Holy ring
The Holy Ring (it. Santo Anello ) is a relic that is kept in the Cathedral of Perugia . He will than that engagement ring revered by the St. Joseph of the Virgin Mary at her engagement have been infected. In the late Middle Ages it was given the highest sacredness and miraculous activity, so that it attracted many pilgrims. His stolen translation from Chiusi to Perugia sparked war-like clashes. To this day, the solemn unveiling and presentation of the ring in the last days of July is a much-attended celebration. Especially newly engaged and married couples ask for blessings.
description
The ring is not made of metal, but of honey-yellow, slightly translucent chalcedony . It is round in cross-section and thickens at the top (in today's suspension at the bottom). There it is slightly flattened and contains a depression. This was perhaps once provided with a relief image or contained a gem . It could be the signet ring of a noble Roman from the 1st century AD.
The ring hangs on a precious little crown from 1716 in a small tower reliquary in a multi-locked box behind a curtain on a floating silver cloud above the altar of the Joseph Chapel, which is in turn grilled. For the festive presentation, the cloud is lowered ( calata dell'anello ) and the reliquary with the ring hanging in it is exhibited to the faithful.
history
Chiusi
Before it was stolen from Perugia in 1473, the ring was Chiusi's most precious relic for centuries. How it got there and how it was identified as Mary's engagement ring is only known in legend . Then Judith , a niece of Otto III. and his wife Hugos von Tuszien , who mostly resided in Chiusi, bought precious jewelry for themselves from a Jew from Jerusalem in Rome. Among them was the ring that the Jew said was Mary's engagement ring that had been passed on in his family for generations. When we arrived in Chiusi, the ring was identified by large miraculous signs. He was brought to the then Cathedral of Chiusi, the Basilica of St. Mustiola .
The storage in Santa Mustiola is possibly the origin of the second, different origin legend. According to her, the apostle John had the ring in his possession along with other souvenirs of Mary and brought it to Rome in 95. There it came to the imperial court and was used as an amulet until the Christian Mustiola, a relative of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Claudius , took it. Because of the persecution of Christians under Aurelian , she fled to Chiusi. There she suffered martyrdom and took the ring with her to the grave, where it was later found while building her Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Around 1250 the ring was transferred to the Cathedral of San Secondiano , which resulted in a long conflict between the Canon Regulars of Santa Mustiola and the Cathedral Chapter . Finally in 1420 Bishop Pietro Paolo Bertini entrusted him to the Franciscan Conventuals of San Francesco . The Basilica of St. Mustiola was abandoned and demolished in the 18th century.
Perugia
At the end of July 1473 the change of location and ownership of the ring occurred, which was presented very differently according to the opposing perspectives. For the Chiusins it was a theft engineered by Perugia out of selfishness and gainfulness, for the Perugians a process willed and supported by God or the Mother of God. The key role played a Franciscan brother Winter ( Fra Venterio ) from Mainz , who had belonged to the convent in Chiusi since 1469. According to his own testimony during later interrogation, his confreres accused him of stealing the goblet for no reason and had been held in heavy prison for forty days in the city prison. After returning to the convent, he was still hostile and decided to travel back to Germany and take the precious ring with him. With self-made duplicate keys, he managed to steal them at night and set off. On the way, however, he was convinced by thick fog and a subsequent light phenomenon to take the ring to Perugia, where the relic was accepted as a gift from heaven after strict examination by the city authorities and was ceremoniously shown to the people in early August. A chest with iron bars and eleven locks was made; the eleven keys are still in the hands of various ecclesiastical and communal authorities.
The protests Chiusi in Perugia and the Pope - Perugia belonged to the Papal States - were unsuccessful. In the following thirteen years there were serious clashes in which Chiusi was supported by Siena , to whose territory it belonged. Economic reprisals, water excavations, road and bridge demolitions, mutual exclusion from the city district, asylum for convicted criminals from the other city, armament and the official threat of war shaped this time.
Pope Sixtus IV decreed in 1480 that the Holy Ring should be brought to Rome in the St. Mary's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore . Perugia should be compensated with other relics. However, Perugia refused. In 1486 Innocent VIII finally awarded the ring to Perugia.
Brother Winter spent the other thirty years of his life as rector of San Giovanni di Piazza and city pensioner in Perugia and after his death received a grave and an honoring epitaph in the cathedral. The St. Joseph's Chapel, the silver tower reliquary (1498–1511) and other decorations from the Baroque era were created for the Holy Ring in the cathedral. Pietro Perugino created the altarpiece The Marriage of Mary for the Joseph Chapel around 1503 . It was stolen by Napoleonic troops in 1797 and is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen . In 1825 Jean-Baptiste Wicar painted a new Marriage of Mary , today's altarpiece, as a replacement for the Brotherhood of the Holy Ring .
Today the Holy ring is called a "monument" ( memoriale ) for the joint participation of Mary and Joseph in the mystery of the Incarnation understood as well as a sign of marital fidelity, fidelity to the Catholic faith of God sacramentally maps.
literature
- Jörg Traeger : Renaissance and Religion. The Art of Faith in the Age of Raphael . Munich 1997, therein pp. 105-132
Web links
- La “Mater Gratiae” e il “Santo Anello” (Website of the Perugia Cathedral, Italian)
- L'anello nuziale della Vergine Maria (Nicoletta de Matthaeis, Italian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Perugia: Quest'anno particolarmente significativa l'ostensione del “Santo Anello” (umbrianotizieweb.it, July 27, 2016)
- ↑ Traeger, p. 108
- ↑ 'Lo Sposalizio' di Wicar, gioiello dell'Accademia di Belle Arti di Perugia (umbria24.it)
- ↑ Website of the cathedral