The Chivalric Order of the ‘Nodo’, or of the Holy Spirit, and the Patronage of Niccolò Orsini in the church of Santa Maria Jacobi in Nola

Abstract

In the Angevin Kingdom of Naples, in the early fourteenth century the Orsini family initiated an urban enrichment in the Campanian city of Nola, that lasted for the entire century. This renovatio urbis focused on the representation of Orsini identity and authority in a variety of settings: during the 1354-1359, Count Niccolò, in fact, promoted the decoration of the conventual female church of Santa Maria Jacobi ordinis sanctae Clarae, making use of both secular and sacred themes, inspired by the medieval bestiaries, the courtly literature (the Lay of Aristotle), the Ovid's Metamorphoses and the st. Augustine's De Musica. The elaborate iconographic program, with its ties to the monarchical order of the Knot - or the Holy Spirit -, shows the role attributed to the nobility as champion of virtue and defensor of the Divine Order upon earth.