Research diary: Part 2 of 2

 

Last week on this blog I posted Part 1 of my research diary, covering a six-day week and giving examples of the kinds of problems I find myself pursuing in the course of writing my work-in-progress.

My story takes place in Rome and Assisi, beginning in the year 1210.  It has proved fiendishly difficult to pin down verifiable dates for events in the life of Saint Francis, and if we can't be certain even of the saint's history, you can imagine what it must be like trying to track down the details on anyone else of that period.

Naturally, that's what I'm trying to do.  My quarry is one Roman noblewoman, Lady Giacoma (aka Jacoba, Jacoba) dei Settesoli, an early friend and follower of Saint Francis.  So far I'm juggling two different death dates (several decades apart), four or five different combinations of names and dates for her sons, four dates for when she was widowed, another four dates for when she met Francis, and at least two different political orientations for her family - although, given the times, that last one is actually believable.

Lady Giacoma dei Settesoli (fresco in the Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi)

I gave you my research problems for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday last week, so now I bring you Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  (Sunday I went to a movie.  You can only do so much of this...)


Thursday

Research problem:  My storyline requires Giacoma to visit Francis in Assisi.  This visit has to take place between 1212 and 1215.  I need to find a timeslot when Saints Francis and Clare will both be present in Assisi.

Saints Francis and Clare

What I find:  This is harder than you might think.  I've compiled a timeline for Francis, drawing on perhaps a dozen different biographies and going with my best guesses when they conflict; another for Clare, also doing some guessing; and one for Giacoma, again pulling together my best guesses based on everything I can find about her, which isn't much.  Then I merged the three timelines, using a different typeface for each of the three, so I can see at a glance what's going on with whom at any given time.

So far, so good.

This visit can't occur in 1212, because there's just too much else going on.  Francis makes a journey to Rome early in the year, before Palm Sunday in March, at which time Clare escapes from her house and joins Francis and his brothers, takes her oath of obedience, and Francis cuts her hair.  He places her first in a Benedictine convent, and shortly thereafter moves her to another house of women, near Assisi (which may have been a convent or possibly more of a beguinage); meanwhile her sister Catherine joins her, taking the name of Agnes, and their family makes repeated attempts to get one or both of the girls back.  Eventually the sisters (and by then other women who wish to join them) are moved to a humble house at San Damiano, a church that Francis himself has restored. 

Courtyard at San Damiano

During the spring and summer of that year, Francis is preaching in various places around Umbria, and in September he leaves for the far east (doesn't get there, not this time, anyway, but that's another story).

So with both of them moving around, that pretty much axes 1212.  How about 1213?  Well, Francis preached in the villages of the Apennines in the spring, and he went to Spain that summer, and probably wasn't back in Italy until late 1214 or even 1215.  Thus, Giacoma can't make her trip in 1214.  Clare, meanwhile, was either in a holding-tank sort of convent, or in San Damiano.

Do you think the sources will agree on how long it took her to move from one to the other?  Of course not.  She arrived in San Damiano "soon," "in a few weeks," "in several months," or "in 1216."  1216?!  I don't think so.  She took the title of abbess in 1216, but it seems likely she was in San Damiano well before that. For one thing, with their irate family aggressively trying to get Clare and her sister to come back to the family fold, the women they were staying with would probably have wanted their guests to find another place, so they could get their peace and quiet back.

So I get arbitrary.  Giacoma is going to arrive in Assisi in the early summer, during that brief moment when Francis must have been back from his preaching tour and not yet departed for Spain.  (There had to be such a time, didn't there?)  And by then, I arbitrarily say that Clare is in San Damiano.

Star rating: ***  I've done what I can with it; my position can't be proved, but it is plausible, and I don't think I've neglected anything.  Not satisfying, but it's the best I can do if my characters are going to be running around all over the place and refuse to stay put.


Friday

Research problem:   Actually, I misspoke last week (misblogged?) when I said I was going to research Christmas in Greccio (by which I meant Saint Francis's setting up the first nativity scene there in 1223).  I've already done some of that in an earlier blog post, which you can find here.  But it was a Greccio question I wanted to explore.

Santuario, Greccio

In the oratory connected with the convent in Greccio, there is a painting of Saint Francis.  It shows the saint dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, the result of the painful eye ailment that plagued him for much of his adult life and resulted in his eventual blindness (or near-blindness).  The tale is that the painting was commissioned, during Francis's lifetime, by Lady Giacoma, so naturally I was interested in it and hoped to learn more, including the name of the artist.

What I found:  Not much.  For one thing, it's a copy - some sources say 14th century, some say 15th.  It may well be a faithful copy of the original, but we have no way of knowing.  I can't find any hint of an artist's name anywhere, which I suppose is not really surprising, but I had hoped that something would turn up.  And I can't find any proof that Giacoma commissioned the work, though I don't see anything to say she didn't, either, and the sign with the painting says she did.

I do learn that this was Mother Teresa's favorite depiction of Saint Francis.  And I learn that the sign under the painting translates to something like this:  "Real portrait of Seraphic Patriarch San Francesco d'Assisi, commissioned by the pious Roman woman Giacoma de' Settesoli, when the patriarch was alive."  That's it.

Star rating:  *  Oh, well.  I still really like the painting.


Saturday

Research question:  I want to discover the route that Giacoma would have taken when she went to Assisi, and that Francesco and his brothers would have taken when they went to Rome.  And I wanted to find out to what extent it overlapped with the ancient pilgrimage route called the Via Francigena.

Photo by Laurom

What I find:  The Via Francigena is the pilgrims' path to Rome.  It's usually associated with France (or the Frankish lands), as the name implies, though a version of it going all the way from Canterbury to Rome was laid out by Archbishop Siguric around the year 990.

Photo by Bjorn Christian Torrissen

In those days Assisi was off the route (or routes; I learned that the Via Francigena was more than one route, encompassing as many as three or four different points for crossing the Alps or the Apennines, depending on one's starting point).  Now, thanks to Saints Francis and Clare, Assisi is itself a pilgrimage destination, so it's not surprising that even today pilgrims are walking between the two cities.  And that made it relatively easy to plot out a plausible route for Francis going to Rome, and for Giacoma going to Assisi.  As a walking route, it involves 14-16 stages, averaging 10-12 miles per day, and much of the terrain is mountainous.  But the total distance, 150 miles, is dwarfed by Archbishop Siguric's route:  1,100 miles. 

Photo by Sailko

It was almost ridiculously easy to put together the information I needed, particularly since I've traveled in this part of Italy and (sort of) know where things are.  Companies that serve tourists and pilgrims, many of whom still make the journey on foot, offer detailed itineraries and maps, and that, plus the records of some of Francis's journeys -- where he stayed, where he stopped and preached, etc. -- make this a fairly simple task.  And I find my point of overlap between the Rome-Assisi route and the Via Francigena:  it's Rieti.

Pilgrims bound for Rome, carved on the Duomo in Fidenza (near Parma)

Star rating: *****  Finally, an easy one!


Now, maybe it's time to address all the things-in-brackets in my draft which still need to be filled in.  I usually use something modern and obvious, so I won't accidentally leave in something inappropriate.  Thus we get things like "She gazed out the tower window, looking down on [the Starbucks] below..."  and "The beggars, [Tiffany and Mortimer], were becoming more insistent."   Not to mention the cardinal who is currently being addressed as "Your Redness," because "Your Eminence" wasn't in use this early.  But that's another topic, for another time.

Images in this post are our own (Giacoma, San Damiano), in the public domain, or licensed as follows:  pilgrim silhouette on rock licensed to Laurom via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; collage of signs licensed to Bjorn Christian Torrissen via the same license; signs posted on stone wall licensed to Sailko via the same license. 

Research diary: Part 1 of 2

 

After writing about my writing process last week (see here), I started thinking again about my research process as well.  After all, the original intent of this blog was to explore the research process, though in practice it has often turned into sharing research results.  

I find that research never entirely ceases.   Though the preliminary reading and organizing for my work in progress is done and I am now writing, hardly a day goes by when I don't have to hit the books for something:  to clarify a point, find a date or other bit of information, check a detail, or just to pursue a new line of thought that has emerged in the course of writing.  

So I decided to post a research diary for one six-day week, and to give each day's research a star rating of one to five, based on how successful it was (or wasn't).  I'll post the first three days this week, and the last three in another week.  Here goes:

Monday

Research problem:  My main character was lady of the castle in a place called Marino, not far from Rome.  I need to know something about what Marino was like in the early 13th century, and whether it would be worthwhile traveling there to learn more.

View of Marino from a nearby villa, Gaspar Van Wittel, 1719

What I find:  I learn that there is an Ikea in Marino.  Also that it's possible to sign up for zumba classes.  Somehow I don't think either of these applies to my characters.  Searching further, I learn that much damage was done during WWII when the town was bombed; that and the fact that many of the tourist sites seem to be later than my time period suggest that it might not be worthwhile to visit.  

Frangipane tower

But I also learn that Marino has a donut festival, which is a plus for visiting, and a wine festival, which is an even bigger plus.  And I find some pictures of surviving medieval towers, which is another plus - and one of them (above) belonged to my character's family, the Frangipane.  I learn that there is a huge lake nearby.  I learn some things about the terrain, and the vegetation that grows there. 

I learned of a nearby quarry that produces "peperino," which is not in my Italian dictionary.  (The closest thing is either the word for "peppers" or the sheep-milk cheese called "pecorino," but I doubt that it was a quarry of either cheese or peppers.)  The internet came through this time.  It means "tufa."

The prize:  During the wine festival, a fountain in the heart of the city is made to flow with wine, free for the taking (which results, apparently, in a rather boisterous festival).  One year, the transformation of water to wine was announced, and the mayor and other dignitaries held out their cups, only to find them filled with - water.  Much consternation ensued, until suddenly a woman inside a nearby building cried out, "Miracolo!"  It seems that someone had made a slight mistake, and the wine was flowing out of her kitchen tap instead of the fountain.  Can I use this story?  No.  Do I love it anyway?  You bet.

Star rating:  ****  Promising results, fun story.  Do I visit?  Maybe.

Tuesday

Research problem:  It's written in the earliest biographies of Saint Francis that on his deathbed he called for the Roman noblewoman Lady Giacoma dei Settesoli (my main character) to come to him, and to bring with her some of the almond sweets that she used to make for him when he visited Rome.   What, exactly, were those sweets?

What I find:  Many, many people have tried to reconstruct them.  They are often said to be similar to mostaccioli (not the pasta version, but an almond cookie popular around Rome).  Another source calls them mortarioli, but when I request a definition of that, an online dictionary sniffs, "Did you spell that right?" - thereby revealing its ignorance.  Hmpf.  Then it goes on to suggest that maybe I mean "mortuaries," or possibly "mortarboards."  Hmpf, again.

Others think that what Giacoma brought to the saint was something closer to frangipani, an almond-flavored cream pastry filling named for her husband's family, the Frangipane.  I looked at dozens of recipes.  The ingredients listed in the earliest writings about Francis were simple:  almonds, honey, spice, eggs, flour.  You'd be amazed at the variations.  

They all have almonds, however.  There is a bit of a debate about whether Giacoma used sugar or honey.  The sugar group says that she was wealthy and therefore could have afforded the expensive commodity.  The honey group says that sugar at that time was mostly used for medicinal purposes, and honey is the likelier sweetener.

Purchasing sugar

Or was it honey?

Some modern recipes for mostaccioli include chocolate, which was obviously not part of Giacoma's version.  I also discount the ones that involve Crisco and self-rising flour, as well as vanilla extract, dark rum, and baking powder.

Mostaccioli often use grape must, which is tempting, except I don't happen to have any.  So I proceed with this list of ingredients:  blanched almonds, honey, cinnamon, egg whites, and flour.  And just for good measure, I also make some frangipani to slosh on the almond thingies, which look like they're going to need some help.

The results?  Well, remember about how the WWII bombing wrecked a lot of older buildings in Marino?  Let's just say that if they had been built out of these almond cakes and mortared together with frangipani, they'd probably still be there.  They tasted fine, but they were dense.

Star rating:  ***  Nothing definitive, but at least I managed to give some thought to the ingredients.  Plus there were almond cakes.  With frangipani.

Wednesday

Research problem:  I want to find out when the controversial Brother Elias joined Saint Francis's band of brothers.  

What I find:  I satisfy myself that he was not part of the original small group of brothers who traveled to Rome, which is the point where my story begins.  And I satisfy myself that he was part of the group by 1212, which is the year where Giacoma's next encounter with the saint is to take place.  But I cannot find out exactly when he joined. There are thousands of biographies of Francis of Assisi, and I own several, have looked at many more from various libraries, and have pursued this question while in Assisi, and I absolutely can't pin it down.  Francis's dates are notoriously elusive, and scholars often disagree on the exact year in which something happened, let alone the month and day.  Do I need to know exactly when he joined?  Well, no, not really.  Would I like to know?  Of course I would.  

Brother Elias is almost certainly one of the friars depicted in Giotto's painting of the verification of Saint Francis's stigmata, above.  It was Elias who wrote the letter announcing both Francis's death and the miracle of the stigmata to the order.  The only known contemporary portrait of Elias has not survived.

Brother Elias is a fascinating character, an enigma, controversial in his time and since, who died estranged from the Franciscan order and just barely reconciled with the Catholic church, yet who was instrumental in the creation of the great Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi.  One find in this frustrating research journey:  an article by a Catholic businessman who credits Brother Elias with being the CEO of Francis's order.

Basilica di San Francesco

Star rating: *  Not helpful.  So, I assign him a probable date of entry into the order.  It's not certain, but it's as educated a guess as I can come up with.  And it invokes my emergency mantra for such things:  "Dammit, Jim, I'm a novelist, not a historian."

Come back next week for the second half of my research diary:  a visit to Assisi, Christmas in Greccio, and traveling the Via Francigena.

Images in this post are in the public domain either because of their age or because of the generosity of a photographer who released his/her work into the public domain on Wikimedia Commons, except for the picture of the Basilica, which is my husband's.  Thank you, photographers.