Confessor Rainerius

Rainerius of Pisa, commonly called Ranieri Scacceri and commemorated in the Roman Martyrology as Rainerius Confessor, was a twelfth-century lay penitent and hermit who became the principal patron of Pisa. Traditional accounts, drawing on a near-contemporary Latin life attributed to the Pisan canon Benincasa, place his birth in Pisa in the early twelfth century to a prosperous mercantile household. His father is named Gandulfo Scacceri and his mother Mingarda. In youth he lived as a well-to-do Pisan, noted for music and a worldly manner of life rather than for devotion. His conversion is ascribed to the example of a holy man named Alberto, a Corsican penitent then in Pisa. Under that influence Rainerius abandoned his former habits, embraced austerity, and resolved on pilgrimage.

He went to the Holy Land and remained there for a long period, traditionally more than a decade, living as a pilgrim and hermit. Sources present him as a lay ascetic, not as a professed member of a religious order. He practiced severe fasting, visited the holy places, and sought the pattern of earlier desert penitents. After these years he returned to Pisa and took up residence at the Benedictine monastery of San Vito, continuing a life of seclusion, counsel, and reported wonders. The vita and later Pisan tradition credit him with healings, prophecy, and deliverance from evil spirits. He remained a penitent attached to San Vito rather than a choir monk.

He died in Pisa on 17 June, in the year traditionally given as 1160, and was first buried at San Vito. His relics were later translated to the cathedral of Pisa (the Duomo of Santa Maria Assunta), where they remain an object of civic and liturgical veneration. Cult as a confessor took root quickly in his native city. The feast is kept on 17 June; Pisa still marks the vigil with the Luminara di San Ranieri, an illumination of the Arno. He is invoked as patron of the city and of the archdiocese of Pisa. Recognition belongs to the older pattern of local episcopal and popular cult rather than to a later centralized papal canonization, and the Martyrology simply records him at Pisa as a confessor.