Lux Aeterna: Commemoration of Women with Candles in the Santa

Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2011, vol. 6
Lux Aeterna: Commemoration of Women
with Candles in the Santa Maria Novella Book of
Wax in Fifteenth-Century Florence
Maria DePrano
O
ne of the most powerful cultural forces in Renaissance Italy was the
imperative to be remembered. While Renaissance Italians surely
wished to be cherished in the memory of their still-living family, they were
also concerned that a sufficient number of prayers be offered so that their
souls might pass from the agony of Purgatory to the ecstasy of Heaven.1
Elaborate chapels with luxurious marble sarcophagi, modest frescoes on
church walls, and masses said for the deceased’s soul all marshaled the living to pray for the dead.2
The literary and artistic remains, such as funerary orations and ornate
tombs, with which kings, popes, humanists, and leading citizens were commemorated, long ago piqued literary and art historians’ interest, and have
been amply researched.3 The memorialization of women in Renaissance
Italy, however, requires further research. Italian Renaissance scholarship
gives the mistaken impression that early modern women were not commemorated after death.4 The few extant tombs honoring women such as
Ilaria del Carretto and Medea Colleoni demonstrate that some exceptional
women were honored by their relatives with tombs equal to those of men
in expense and artistic design.5 An examination of the commemorative
practices other than monuments employed by Renaissance Italians to pay
tribute to their dead gives a more egalitarian view of societal remembrance
than the art historical examination of monuments is able to produce,
because of the prohibitive expense of sepulcher construction, as well as the
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large-scale destruction of female tombs over the past five hundred years.
The Libro dell’entrata e uscita di cera (Book of the Entrance and Exit of
Wax) for the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella for the years 1479
to 1488 provides poignant testimony that the living remembered their
deceased wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters, some with larger amounts
of wax than others.
The Book of Wax of Santa Maria Novella records the wax donated
to the church sacristy, after the candles were briefly burned at a funerary mass or a sung mass, and the candles given to some families to burn
from the sacristy cache.6 Candles functioned in a variety of ways in Italian
Renaissance churches.7 They were, and still are today, often lit in honor of
different saints or the Madonna. Blessed candles received at Candlemas on
February 2 were highly valued as a means to protect oneself from evil.8 In
the context of a funeral mass, candles both honored the soul of the deceased
and protected it from evil.9 Accounts of popes’ and kings’ deaths shed some
light on the use of candles in funerary rituals. Cardinal Ferrari of Modena,
who died in 1502, lay in state accompanied by six candles for five hours,
until his body was accompanied to the grave by thirty candle bearers.10
The weight of the donated candela (candle), falcola (large candle), doppiere
(double candle), torchio (a large wax candle or wax torch), or torchietto
(an intermediate-sized candle, or a fragment of a torch of wax) reflected
either the importance or the affection that the relatives who arranged for
the candles felt for the deceased.11 These were burned in reverence during
the mortorio (a funeral ceremony that accompanies the departed to the
grave) and other funerary celebrations of varying pomp and honor, such as
the onoranza (funeral with extreme honors), esequio (graveside mass), and
messa canta (sung mass, requiem).12
Analysis of the nine years recorded in the Santa Maria Novella
Book of Wax shows that about one-third of the entries were dedicated
to women.13 Nearly all the wax burnt for women was at the request of
male relatives, with only one entry obviously recording a petition made
by a woman.14 Men purchased wax to pay tribute to female relatives who
were almost exclusively members of their immediate family. Wives and
daughters appear frequently in the book, while only a few mothers, and
hardly any sisters, were so honored. Of the 271 entries of wax donated to
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the church, 147 entries were bequeathed for wives, over half (54 percent);
eighty-three donations of wax were made on behalf of daughters, about
one-third (31 percent); fifteen entries refer to a mother (<6 percent); and
four were given for a sister (<2 percent). Further research is required to
determine if the mothers and sisters were commemorated because their
husbands had predeceased them. Beata Villana, a local beatified woman
who is buried at Santa Maria Novella, received nearly annual wax offerings from the Compagnia del Pellegrino (Company of the Pilgrim) and the
Compagnia del Tempio (Company of the Temple), accounting for 6 percent
of the entries.15 A few other honored women make up the remainder (<2
percent), including two poor women, a servant, the one woman who made
a petition mentioned above, and one aunt. Domenico Cialdonaro purchased ten pounds of large candles for his aunt, Mona Felice, the only aunt
so honored in the entire nine-year data set.16
In general, the longer a woman lived, the more wax she tended to
receive. Infant daughters, who are usually not named, but instead specified as bambina figluola [sic] (baby girl) in the account book, tended to
receive the smallest amount of wax, at most four pounds, but more typically around eight ounces.17 Daughters who were referred to as young girl
or girl (giovane, fanciulla, figliuola) or by name, received four or five times
more wax than was burned for infant daughters.18 Marco Strozzi, who
had the misfortune to lose two daughters, provides a revealing example.
On December 16, 1481 he purchased seven ounces of candles and little
torches for his baby girl.19 Three years later, on February 15, 1485 (modern style), he honored his daughter with thirteen pounds, two ounces in
candles, large candles, and one small torch, which was on the upper end of
wax given for older daughters.20 The greatest amount of wax was donated
for wives, averaging ten and a half pounds.21 Mothers received a respectable, but not lavish amount of wax: on average seven and a half pounds.22
Some indications of class appear in the book’s entries. The names of
some male patrons suggest the craft they practiced. Giovanni Calzaiuolo,
who donated candles and a torch for the memorial celebrated on October
12, 1487, in honor of his wife, Mona Costanza, may have been a hosier.23
Lorenzo di Benedetto Farsetaio [sic], who honored his baby girl with candles and a little torch totaling six ounces on August 5, 1484, may have been
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a doublet maker.24 Other entries list men as muratori (wall makers) and
orafi (goldsmiths).25 The well-respected painter Domenico Ghirlandaio
gave large candles, candles, and a torch totaling fifteen pounds, eight ounces
for the January 24, 1485 memorial service for his wife Mona Gostanza.26
Patrician families in the Santa Maria Novella parish, including the
Tornabuoni, Popoleschi, Cavalcanti, and Lapi families, bestowed vastly
more wax for their dead women, often in the range of twenty to thirty
pounds, sometimes for more than one funeral celebration. If members of a
patrician family honored their deceased female relative with only a mortorio
(memorial service), they usually bought a large amount of wax. However,
if they memorialized the deceased with both a mortorio and a sung mass,
they tended to purchase a small amount of wax for the memorial service,
for instance, two or three pounds of candles, and a much larger sum for
the sung mass. Giovanni Popoleschi burned only two pounds, four ounces
of candles and large candles for his wife’s mortorio, but then splurged on
thirty-one pounds, two ounces of candles, large candles, and a pair of
torches for her sung mass.27
In a few cases patrician wives were venerated with a weight of wax
rivaling that used to honor prominent men of the same class. A combined
total of forty-eight pounds, four ounces of wax was lit for the memorial,
extremely honorable funeral, and sung mass celebrated for Francesco di
Nicholo Tornabuoni in February 1485 (modern style).28 In these rare
cases, the wives may either have performed an extraordinary role in their
lifetimes, or died an unfortunate death, as did Giovanna degli Albizzi, who
died from complications related to her second pregnancy. In her case, the
considerable sum of fifty-two pounds of wax surely honored both her and
her unborn child.29 While the weight of wax given for Giovanna’s masses
was impressive, it is not unrivaled. Antonio di Salvestro Lapi provided
twenty pounds, nine ounces of large candles and ordinary candles for the
February 4, 1485 (modern style) memorial for his wife.30 He also honored
his deceased mate with twenty-four additional pounds for the memorial
mass celebrated on February 7, 1485 (modern style).31 Nearly forty-five
pounds of candles and large candles briefly lit was a generous gesture,
exceeding that for many men, and equaling that for patrician men.
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Contrary to current scholarly opinion, women were honored after
death in Renaissance Florence. An evaluation of the donations of wax
detailed in the Book of Wax at Santa Maria Novella shows that many male
patrons celebrated deceased female family members, especially wives and
daughters, and occasionally mothers and sisters.
Notes
1. For the development of the idea of purgatory, see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth
of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984);
Richard Trexler, “Review of The Birth of Purgatory by Jacques Le Goff,” American
Ethnologist 13 (1986): 160–61; and Robert E. Lerner, “Review of Le naissance du
Purgatoire by Jacques Le Goff,” American Historical Review 87 (1982): 1374–75. This
paper is dedicated to Will Hamlin in gratitude for his kind and generous mentoring.
2. On remembrance of the deceased, see Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., The Cult of
Remembrance and the Black Death (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992);
Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992), 30–51; Strocchia, “Death Rites and the Ritual Family in
Renaissance Florence,” in Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Marcel Tetel,
Ronald G. Witt, and Rona Goffen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989),
120–45, esp. 124–26; and Strocchia, “Remembering the Family: Women, Kin and
Commemorative Masses in Renaissance Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 42 (1989):
635–54.
3. See especially Debra Pincus, The Tombs of the Doges of Venice (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000); Julian Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb
Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992); Andrew Butterfield, “Monument and Memory in Early Renaissance Florence,”
in Art, Memory and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia
Lee Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 135–60; and John M.
McManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideas of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
4. For the burial of woman in the Laurentine age, see Strocchia, Death and Ritual in
Renaissance Florence, 197–200. For funeral oratories praising women, see McManamon,
Funeral Oratory, 113–14. For posthumous portraits of women and a memorial altarpiece
commemorating a woman, see Maria DePrano, “ ‘No Painting on Earth Would Be More
Beautiful’: An Analysis of Giovanna degli Albizzi’s Portrait Inscription,” Renaissance
Studies 22 (2008): 617–41;DePrano, “At Home with the Dead: The Posthumous
Remembrance of Women in the Domestic Interior in Renaissance Florence,” Source 29
(Summer 2010): 21–28; and DePrano, “Per la anima della donna: Pregnancy and Death
in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Visitation for the Tornabuoni Chapel, Cestello,” Viator, forthcoming in Fall 2011.
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Maria DePrano
5. For the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, see Marco Paoli, Il monumento di Ilaria del
Carretto nella Cattedrale di Lucca (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 1999); Stéphane
Toussaint, ed., Ilaria del Carretto e il suo monumento: La donna nell’arte, la cultura e la
società del ‘400 (Lucca: Edizioni S. Marco Litotipo, 1995); and James Beck, Jacopo della
Quercia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 2.341. On the tomb of Medea
Colleoni, see JoAnne G. Bernstein, “The Tomb of Medea Colleoni in the Nineteenth
Century: New Documents, 1841–1842,” Arte Lombarda, n.s. 151. no. 3 (2007): 25–32;
and John Pope-Hennessy, “The Monument to Medea Colleoni,” Italian Renaissance
Sculpture (London: Phaidon Press, 2002), 268, 408.
6. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Santa Maria Novella Libro della Cera 1479–1488,
Corporazioni Religiose Soppresse dal Governo Francese [102] Appendix, filza 84, fol. 1r-41r
records the wax that entered the sacristy’s candle supply. Fol. 62r to the end of the book,
fol. 151v, records the candles given by the church to various religious celebrations. These
documents were first discovered by Rab Hatfield, to whom I extend my thanks for so
very generously sharing the reference with me. Also see Strocchia, Death and Ritual in
Renaissance Florence, 128–29.
7. On light and candles in Christian rituals, see David Reginald Dendy, The Use
of Lights in Christian Worship (London: SPCK, 1959). For candle usage during the
Reformation, see Jesse Spohnholz, The Tactics of Toleration: A Refugee Community in the
Age of Religious Wars (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2010), 214–16.
8. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992), 16–18, 281.
9. Dendy, The Use of Lights, 99–107; Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 361–62;
Henry Theiler, The Candle as a Symbol and Sacramental in the Catholic Church, trans.
J. F. Lang (New York: Fr. Pastet & Co., 1909), 71–73; and Katrin Seidel, Die Kerze:
Motivgeschichte und Ikonologie (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1996), 63–67, 113–17.
10. Johann Burchard, At the Court of the Borgia, trans. Geoffrey Parker (London:
Folio Society, 1963), 206–8.
11. Salvatore Battaglia, Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana (Turin: Unione
Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1971–2007), 2:621–22, 5:586, 4:957, 21:40–41; John
Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, 1611 (Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1968),
78, 161, 177, 186; and Sharon Therese Strocchia, “Burials in Renaissance Florence,
1350–1550” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1981), 80–82. Alternatively,
a torchietto may have been a rather small candle. Peter Thornton describes a torchietto as
a “small and stubby candle”; see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400–
1600 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 275–82, esp. 278. The price of candles is
assumed to be unchanged in this ten-year period. For general wax prices from 1348 to
1519, see Strocchia, “Burials in Renaissance Florence,” 82–84.
12. Battalia, Grande Dizionario, 10:973–74, 11:994, 5:334; and Florio, New World
of Words, 323. For the term esequio, see Cohn, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black
Death, 147.
13. Of approximately 900 entries, 271 were dedicated to women, about 30%.
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14. Ludovica Tornabuoni requests four pounds of candles for the feast of San
Ludovico on August 22, 1487, ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 35v.
15. Ibid., fol. 6v, 11r, 14v, 19r, 23v, 27v, 32r. Beata Villana received wax in 1482, 1483,
1484, 1485, and 1486.
16. Ibid., fol. 12r.
17. Twelve once equal one libbra. This text has followed the standard translation
of “pound” for libbra and “ounce” for oncia, but with the caveat that the Italian libbre is
not equal to the English “pound.” Out of fifty-two entries for baby girls (bambine), the
maximum given for a bambina was four pounds, while the minimum was four ounces.
The average amount given for these particular years was 11.2 ounces, with a median of
eight ounces.
18. Out of thirty-two entries for girls (fanciulle figliuole), the maximum given was
seventeen pounds, six ounces, while the minimum was six ounces. The average was four
pounds, six ounces, with a median of four pounds.
19. ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 10v. Dal mortorio d’una bambina figluola [sic] di marcho strozzi a dì 16 in chandelle e torchietto once sette. [From the funeral of a baby girl of
Marco Strozzi on day 16 in candles and a little torch six ounces.]
20. Ibid., fol. 24r. Dal mortorio d’una fanciulla figluola di Marcho Strozzi a dì 15
detto tra chandelle e falchole libbre cinque once due e d’uno torchietto libbre otto, in tutto libbre
13 once 2. [From the funeral of a girl of Marco Strozzi on said day 15 between candles
and large candles five pounds, two ounces and in one small eight-pound torch, in all 13
pounds, two ounces.]
21. The median amount given for wives was eight and a half pounds. The maximum given was thirty-two pounds. The minimum was six ounces, given by a muratore
(wall maker).
22. The median amount donated for mothers was nine pounds, five ounces. The
maximum was fourteen pounds, six ounces, and the minimum was one pound, eight
ounces.
23. ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 36r. For a translation of calzaiuolo as “hosier,” see
Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2002), 44–45.
24. ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 21v. For a translation of farsettaio as “doublet maker,”
see Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 51–53.
25. ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 10v, 12v, 25r, 26r. For the term muratori, see Richard A.
Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1980), xv.
26. ASF, Libro della Cera, fol. 27v. Dal mortorio di Mona Gostanza dona fu di
Domenicho di Thomaso del Girlandaio di pittore a dì detto libbre nove once due tra falchole e
chandelle e uno torchio libbre sei once sei in tutto libbre 15 once 8. [From the funeral of Mona
Gostanza, who was the wife of Domenico of Thomas of Ghirlandaio, the painter, on said
day nine pounds, two ounces between large candles and candles, and one six-pound, sixounce torch, in all fifteen pounds, eight ounces.]
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27. Ibid., fol. 28v.
28. Ibid., fol. 24r.
29. Ibid., fol. 40r.
30. Ibid., fol. 23v.
31. Ibid., fol. 24r.
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