Percursos pelo imaginário medieval italiano: lendo imagens nos passos de São Francisco de Assis

Abstract

This thesis is focused on reading images of personal objects and artistic and architectural works pertinent to St. Francis of Assisi. He was born in Assisi, Italy, this saint of the Catholic Church who used the behavior of Christ, propagated Christian dogmas and created the Franciscan order. To revere the saint, different paths were created; The Way of Assisi is one of them. The guiding question outlined the possibility of understanding what’s the meaning may be given to the reading of personal objects, artistic and architectural works related to San Francisco, present in some cities of the Way of Assissi, in the region of Central Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries? The general objective was to perform the reading of objects, artistic and architectural works linked to St. Francis of Assissi in order to try to understand the imaginary in the timespace in which he lived. It is a bibliographical research, with a qualitative and hermeneuticsymbolic approach, anchored in the imaginary theory of Gilbert Durand. The text is structured in four chapters; where they cross over aspects about reading images, Gilbert Durand and his theory, hagiographic bases of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare and St. Anthony of Padua, the records of the Way Of Assisi, archetypes and Franciscan symbols, aspects of the Middle Ages, especially of Central Italy from the 12th and 13th centuries, a period marked by Catholicreligious fervor. The imaginary is the individual and collective ability to give meaning to the world, and images, as symbols, express and give meaning to everything that exists. From the mythical and symbolic content based on Gilbert Durand's theory, the images present parity between the diurnal, nocturnal and twilight regimes, referring to the center, the balance and the cyclicity. By hermeneutics, we decipher the symbolic set of thirteen photographs - house, fortress, church, crucifix, tunic, rope, chalice, stick, via francigena di Francesco, bed, Regula Bullata, blood and tomb - all linked to the saint. Thus, we understand that the reading of the images of these objects, artistic and architectural works are in accordance with the medieval customs. Francis is considered a saint by renunciation of the world, eremitical andcontemplative life, liberation from selfishness, humility and fraternity, attributes that are repeated in the heroic saints and myths. This research contributes to the reader's research and training research line, since the studies undertaken here refer to the thesis that the reading of photographs of artistic and architectural works and personal objects belonging to Saint Francis of Assisi [1181-1226] may provide an interpretation of some aspects of the life of the Saint and the imaginary of the period in which he lived, especially in central Italy.