Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/676

 BOCCACCINO

606

BOCCACCIHO

of St. Columban's disciples, increasing numbers of the Lombards were received into the Church. But during the first half of the seventh centurj', the large tract of country Ipng between Turin and Verona. Genoa and Jlilan, was in a very irrehgious and disturbed state; and even idolatrj- was not tm- known. In fact not until the reign of the usurper Grimoald (663-673), himself a convert, was the bulk of the nation brought into the Church. But from that time Arianism disappeared in the West. The historians of the abbey regard as one of its chief glories the prominent part which it took in the final contest with this heresy. Theodelinda's nephew, the pious Arribert (653-663), restored all the lands of Bobbio wluch belonged by right to the Prince of the Apostles. Arribert II also gladly confirmed this restitution to John VII in 707. The unruly Lombards soon dispossessed the pope, but in 756 -Aistulf was compelled by Pepin to give up the lands. In 77-1 Charlemagne made liberal grants to the abbey. In 1153 Frederick Barbarossa confirmed by two charters various rights and possessions. Thus it came to pass that the abbots were for centuries entrusted with a large administration of temporals. The fame of Bobbio reached the shores of Ireland, and the memorj- of Columbau was dear to the hearts of his countr^^uen. Bobolen's successor was St. ComgaU who had resigned his see in Ireland in order to become a monk of Bobbio; St. Cummian who did the same died in the abbey about 730 (Holder- Egger in "Mon. Germ. Hist."); and the learned St. Dungal (d. after 827) bequeathed to the abbey his valuable librarj', consisting of some seventy volumes, among which was the famous " .Antiphonary of Ban- gor". A tenth-centurj' catalogue, published by Muratori, shows that at that period everj' branch of knowledge, divine and human, was represented in this hbrary. Many of the books have been lost, the rest have long since been dispersed and are still reckoned among the chief treasures of the later col- lections which possess them. In 1616 Cardinal Federigo Borromeo took for the .\mbrosian Library of Milan eighty-six volumes, including the famous "Bobbio Missal", written about 911, the "Antipho- narj- of Bangor", and the palimpsests of Ulfilas's Gotliic version of the Bible. Twenty-six volumes were given, in 1618, to Paul V for the Vatican Librarj-. Many others were sent to Turin, where, besides those in the Royal Archives, there were seventy-one in the University library \mtil the disastrous fire of 26 January, 1904. As scholars of later ages have owed a great deal to the Bobbio MSS., so, too, did those of the tenth centurj'. Gerard of Aurillac, for example, who was afterwards Pope Sylvester II, be- came Abbot of Bobbio in 982; and with the aid of the numerous ancient treatises which he found there he composed his celebrated work on geometry. And indeed it appears that at a time when Greek was al- most unknown in western Europe, the Irish monks of Bobbio read Aristotle and Demosthenes in the original tongue.

In the year 1014, the Emperor Henry II, on the occasion of his own coronation in Rome, obtained from Benedict VIII the erection of Bobbio as a see. Peter Aldus, its first bishop, had been .\bbot of Bob- bio since 999, and his episcopal successors for a long time lived in the abbey, where many of them had been monks. According to rghelli and others, Bobbio was made a suffragan see of Genoa in 1133; but Sa\'io finds this subordination mentioned for the first time in a Bull of Alexander III, dated 19 .\pril, 1161. From time to time disputes arose between the bishop and the monks, and in 1199 Innocent III issued two Bulls, restoring the abbey in spirituals and temporals, and empowerin," the bishop to depose an abbot if within a certain time he did not obey. Bobbio's greatest bishops have been (1) Blessed

Albert (1184), who was translated to the Patriarchal See of Jerusalem and died a martyr at Acre in 1214; (2) the learned canonist Giovanni de Mondani (1477-82), whose remains were found incorrupt in 1614; and (3) Venerable Antonio GianeUi (1838- 46), whose cause has been introduced. St. Coliun- ban's abbey and church were taken from the Bene- dictines by the French soldiers in 1803; what remains of the abbey is now used as a municipal school, and the church, where the reUcs of Sts. Columban, Attala, Bertulf, Cummian, and others repose, is now a parish church, served by secular priests. The altars and the sarcophagi in the crypt present beautiful specimens of the interlaced ornamentation which is characteristic of Irish art. In the Cathedral of Bobbio there is a beautiful tabernacle in the Ravenna style.

Warn'efried, De ijestis Longobardorum in Mon. Germ. Hist. (Hanover, 187S), III; Migxe, P. L., LXXVII. CLXXIX, CCXIV; Jaffe-Ewald, Regesta Rom. Pont. (Leipzig, 1885, 1SS6); PortHAST, Regeata Rom. Pont. (Berlin, 1872); Id., Bibliotheca Hist, medii icvii (2d ed. Berlin, 189(5); PHESsrTi, Regesta Honorii 111 (Rome. 1888-95); Duchesne, Liber Pontijicalis (Paris, 18921, II; Ughelli-Coleti, Italia Sacra (Venice). IV; Mabillon, .Ida Sanctorum Ord. S. Ben. (2d ed.. Venire, 173.3). I; Muratori, .intinuitales /ta/zVr (Milan, 1740). Ill; Bellesheim, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Irland (Mainz. 1890), I; GoERtv, Les petits Bollandistes (Paris, 18S2- — ); MoR.AN, Essays on the Early Irish Church (Dublin, 1864); OHanlon. Lives of Irish Saints (Dublin, 1875-1906); Martin. Saint Columban in Les Saints (Paris, 1905); Rosetti (an Abbot of Bobbio), Bobbio Illustrato (1795); Amatt, Dizionario Coro- grafico d'llalia (Milan, 1802); Corografia d'ltalia (Milan, s. d.); Healy, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars (Dublin, 1890); Stokes, Six Months in the .Apennines (Dublin, 1892); His- toric Patria Monumciita. (Turin, 1836-84); Petron, Prafatio De Bibliotheca Bobbiensi; M. T. Cic. Fragm., (Turin, 1824); Vox Gebhard, Ein Bacherfund in Bobbio: Seebass, H andschriften. von Bobfno respectively in V and XIII of Centralblatt f. Biblio- thekenwesen (Leipzig, 1888-96); OTrrxo, / codiri Bobbiesi (Turin, 1890; a facsimile edition from copies of the Turin MSS. is appearing at Milan since 1906); Werner, Gerbert von Auril- lac (Vienna. 1881); Heimbucher. Die Orden u. Kongregationen der kath. Kirche (Paderborn. 1896, 1897); Gams. Series epis- coporum Ecclesice catholicce (Ratisbon, 1873-88); Eubel, Hier- archia Catholica medii tevi (Jliinster. 1898), I; Savio, Gli antiehi vescovi d'ltalia; Piemonte (Turin, 1899), I, 158-174.

ReGIN.U-D W.tLSH.

Boccaccino, Boccaccio, an eminent Italian painter, b. at CVemona, 1460, and d. probably in 1525 rather than in 1518, the date usually given. He studied, it is thought, with followers of Man- tegna, at Ferrara, and was a pupil or fellow-student of Domenico Panetti. At Cremona he painted in Sant' Agostino a series of frescoes. He had as an assistant Benvenuto Garofalo, who left him and went to Rome. The master followed and painted a "Coronation of the Virgin" in Santa Maria in Trastevere. Tliis, however, was so ridiculed by the public, which had expected much of one who had had the hardihood to criticize Michael Angelo, that the disappointed artist returned to Cremona where, among liis most appreciated works, is a frieze in the cathedral, sho\\ing the "Birth of the Virgin '" and other subjects from the life of Our Lady. Lanzi, who considered Boccaccino as the best modern among the ancients and the best ancient among the moderns, compares liis work in these productions with that of Perugino, treating it as inferior in some qualities while superior in others.

The works of Boccaccino possess much charm, and a number of them greatly resemble those of Perugino. This is notably so in his "Marriage of the Virgin" and "The Madonna with St. Vincent, and St. Anthony" in the church of San Vincenzo a^ Cremona, which have often been assumed to be the work of the greater painter. Among Boccaccino 's works in the cathedral at Cremona, in addition to those already spoken of, are: "The Appearance of the Angel to Joachim"; "The Meeting of Joachim and Anna"; "The Circumcision"; "Christ Reason- ing with the Doctors"; and "Christ with the four Patron Saints of Cremona". .\t the Academy in Venice is his much admired "Marriage of St. Cath-