In previous posts we often looked at the tailoring traditions in Italy, studying the Milanese, Neapolitan, Sicilian and Venetian tailoring schools. But we never looked at a very revered figured for tailors – their patron Saint Homobonus.
Born in Cremona, Lombardy, in Italy (where he is known as Sant'Omobono - his name meaning in Latin, "good man"), Omobono Tucenghi was a wool and textile merchant.
He believed that God had allowed him to work in order that he would be able to support people living in a state of poverty and practiced his profession with honesty and devotion.
A frequent church attendee, he died on November 13, 1197, while attending mass and was canonized by Pope Innocent III two years later.
The church of Sant'Omobono in Rome is dedicated to him and his body is preserved in the cathedral of Cremona.
Homobonus incarnated the figure of the kind entrepreneur, focused on distributing wealth rather than accumulating it and therefore became patron saint of business people, tailors, shoemakers, clothworkers, as well as the city of Cremona.
The Madonna of the Tailors, painted by Bonifacio Veronese in 1533 for the altar on the ground floor of the Tailors' School near the Jesuit Church in Venice, depicts in a Mannerist style Saint Homobonus on the left of the Madonna and Child, giving alms to a man. Saint Homobonus can be easily identified by the tailor scissors on the pavement near his feet.
Celebrations are organised in the honour of Saint Homobonus in November, but it is not rare to see a mass being said to remember him whenever groups from the association of tailors in Italy get together.
In Pescina, in the Abruzzo region, the devotion for this saint was strong in the 1800s. Local tailors started celebrating Saint Homobonus in 1861 in the local church of Saint Bernard.
By 1901 they had a street dedicated to tailors next to the church and in the same year they organised a sort of open air runway show in this street to launch a coat designed to pay homage to the local style. In 1902, a local tailoring house created tunics for the Good Friday procession, combining fashion and devotion in the designs.
Traditions were abandoned around 1915 when people started migrating, among them many tailors who continued their professions abroad. The devotion to saint Homobonus was rediscovered after the Second World War in Pescina and revived in a minor form in more recent years.
Local tailors were extremely skilled as proved by archival footage from 1955 showing Pescina-based tailor Serafino Cordischi making a suit in 2 hours and 15 minutes using 1.75 metres of fabric. Must have genuinely been inspired and protected by Saint Homobonus.
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