in preference to a running commentary. In effect, this
form signaled a shift away from simply commenting
on Lombard’s text to rewriting it, a process that was to
reach its perfected form a generation later in the Summa
theologica of Thomas Aquinas.
Among Hugues’s more original contributions to
theology was his teaching of the “treasury of merits”
that held that the superabundance of the merits and
good works of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints are at
the disposal of the church, in the offi ce of the pope, to
distribute to the faithful. With the articulation of the
treasury of merits, the theology of indulgences became
integral to the practice of private penance.
As cardinal, Hugues worked closely with three
popes and served on papal commissions that heard the
controversies over Joachim of Fiore, the posthumous
champion of the Spiritual Franciscans, in 1255 and
William of Saint-Amour, the most vocal critic of the
mendicant orders, in 1256. Hugues’s eucharistic devo-
tion is epitomized in the feast of Corpus Christi, which
he authorized in Liège while legate there between 1251
and 1253 and which was placed in the calendar of the
universal church in 1264 by Pope Urban IV, whom
Hugues had served.
See also Aquinas, Thomas; Joachim of Fiore;
Peter Lombard
Further Reading
Kaeppeli, Thomas. Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi.
3 vols. Rome: Ad S. Sabinae, 1975–80, Vol. 2, pp. 269–81.
Lerner, Robert E. “Poverty, Preaching, and Eschatology in the
Revelation Commentaries of Hugh of Saint-Cher.” In The
Bible in the Medieval Wo r l d: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smal-
ley, ed. Catharine Walsh and Diana Wood. Oxford: Blackwell,
1985.
Principe, Walter. The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the
Early Thirteenth Century. 4 vols. Toronto: Pontifi cal Institute
of Mediaeval Studies, 1970, Vol. 3: Hugh of Saint-Cher’s
Theology of the Hypostatic Union.
Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 3rd
ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
Mark Zier
HUMILITY OF FAENZA
(c. 1226–1310)
Humility of Faenza (Umiltà, Humilitas de Faventia,
Rosanese) was an abbess and mystic and was said to
be a miracle worker. She is perhaps unique in medieval
Italy as a known woman author of a substantial body of
Latin texts that are unlikely to have been ghostwritten or
signifi cantly redacted by a male secretary or confessor.
These are her fi fteen so-called Sermons, of which some
are sermons in the general medieval and modern sense
and the remainder—for which she accurately uses the
term oratio (“prayer”)—are formal addresses of devo-
tion to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and others. The writing
is forceful, expressive, prone to grammatical errors of
case and gender, and replete with resonances of biblical
and other widely known Latin Christian texts. Rhetori-
cal artifi ce is present but not overwhelming. A linear
syntax reminiscent of ordinary speech patterns and the
occasional inappropriate substitution of one similarly-
sounding word for another suggest the oral environment
in which these pieces were delivered and taken down
by dictation. The present Sermon 9 (the division and
arrangement of Humility’s work has varied according
to the judgment of her editors) consists largely of rhyth-
mic poems of the sort called laude (“songs of praise”).
Much matter in the higher-numbered Sermons can be
analyzed somewhat similarly, even if it is not printed
similarly; and there is evidence from the early modern
period that several passages were sung in Vallombrosian
monasteries and transcribed as separate laude in Latin
or in Italian translations, or both.
Apart from the testimony of the Sermons themselves,
almost all that we know of Humility comes from two
early fourteenth-century lives, one in Latin and one in
Italian. She was a talented and determined individual,
with little if any forma! education, who had been born
into a noble family at Faenza. Humility was her name
in religion; Rosanese was her original name. She went
from married life to the life of a conventual, then became
an ascetic solitary, and subsequently founded a com-
munity of Vallombrosian nuns. In 1282, together with
a few companions, she traveled to Florence, where she
established the Vallombrosian convent of Saint John
the Evangelist and spent the remaining years of her
life. Humility was recognized as a living saint both in
Faenza and in Florence; shortly after her death she was
the subject of a statue by Andrea di Cione (Orcagna)
and of a polyptych altarpiece whose paintings have
often been attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti. Her cult was
authorized by the papacy in 1720 for the Vallombrosians
and in 1721 for the dioceses of Florence and Faenza.
She was canonized in 1948.Further ReadingEditions
Simonetti, Adele, ed. I sermoni di Umiltà da Faenza. Biblioteca
di Medioevo Latino, 14. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’
Alto Medioevo, 1995.
——. Le vite di Umiltà da Faenza: Agiografi a trecentesca dal
latino al volgare. Per Verba: Testi Mediolatini con Traduzione,- Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1997.
Translations
“Life of Saint Umiltà, Abbess of the Vallombrosan Order in
Florence,” trans. Elizabeth Petroff. In Consolation of the
Blessed. New York: Alta Gaia Society, 1979. pp. 121–150.
(See introductory material, pp. 7–10. Includes translations of
the Latin life, pp. 121–137; and of much later Analects written
HUMILITY OF FAENZA