A Holy hermit, possibly Guglielmo of Malavalle (wall painting, 1330–1337), Sant’ Agostino chapter house, Siena, Italy. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

Long before eco-conscious faith, medieval monks were healing land, animals and harvests.

New research suggests that the Vatican’s recently opened eco-friendly farm, inaugurated by the first pope from the Augustinian order, reflects a largely overlooked chapter in the order’s early past. Historian Dr. Krisztina Ilko of the University of Cambridge argues that this history calls into question long-held ideas about the medieval Catholic Church and the early Renaissance.

A scorched cherry twig miraculously sprouting; a diseased swamp restored to ‘peak fertility’; healing the broken leg of an ox; and multiplying cabbages. These forgotten episodes are part of a broader set of medieval miracles that Dr. Ilko has brought back into view through her research.

“Bleeding hosts and stigmatizations are the best-known medieval miracles,” says Dr. Ilko, author of The Sons of St Augustine, a major new study published by OUP.

“The Augustinians get very little credit for miraculously making land fertile, healing livestock and bringing fruit trees back to life,” says Ilko, a medieval historian from Queens’ College, Cambridge.

The Commune of Teramo framed by citizens and Augustinian friars on Jacobello del Fiore’s altarpiece (1407-10), Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Teramo, Italy. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

“With Leo XIV becoming the first Augustinian Pope, it’s the perfect time to make the order’s astonishing history better known. There has been so much focus on Italian cities, we’ve lost sight of how important the countryside was to the Church and to the Renaissance.”

Dragons and fertility miracles

Saint George is widely known in Christian art as a warrior saint striking down a dragon with a lance. Much less familiar is Guglielmo of Malavalle, a twelfth-century hermit revered by the Augustinians, who was said to have slain a dragon using a simple wooden staff shaped like a pitchfork.

Dr. Krisztina Ilko at the hermitage of Santa Lucia in Rosia, Tuscany, Italy. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

In the medieval imagination, outbreaks of disease affecting people, livestock, and crops were often blamed on dragons. Their breath was believed to poison the air, choking the land and making it uninhabitable. Such creatures were especially linked to marshes and wetlands, places thought to breed illness and decay.

According to tradition, Guglielmo followed a heavenly voice to Malavalle, meaning ‘the bad valley’, located in the swampy Maremma region of Tuscany. The area was feared for its foul air and violent storms and was described as so ‘dark, and terrible’ that even hunters avoided it.

Dr. Ilko suggests that Guglielmo’s reputation as a dragon slayer stemmed from his role in cleansing this hostile environment. By purifying the air and restoring the land, he was credited with transforming Malavalle into a place of ‘peak fertility’, an achievement that earned him lasting veneration.

The ruins of the hermitage of San Guglielmo at Malavalle ‘the bad valley’ in Tuscany, Italy. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

“These achievements weren’t symbolic, Guglielmo provided a crucial public service, he helped country people survive in a really harsh natural environment,” Dr. Ilko says.

“Guglielmo was a pitchfork-wielding dragon slayer and divine gardener all at once. Commanding the weather, securing a good harvest, and restoring the health of livestock must have seemed the most desirable divine interventions in the late medieval countryside. They were matters of life and death.

Miraculous discoveries

A decade of research took Dr. Ilko to two dozen archives and she trekked to more than sixty Augustinian sites, including some of the most inaccessible ruins. She made discoveries in frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, hagiographies and letters. Some of the ancient documents she studied had been misdated and wrongly attributed, further denying the Augustinians of miraculous limelight.

The earliest collection of Augustinian life stories Dr. Ilko studied was written by a Florentine friar in the 1320s and has been largely overlooked until now because, she believes, scholars deemed its miracles too rural. Housed in Florence’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, the manuscript opens with the life of Giovanni of Florence who built the Augustinian hermitage of Santa Lucia in Larniano with the help of local farmers.

One of his greatest miracles was healing the broken leg of an ox. Another life story describes Jacopo of Rosia commanding an unreliable apple tree to produce fruit every year, as well as him multiplying cabbages.

Dr. Krisztina Ilko exploring the ruins of the hermitage of Montespecchio, Tuscany, Italy. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

“When people think about religious orders and their massive role in the Renaissance, they usually turn their attention to cities like Rome, Florence, and Siena,” Dr. Ilko says.

“The Franciscans and Dominicans, in particular, are credited for Italy’s rapid urban renewal from the 1200s onwards. Not many people realize that the Augustinians drew most of their power from the countryside. Their miracles were very green-fingered, agricultural.”

“St Francis of Assisi remains the most famous ‘nature saint’, best known for preaching to birds. In a more eco-conscious world, the Augustinians deserve much more attention.”

Augustinian survival strategy

Dr. Ilko argues that positioning themselves in forests or by the sea was crucial to the survival of the Augustinians as a religious group.

The Order of the Hermits of St Augustine was founded by the papacy as a mendicant order through the amalgamation of various central Italian hermit groups in 1256. Then, in 1274, the Roman Catholic Church put the Augustinians on notice because they were founded after 1215 and lacked continuous existence since late antiquity. The papacy only reconfirmed their order’s existence in 1298. During this 25-year period of uncertainty, the Augustinian friars worked hard to prove their legitimacy.

Lacking a single, charismatic founding father, the friars developed a compelling origin story in which they claimed to have been founded directly by St Augustine. But, Dr. Ilko argues, the Augustinians also drew heavily on their wild power-bases – forests, mountains, and the sea – to prove their antiquity and authority. “Direct contact with nature gave the friars legitimacy, special spiritual powers and access to valuable natural resources including timber, crops and wild animals,” Dr. Ilko says.

The Augustinians went on to found urban convents, but carefully selected locations that bordered the countryside. In Rome, they founded the convent of Santa Maria del Popolo at one of the major entrances to the city, framed by trees and gardens on one side. The Franciscans had earlier rejected the spot because it was too remote and difficult ‘to sustain the body’ there. The site had been a sinister place: an ancient walnut tree plagued with demons towered over the supposed burial site of the Emperor Nero until Pope Paschall II had them removed in 1099.

In addition to raising public awareness about the Augustinians, Dr. Ilko argues that the ruins of Augustinian hermitages should be better cared for and access improved so that more people can visit them.

Reference: “The Sons of St Augustine” by Krisztina Ilko.

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