NEVOLONE (NOVELLONE) DA FAENZA, BEATO - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. VIII, p. 1054

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

**NEVOLONE** (also called NOVELLONE) of FAENZA, Blessed. A shoemaker who turned from a life of pleasure to penance, a Franciscan tertiary, a pilgrim, and later a hermit among the Camaldolese monks of Faenza, where he died on 27 July 1280. At his death, the people of Faenza in great numbers carried his body solemnly to the Cathedral, where they had it buried in the presence of the city’s magistrates.

He was venerated as a blessed; certainly before 1331, as is shown by well-known Faentine documents. Pius VII confirmed his cult on 4 June 1817. In the cathedral of Faenza a chapel of particular artistic merit is dedicated to N. He is commemorated on 27 July. The most reliable information about N. comes from the chronicler P. Cantinelli (*Chronicon*, Città di Castello 1902); an anonymous life written between 1415 and 1475 is of little value. Of some interest as a vernacular document, composed in Faenza perhaps before 1426 and as a biographical source, is the *Lauda beati Novelloni de Faenza*, which speaks of N.’s travels and pilgrimages to Apulia and Campania.

BIBL.:** *Acta SS. Lulli*, VI, Paris 1868, pp. 497–99; G. B. Mittarelli and A. Costandoni, *Annales Camald.*, V, Venice 1760, pp. 111, 141–43; F. Lanzoni, *I primordi dell’Ordine francescano in Faenza*, ibid. 1910, pp. 31–32; id., *Una vita del B. N.*, in *Archivum Franciscanum historicum*, 6 (1913), pp. 632–53; id., *Il B. N.*, in *Boll. dioc. di Faenza*, 8 (1921), pp. 77–78 and 109–11; G. B. Tasselli, *S. N.*, ibid., 10 (1923), pp. 94–95.