The City Coming Down Out of Heaven (Rev. 21:10): Bologna as Jerusalem

Abstract

In the vision of John of Patmos, the end of the world is followed by the beginning of a new world—a reign of peace that will take place in the holy city descended from heaven (Rev. 21:10). The verse inspired a medieval topos characterizing the city as a heavenly Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages, Bologna—the Roman Bononia—was progressively constructed and reconstructed as a holy city, starting from the early reproduction of the Santo Stefano’s Sancta Jerusalem in the fifth century. The purpose of my intervention is to show the continuity, between the Middle Ages and Early Modern era, of a biblical tradition reflected in the city’s urban planning: from the construction of the third circle of walls closed by twelve doors in the thirteenth century, to the consecration of the city to the Virgin with the elevation of the column of the Immaculate in 1638, and the subsequent erection of twelve Marian oratories on the walls, and of twelve convents at the gates of the city.

My first meeting with E. Ann Matter took place in Bologna. She found her way to me through a dear friend and an interest in the Italian mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lucia Brocadelli, the living saint of the Este family, particularly attracted her attention and later became the object of a joint study and other meetings in the city of Bologna. Women, mystics, nuns were the protagonists of conversations and cemented a years-long friendship, with visits to Philadelphia, conferences at the University of Pennsylvania, Leeds, Florence, and also meetings in the city of Bologna. My studies have never concerned exegesis or philological analysis, and insofar as the theme of the Apocalypse lends itself to studies of mystical texts that are familiar to me, I preferred to send Ann a special “postcard” to tell her that I await her still in the city coming down from Heaven.