"A Pilgrim Between Two Worlds: Saint Davino the Armenian and the Memory of Lucca" by Carlo Coppola
"La festa di San Davino Armeno 2026 a Lucca" di Carlo Coppola su In Città Giovinazzo diretto da Papàs Antonio Calisi:
They traverse the centuries with silent tenacity — for Christ and for the Gospel — hosts of men and women who renounced the world not out of incapacity but by deliberate choice, setting out toward something no map could ever indicate. Of some, their stories have reached us in their entirety; of others, even in their own time only fragmentary reports circulated, sometimes contradictory — material most fertile for narrators of the genius of Giovanni Boccaccio, who upon that historical penumbra built some of the most celebrated pages of Italian literature, opening the Decameron with a hand at once learned and irreverent.
Among these figures stands Saint Davino the Armenian: a pilgrim of the Year One Thousand, who died far from his homeland in the silence of a house in Lucca, kept for nearly a thousand years beneath the altar of the Basilica of San Michele in Foro. The very name reveals his origin: Davino is thought to be a corruption of the Armenian name Davit, or of Zaven, or alternatively a geographical indication of the ancient Armenian capital, Dvin. From his Armenia he distributed his possessions among the poor and undertook the peregrinatio maior — Jerusalem, Rome, and finally Santiago de Compostela. In Lucca he was drawn by the Volto Santo, a fundamental devotional halt along the Via Francigena. He fell ill in the city, was received into the small hospital near San Michele in Foro, and thereafter by the widow Atha, in whose house he died on 3 June 1050. His remains, found incorrupt in subsequent canonical examinations, were translated several times until reaching their present position beneath the Crucifix. The Roman Pope Alexander III ratified his canonisation around 1159. A saint of charity, Davino had placed himself at the service of the sick in the very hospital that had once sheltered him.
From 3 to 12 June 2026, the Parish of the Historic Centre of Lucca presents a structured programme of celebrations, cultural meetings and film screenings. On 3 June, the solemn liturgy at 6 p.m. will be presided over by Archbishop Mons. Paolo Giulietti in the presence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the Holy See, H.E. Boris Sahakyan; the same evening, at 9 p.m., Prof. Antonio Fornaciari, anthropologist, and the historian Prof. Alessio Pisani will speak on Lucca in the Year One Thousand and on the most recent studies of the Saint's body. On 9 June, at Sant'Alessandro Maggiore, Prof. Giovanni Macchia — author of the volume San Davino pellegrino armeno, presented also in its English edition — will meet with the public, with musical pieces performed by the Concentus Lucensis. On 12 June, the journalist Filomeno Lopes will offer a reflection on the contemporary significance of the Saint as a symbol of integration and dialogue between cultures. Cinema completes the programme: on 4 June, Amerikatsi by Michael Goorjian, and on 11 June, Ararat by Atom Egoyan, both at 9 p.m. at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni of the Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca, with free admission — a genuine tribute to the knowledge of the Armenian people through the moving image.
The renewed interest in Saint Davino over the past two decades must be understood in relation to the flourishing of ethnical studies within the humanities and the religious sciences in Italy. Forensic anthropology too has shown considerable attention to this case: what remains of the saint is today a naturally mummified, partially skeletonised body, with skin and soft tissue preserved only in the limbs and partially in the pubic region. Lucca understands this. And this year, too, on 3 June, she remembers.
Carlo Coppola
