Raimondo and the Magdalen: a twelfth century Italian in Provence

The life of Raimondo 'Palmario' of Piacenza (d. 1200) has been preserved in a seventeenth century Latin retranslation of an Italian translation of the original written by Master Rufino in 1212. There seems little reason, howe ver, to doubt its authenticity. It contains brief descriptions of two long- distance pilgrimages undertaken by the saint, to the Holy Land as a very yo ung man, and in the 1170s to Compostela and Provence. In Provence he is sai d to have venerated Mary Magdalen, whose house at Bethany he had visited wi th great devotion on his earlier Holy Land pilgrimage, and also Lazarus, Ma rtha and the Maries. If authentic, Master Rufino's narrative preserves an e xceptionally early record of a pilgrimage to the Provencal shrines of these saints, including the place of the Magdalen's penitence in Provence, which according to other evidence were only just beginning to be identified. As a citizen of Piacenza, Raimondo would have been well-placed to obtain up-to -date word-of-mouth information about shrines and relics. He was also an ea rly visitor to St. Anthony of Vienne, a popular destination with later Ital ian pilgrims to Compostela, and to a 'St. Bernard,' who was probably not th e saint of Clairvaux, but the Carolingian bishop venerated at Romans-sur-Is ere. (c) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.