Apocryphal standing corpse of St. Francis: Print recycled as death announcement.

[Saint Francis] / [Death announcement]. S. Franciscus Ord. FF. Min. Fundator. Basilica S. Assisiensis FF. Min. Conventualium in qua corpus S.P.N. Francisci incorruptum et erecto corpore stans asservatur [Verso:] Memor esto judicii mei … Prier pour le repos de l’Ame de Soeur Claire Isabelle Lowet, Associée du Pensionnat d’Hougaerde, Décédée … 2 November 1825, agée de 26 ans et 6 mois. [12.2 x 8.7], [1] f. engraving with letterpress text on verso. Well preserved.

Unrecorded 18th-century engraving depicting St. Francis and the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, with a Latin inscription repeating the wild claim that the incorrupt corpse of Saint Francis miraculously stood upright in the crypt at the Basilica (“in qua corpus S.P.N. Francisci incorruptum et erecto corpore stans asservatur”).

The engraving was reused in 1825 for a death announcement for a certain Sister Claire Isabelle Lowet, who died at the age of 26 at Hoegaarden (she was a member of the Soeurs de l’Union au Sacré-Coeur). The selection of this engraving for this purpose seems to have been random.

The false claim about the body of Francis requires some explanation. Jeannine Baticle provides a fine introduction to the matter in reference to Francisco de Zurbarán’s famous life-size painting of the standing Saint Francis (c. 1650-60). I quote her here at length:

“The image of the founding saint uncorrupted, in an ecstatic pose and standing upright in his tomb, corresponds to a singular tradition transmitted orally since the thirteenth century, which made its first appearance in art in the early seventeenth century. In his Legenda maior (1266), Saint Bonaventure states that Saint Francis was interred in the basilica at Assisi. Not long thereafter, the conviction grew that his body remained uncorrupted and standing upright, and many who had visited the crypt swore to having seen him thus. The discovery of the saint’s true relics in 1818 proved the tales unfounded, but they had once been believed by even the most objective chroniclers of the Counter Reformation, such as Luke Wadding, the author of the monumental Annales minorum. The first volume of Wadding’s history of the Franciscans, published in 1625, tells of some of the visits, notably of those of Nicholas V (1397-1455) and Sixtus IV (1414-1484), who witnessed the body ‘intact and standing,’ in rapt devotion even after death. The visit of Nicholas V in 1449 is also recounted at length in volume two of the Acta sanctorum (Antwerp, 1748).

“A description furnished by a cardinal in the escort of Nicolas V appeared in Spanish in 1562 in the Chrónicas of Fray Marcos da Lisboa. The description was reprinted in the Chrónica de nuestro seráfico padre San Francisco (Seville, 1589), by Luis de Rebolledo, and it turned up again in Ribadeneyra’s Flos sanctorum (Madrid, 1624): ‘He was standing upright … He had his eyes open, like a living person, and calmly raised to heaven. The whole and entire body was without corruption … His hands were covered with the sleeves of the habit and in front of his chest,’ This precise description of the saint’s miraculous appearance in death served as the model for many seventeenth-century artists in their representations of the subject. An especially popular theme was the witnessing of the saint’s body by Nicholas V, as in the engraving by Thomas de Leu of about 1600-1610 [as well as Laurent de Hyre’s 1630 painting]” (Jeannine Baticle, pp. 306-9, no. 69).

The engraving offered here is a rare survival from the material culture of 18th-century pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Francis in Assisi. The Assisi tomb was at that time not an especially popular pilgrimage site (unlike, e.g., Loreto or the various churches of Bavaria/Austria, which generated a huge quantity of printed souvenirs for the consumption of pilgrims). Vauchez remarks that, “In 1818, on the occasion of archeological digs that were being done in the basilica at Assisi, [Francis’s] tomb and his relics, lost since the fifteenth century, were rediscovered, and in 1850 those of Saint Claire, which had also been hidden in the great church dedicated to her, were also found. This helped relaunch pilgrimages to the two saints, whose cult had become purely local since the Middle Ages” (Vauchez, p. 232).

Remarkably, however, there survives a 1786 letter written by Ubaldo Tebaldi, the famous historian/chronicler of the Order, in which he discusses the commissioning of a new engraved plate to print forms for certifying that pilgrims had visited the Assisi Basilica. He objects strenuously to the inclusion of the phrase “mirabiliter stans” (“miraculously standing”) in reference to the body of St. Francis, stating that, despite claims to the contrary, no one had ever truly observed the body in such a posture (“Lettera autentica transcritta dall’ originale dal P. M.ro. Ubaldo Tebaldi al Rev.mo P. Generale Barbarigo,” pp. 94-5).

This item is not located by OCLC, KVK, or ICCU/OPAC, not have I encountered it in the literature on the relics/tomb of St. Francis.

*Jeannine Baticle, Zurbarán (ex. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Sept. 22 - Dec. 13, 1987), pp. 306-9, no. 69; André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint; “Lettera autentica transcritta dall’ originale dal P. M.ro. Ubaldo Tebaldi al Rev.mo P. Generale Barbarigo,” Miscellanea francescana di storia, di lettere, di arti, vol. 17, fasc. II-III (1917), pp. 94-5.