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# 62 • JUNE 12 , 2015
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ITALIAN HANDCRAFTS:
Shoemaking in Macerata
By Camera di Commercio di Macerata with Unioncamere
In the summer of 1325, the process for the canonisation of St. Nicholas of Tolentino took place in
some towns in the Marche. 371 witnesses from
various socila backgrounds were invited to testify
in the presence of the papal legates, who were
to receive news and testimonies on the life and
miracles of the saint.Among the testimonies presented was one by Buzzarello di Giovanni, who,
after swearing, referred to severe pain that had
struck him in the right hand preventing him from
working and that, through the intervention of the
saint, the pain had disappeared altogether.
But it was not the only miracle that had happened
to him.The year before the process, he had made
a vow to St. Nicholas to go to his grave and offer
him a foot of wax if it had been freed from the
pain, “et facto vote predicto fuit liberatus”.
The importance of the deposition is obvious: it is
the relationship “forerunner” of a work accident
that happened to a leather tanner, who, while preparing and washing the hide, had inadvertently
put his right foot into the quicklime that had eaten the flesh near the malleolus and consequently
his leg and foot had swollen.
The reported incident testifies to a particular and
complex work like tanning, which by the beginning of the fourteenth century had already spread
and developed in the region. Ancona and its port
became a major hub for hides and skins from the
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