Confessor Homobuono

Saint Homobonus of Cremona (Italian: Sant'Omobono; Latin: Homobonus, a name meaning "good man") was a twelfth-century merchant and tailor of Cremona in Lombardy, in northern Italy. He belonged to a family engaged in the cloth trade; later tradition sometimes gives the family name as Tucenghi, though early official documents typically identify him simply as Homobonus of Cremona. He followed his father's occupation as a dealer in textiles and as a tailor, and he lived as a married layman rather than as a cleric or monk. In an age when the Italian communes were expanding commercially, he acquired a reputation for unusual honesty in business, refusing deceitful weights, false measures, and other fraudulent practices, and treating customers and workers with justice.

Homobonus combined his secular calling with a life of prayer and charity. He attended Mass daily and devoted a substantial portion of his earnings to the poor, to the sick, and to those in prison. He is also remembered for efforts to reconcile enemies and to calm the factional conflicts that frequently disturbed Cremona and other Lombard cities. Hagiographical accounts state that his wife at first protested the scale of his almsgiving, fearing that the household would be ruined, but that she later accepted and supported his generosity. Precise details of his domestic life, including his wife's name and whether the couple had children, are not securely recorded in the earliest sources and should not be treated as certain.

On 13 November 1197 Homobonus died suddenly while attending Mass in the church of Saint Giles (San Egidio) in Cremona. According to the tradition presented at his canonization, he collapsed in church during the liturgy, and this death in the presence of the Eucharist was taken as a sign of his devotion. He was buried in Cremona, and his tomb quickly became a focus of popular veneration. The bishop of Cremona, Sicard, together with the city's clergy and people, petitioned the Holy See for his canonization.

Pope Innocent III canonized Homobonus on 12 January 1199, little more than a year after the saint's death. The papal bull is an important document in the history of canonization: Innocent III held up Homobonus as a model of lay sanctity, arguing that a married merchant who practiced justice, mercy, and peace in ordinary life could be raised to the altars. Homobonus thus stands among the earliest formally canonized saints of the medieval Latin Church who were neither martyrs, nor bishops, nor members of religious orders, nor of royal blood. His relics have been kept in the cathedral of Cremona (the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta). His feast day is 13 November. He is invoked as patron of the city of Cremona and as patron of tailors, cloth workers, shoemakers, merchants, and business people. Churches dedicated to him include Sant'Omobono in Rome, which gave its name to a piazza and to an archaeological area of the ancient Forum Boarium.