 14th to the 19th century. As is well known, the church is organised on two levels, the so-called Lower and Upper Basilica, where frescoes by Giotto and Cimabue are displayed alongside those of other prominent Italian 14th-century artists. In both the Upper and Lower Basilica, graffiti were written in different languages—Latin, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Croatian—and writing systems, from cursive to set book handwriting.In the Lower Basilica, graffiti occur mainly in transit areas, such as the entrance and the exit, in the right-side chapels and in the transept where the stairs leading to the cloister are located. It will suffice to give just a few examples to illustrate the range and nature of the evidence available. At the entrance to the church, in the lower part of a fresco depicting St Christopher (the patron of pilgrims), one Francesco of Naples wrote his name and the date of his stay in Assisi in 1421 (Figure 3). The marble inlays on the wall below the fresco also contain graffiti by a certain friar Paolo Antonio from Cesena, who visited the church both in 1589 and in 1590, i.e. for two consecutive years, on the occasion of the ‘Pardon of Assisi’ (a feast celebrating the indulgence that Pope Honorius III granted to St Francis).
Many graffiti can also be found in a narrow space—a kind of corridor—between the second and third chapel, along the right wall. In particular, in the intricate tangle of writings, we are drawn to two verses from Dante’s Comedy: Io vidde Eletra cum multe compagne, tra i quali conubbe Ettor et Enea (Inf. IV, 121-122). Palaeographic analysis allows this text to be dated to the 14th century and reflects the wide circulation of the Divine Comedy just a few decades after its publication (Figure 4). On the same wall, to the left of Dante’s verses, we also find verses from the ‘Latin Aesop’, for example, this one from the fable De cane vetulo: Nullus amor durat, nisi fructus servet amorem. Moving on to the Upper Basilica, almost all the graffiti were written on the frescoed curtains below the scenes of Giotto’s Life of St Francis. Most of the graffiti are due to Franciscan friars, partly residing in the Sacro Convento itself, partly coming from different places in Italy and Europe. Among them are some northern European friars who sometimes wrote their names more times, such as Frater Michahel (1383), a Frenchman, judging by the writing he uses, Nicholaus de Bohemia from Nysa (1411), Iohannes Meller from Dieburg (1456) and Honorius Engelbert from Köln (1640).
Among the several hundred graffiti in the basilica of St Francis, we have identified 27 inscriptions by the same individual: an anonymous friar who wrote them in 1386. These graffiti can be easily identified: the texts are long and even very long; the script used is an Italian set handwriting; two specific symbols, i.e. a long Latin cross and a crossed O, are at the beginning and at the end of each text, respectively. An exceptional aspect of these graffiti is that the texts they convey are not only long and complex but directly inspired by scenes from the life of St Francis. For example, under the scene of Francis giving his cloak to the poor man, the anonymous friar writes a text based on a homiletic model against avarice (Figure 5). Nothing could express more clearly than these graffiti the process of careful reading and identification that the friar carried out in relation to the scenes painted on the walls.
Given the extent of his work, the process of writing this group of graffiti must have kept the friar busy for several days, implying that his activity was by no means considered illegal. In fact, evidence suggests that, among the many people we can imagine circulating inside the basilica, nobody tried to prevent or thwart the wall-writing work, not even
the church keepers.
Box catalogue
Some of the graffiti in the basilica of St Francis were published in the volume: Graffiti dell’Umbria fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (secoli VIII-XVII), edited by Francesca Malagnini, Carlo Tedeschi, Pier Paolo Trevisi, Florence, Franco Cesati Editore, 2023 (Figure 6).
The Catalogue offers a selection of graffiti from different monumental sites in Umbria, dating between the 8th and 19th centuries. The selection tries to account for different types of graffiti, in terms of technique (scratch, charcoal, sanguine), function (devotional, commentaries on painted scenes, commemoration of collective and personal events), media (writing, symbol, figure), and language (Latin, Italian, French, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Armenian).
PROJECT TITLE
Writing on the Margins: Graffiti in Italy (7th—16th centuries)
PROJECT SUMMARY
The ERC AdvGrant Graff-IT project aims to develop a new interdisciplinary approach to the study of medieval and Renaissance graffiti (seventh—sixteenth century) as a historical source. The project will have an innovative and groundbreaking effect on the study of graffiti in their multifaceted complexity: writing, image, language, and material aspects. Innovative tools and methods will be used to build out the first digital archive of Italian graffiti.
PROJECT PARTNERS
The project will be supported by the University for Foreigners of Perugia in the study of graffiti in vernacular and dialect language with a focus on the graffiti in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, and by the University of Padua, which will support the PI in the study of the graffiti in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
PROJECT LEAD PROFILE
Born in 1964, Prof. Tedeschi was educated at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, then obtained a doctorate at the University of Macerata. As a paleographer, he has gained experience in Italy and abroad in the field of book and documentary writings and developed a particular interest in “public” writings, inscriptions and graffiti.
PROJECT CONTACTS
Prof. Carlo Tedeschi University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti Pescara
Email: GraffIT-project@unich.it
Web: https://graffitproject.eu/
FUNDING
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101020613.
Figure legends
Figure 1: Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.
Figure 2: Basilica of St Francis. Cross-section on the transept.
Figure 3: Assisi, St Francis, Lower Basilica. Devotional graffito on fresco depicting St Christopher: “Hic fuit Franciscus de Neappolis die VIII mensis iulii anno D(omi) ni MCCCCXXI.” Photo © Lorenzo Dottorini.
Figure 4: Assisi, St Francis, Lower Basilica. Graffiti of Dante’s Comedy: “Io vidde Eletra cum multe compagne tra i quali conubbe Ettor et Enea” (Commedia, Inferno, IV, 121-122).
Figure 5: Assisi, St Francis, Upper Basilica, Graffito under the scene of St Francis giving his cloak to the poor: “Blind are those who for the false profit of this world would rather lose the glory of heaven and have hell. Not so the blessed Francis, who, to gain the pearls of the heavenly empyrean, where the Lord Jesus Christ, the only true God, dwells, gave away all his father’s wealth. Blessed, then, are those who eat of the labor of their hands and who do not impoverish their neighbor through false ways and usurious contracts, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. On 17 July in the year of our Lord 1386, I wrote all this here. Those who can read will find my letters between the sign of the cross and the sign Ø.” Photo © Lorenzo Dottorini.
