St. Mama's Prayer: Paleographist for a Day

The detail from an Italian Renaissance painting piqued my curiosity.
What does the book say? 

The other day I was a paleographist for one day. My dear friend Rosemary posted a painting on Facebook by an artist I did not know, Francesco dei Franceschi. His San Mamante, St. Mama's is housed in the civic museum in Verona. I can't wait to see this painting in person as my Daniele has decided that our next trip to Italy is going to be to Verona and Mantova. It may happen soon. So I have an extra good reason to visit. 

The painting by Francesco dei Franceschi depicts San Mamante with a lion on his right side. The saint is holding a book in his left hand. The book's writing is gothic style with many syncopes. Syncopes are expressed by little signs over single words. They indicate that there is a letter or more missing in a word. At first sight, I could tell the original writing was much longer than what was on the painting:  the writing was full of syncopes. From the few words I had read, the writing was in Latin: 

I definitely wanted to decipher what the book said. It was a curiosity my new Facebook friend Laura had expressed to be fulfilled in one of her comments to the painting. She had piqued my curiosity, too! 

The first thing I did was enlarge the image that was posted on Facebook (see above). On the internet, there was no better resolution. Then I found out that by using my cellular touch phone I could obtain the best enlargements. In the beginning, despite I had enlarged the image, I could not see the writing clearly. So I was almost giving up. I was also tempted to write to the civic museum in Verona. I had marked down their email address already. Then what happened is that the next morning I woke up and said to myself I should have a bigger picture of St. Mama's painting. So I opened my computer and stood back enough to see the image better. I thought at that point I could read more than the few Latin words I had spotted in the beginning. "Deo vivo qui...[...] Deus meus" was about all I could read that made sense. Not much). 

So I looked for a St. Mama's prayer on the internet and my research took me to the gospel of St. Luc, where it says that God is the God of the living (St. Luc: 20,27.34-38). No way the book writing and St. Luc's gospel matched. 

The magic happened when I stood back in front of the writing and continued reading: «Deo vivo qui REGNAT...[...] servio et...[...] me [...] deus meus »  With these additional words in mind I went and redo my research on the internet and...I found the original book from which the writing came. I found it on Google books!                

So the solution is that St. Mama's book repeats a sentence from a book called: Acta Sanctorum, containing the history of saints by the saint's day. In particular, it is a sentence that is part of the chapter dedicated to Saint Magnus martyr: The writing goes: « DEO VIVO, QUI REGNAT IN CAELIS, FERVIO, ET NUMQUAM ME DERELINQUET DOMINUS DEUS MEUS »

(English translation: "The living God, who reigns in heaven, I serve, O Lord my God, and he will never abandon me." - Source: Acta Sanctorum. Die decima nona Augusti page 719- paragraph  6.

Collectore Petro Calo Dominicano. San Magno Martire Caesarea in Cappadocia ) 

Francesco dei Franceschi, San Mamante (st. Mama's),
circa 1450, civic museum, Verona, Italy 

At that point, all words were matching except for fervio-servio. What Francesco dei Franceschi wrote on the painting is the verb: servio. It starts with the letter that we currently use in Italian: it's the verb 'to serve' with initial "S": servire, to serve same as in English. This change from fervio to servio is for a professional paleographist to explain. There must have been a consonant rotation from the time the original book was written and the painting that belongs to the 15th century was created. Or maybe it was just an error that the painter made because servio starting with 'S' was more familiar to Francesco de Franceschi. In any case, the artist should have been faithful to the original Latin sentence. 

I hope you enjoyed my discovery. I love doing this as I am very curious. When I visit Verona, I will look for a book with the book's saying interpretation by a real paleographist!

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