Opicinus de Canistris

Opicinus de Canistris was an Italian priest, writer and artist. He was born on 24 December 1296 in Lomello (close to Pavia) and died in Avignon around 1353. When his works were rediscovered in the early twentieth century, scholars deemed them to be “psychotic” due to their extraordinary theological musings and schematic diagrams. The merits of this psychoanalytic interpretation, however, are currently under debate.

Biography

It is mostly known through the writings and drawings of Opicinus himself because his work constitutes a vast delirious autobiography which is worth decoding.

Northern Italy (1296-1329)

Opicinus de Canistris was born in Lomello (Lombardy, close to Pavia) on 24 December 1296. His family, which was well known in Pavia, actively supported the Guelphs against the Ghibellines.

He went to school from the age of six. He then studied liberal arts and progressively received an eclectic encyclopaedical training. From a very early age he was interested in drawing. He had several temporary jobs to materially help his family.

The storming of Pavia by the Ghibellines on 8 October 1315 forced Canistris' family to take exile in Genoa for three years. Opicinus then distanced himself from the Guelph part of his family, especially following the death of his father and one of his younger brothers.

In Genoa he studied theology and the bible in greater depth and developed his talent for drawing. During this period he was able to see the first "sea maps" (incorrectly known as "portolans"). When he returned to Pavia (1318) Opicinus studied to become a priest. From 1319 he drew up religious treaties. He was ordained in Parma on 27 February 1320 and in 1323 obtained a modest parish in Pavia (Santa Maria Capella).

Between 1325 and 1328 he committed a simoniac crime and was excommunicated by the Bishop of Pavia. He fled and roamed for several months, living from begging and suffered a depression punctuated with anxiety attacks.

Avignon (1329 – circa 1353)

When he arrived in Avignon (April 1329), where the Papal Court was located, Opicinus regained his strength and once again pursued his ambitions. He was noticed by Pope John XXII and wrote several treaties, including two of an opportunist nature (De preeminentia spiritualis imperii and De laudibus).

He obtained a position as scribe at the Apostolic Penitentiary on 4 December 1330. However soon after, he was found by those who had been pursuing him since the events in Pavia and who brought a suit against him before the Rota. In his writings, Opicinus is quite vauge about the nature of the suit against him. However, On 24 January 1337, he won his trial before the Rota.

Illness and visions

On 31 March 1334 Opicinus writes "the sickness came." He explains that he became comatose for nearly a fortnight and when he finally recovered he discovered that much of his memory was gone, that he could not speak and that his right hand was useless.

“On March 31, 1334 I fell sick. I received the sacraments and was near death through the first third of April. When I came to I found my limbs out of action…I had forgotten everything and could not even remember how the world looked outside of our dormitory…In the consequences of the disease I was mute, my right hand was lame and I had lost in a miraculous way a great deal of my literal memory.” Ultimately, Opicinus did recover his memory, speech and some function in his hand. He attributed this healing to a vision he experienced on August 15th (coincidently the date of the feast of the assumption of the Virgin).

“In the night of August 15, I saw a dream of the Virgin with the Child in her lap...and through her merits she has given me back not the littera (knowledge) but a double spirit. Since February 1, 1335, I began to retire, bit by bit, from the work in our office because of the weakness of my hand.”

Opicinus believed that his illness was the result of hidden sins that had corrupted his body. However, he interpreted his recovery as spiritual gift that allowed him to reveal spiritual truth.

“In a spiritual work, however, this same hand proved stronger than before: since then it has draw all these pictures without any human help. At present my lost literal knowledge is replaced twofold by spiritual knowledge; my right hand is weak in worldly work, but strong in spiritual endeavors.”

The “pictures” he refers to are a complex series of maps and schematic diagrams in Palatinus 1993 and Vaticanus 6435. These drawings were a means for Opicinus to chart the spiritual realities that he believed were the underpinnings of the physical world.

Much scholarship has interpreted Opicinus’s illness as psychosomatic, specifically the product of schizophrenia. however, whatever symptomotology can be gleaned from Opicinus’s abstruse writings seems to suggest that he suffered a stroke in addition to potential psychotic episodes.

Work

Writings prior to 1334

• 1319: Liber metricus de parabolis Christi

• 1320: De decalogo mandatorum

• 1322: religious treaties

• 1324: Libellus dominice Passionis secundum concordantiam IIII evangelistarum

• 1329: De paupertate Christi, De virtutibus Christi, Lamentationes virginis Marie, De preeminentia spiritualis imperii

• 1330: Tractatus dominice orationis, Libellus confessionis, De laudibus Papie

• 1331: Tabula ecclesiastice hierarchie

• 1332: De septiloquio virginis Marie

• 1333: De promotionibus virginis Marie

These are treaties without drawings and known by the authors friends. Only De preeminentia spiritualis imperii (The primacy of spiritual power) and De laudibus Papie (Pavia eulogy) have survived to date in the form of copies (1). Their content is classical.

Work after 1334

This consists of two manuscripts without any title, with writings and drawings without the knowledge of those closest to him, where he noted and illustrated his delirious ideas. The originals are today kept at the Vatican Apostolic Library. There are no copies.

the Vaticanus latinus 6435 manuscript

Opicinus wrote this between June and November 1337 and subsequently inserted addita (the last in December 1352). This manuscript, which was only identified on the eve of the 2nd World War, was recently fully published and translated by the medievalist Muriel Laharie as well as several studies by the psychiatrist Guy Roux – a multi-disciplinary collaboration essential to examining this singular work.

The Vaticanus comes in the form of a paper codex with 87 folios, with only written text in the first half, text and drawings (often map based) in the second half. It is a very dense document.

This codex looks similar to a journal written in chronological order. However its polymorphous content which is difficult to decipher bears witness to the encyclopaedic culture of its author. Indeed, Opicinus used all his knowledge to support his megalomaniac pretentions, with many different identities favoured by a wild imagination: he is God, the Sun, the Pope, Europe, Avignon, etc. Its colour anthropomorphic maps of the Mediterranean area, precise and curiously organised, illustrate "good" and "bad" characters and animals on which he projects himself and his enemies, in relation to his persecutive and Manichean madness. The use of symbols, his taste for dissimulating and manipulating (words, numbers, space), and his attraction to the obscene and scatological are omnipresent.

the Palatinus latinus 1993 manuscript

Opicinus began this in 1336, but mostly worked on it after having done the codex Vaticanus and continued until his death. Identified in 1913 (therefore before the codex), this manuscript was the subject of a study by Richard Salomon in 1939, with a partial edition of the document and comments.

With 52 large colour drawings on parchment (often used on both sides) and covered with notes, Palatinus used and developed the subjects of sin and conscience which Opicinus had expressed in Vaticanus, in a more majestic and solemn way but also less spontaneously. The drawings are extremely complex, including mostly circles and ellipses with biblical quotations, calendars and varied series (signs of the zodiac, planets, prophets, apostles, metals, etc); a map, full or embryonic, frequently underlies the drawing; characters, which sometimes fit into each other, complete the system. The mystic and Manichean madness, spatial thought, sovereign imagination and hermetic style are comparable to those of Vaticanus.

Selective bibliography

CAMILLE, Michael. “The Image and the Self: Unwriting Late Medieval Bodies,” in Framing Medieval Bodies. (ed.) Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin. New York, NY. Manchester University Press, 1994

GUREVICH, Aron Yakovlevich. “L'individualité au Moyen Age: le cas d'Opicinus de Canistris,” in Annales ESC: économies, sociétés, civilisations: (later Annales - Histoire, Sciences Sociales) vol. 48:5, pp. 1263-1280, 1993

HARDING, Catherine. “Open to God: The Cosmological Diagrams of Opicinus de Canistirs,” in Zeitscherift für Kunstgeschichte, 61 (1998): 18-39

KRIS, Ernst. “A Psychotic Artist of the Middle Ages,” in Psychoanalytic Exploration in Art. New York, NY. International Universities Press, 1952

LAHARIE (M.), Le journal singulier d’Opicinus de Canistris (1337 - circa. 1341), Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008, 2 volumes, LXXXVIII + 944 p., 47 ill.

LAHARIE (M.), "Une cartographie ‘à la folie’ : le journal d’Opicinus de Canistris", in Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome (Moyen Âge), Ecole française de Rome, 119, 2, 2007, p. 361-399.

MORSE, Victoria, A Complext Terrain: Church, Society and the Individual in the Thought of Opicino de Canistris. Unpublished dissertation completed at the University of California-Berkeley, 1996

MORSE, Victoria. “Seeing and Believing: The Problem of Idolatry in the Though of Opicino de Canistris,” in. Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire. (ed.) Susanna Elm, Eric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano. Ecole Francois de Rome, 2000 pp. 163-176

MORSE, Victoria. “The Vita Mediocris: The Secular Preisthood in the Thought of Opicino de Canistris,” in Quaderni di Storia Religiosa pp. 257-82 Verona, Cierre Edizione, 1994

QUAGLINO, Gian Piero, ROMANO, Augusto, & BERNARDINI, Riccardo, "Opicinus de Canistris: some notes from Jung's unpublished Eranos Seminar on the medieval Codex Palatinus Latinus 1993". Journal of Analytical Psychology, 55(3), 2010, pp. 398–422

ROUX (G.), Opicinus de Canistris (1296–1352), prêtre, pape et Christ ressuscité, Paris, Le Léopard d’Or, 2005, 484 p.

ROUX (G.), Opicinus de Canistris (1296–1352), Dieu fait homme et homme-Dieu, Paris, Le Léopard d’Or, 2009, 310 p.

ROUX (G.) & LAHARIE (M.), Art et Folie au Moyen Âge. Aventures et Énigmes d’Opicinus de Canistris (1296-1351 ?), Paris, Le Léopard d’Or, 1997, 364 p., 94 ill.

SALOMON, Richard. “A Newly Discovered Manuscript of Opicinus de Canistris,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 16 (1953), 45-57

SALOMON (R.G.), Opicinus de Canistris. Weltbild und Bekenntnisse eines Avignonesichen Klerikers des 14. Jahrunderts, London, The Warburg Institute, 1936, 2 volumes; reprint. Lichtenstein, Kraus Reprints, 1969, 292 p. + 89 ill.

TOZZI (P.), Opicino e Pavia, Pavia, Libreria d’Arte Cardano, 1990, 76 p.

---

(1) De preeminentia spiritualis imperii (1329). Cf. SCHOLZ (R.), Unbekannte Kirchenpolitische Streischriften aus der Zeit Ludwig des Bayern (1327–1354), Rome, Verlag von Loescher & Cie, vol. 1, 1911, p. 37-43, and vol. 2, 1914, p. 89-104. De laudibus civitatis ticinensis (1330). Cf. GIANANI (F.), in Opicino de Canistris, l’Anonimo Ticinese, Pavia, EMI, 1996, p. 73-121; and AMBAGLIO (D.), Il libro delle lodi della città di Pavia, Pavia, 1984.