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-
