Guarinus of Palestrina

Guarinus of Palestrina, often called Guarino Foscari in later Italian tradition, was a twelfth-century Augustinian canon regular and cardinal-bishop venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. Reliable notices agree that he was born in Bologna, in north-central Italy, toward the end of the eleventh century; a round date near 1080 is frequently repeated in modern summaries but is not anchored by a contemporary record, so his exact year of birth remains unknown. Traditional biographies assign him to the noble Foscari family of Bologna. As a young man he entered the Canons Regular at Santa Maria di Reno, a house just outside Bologna that followed the Rule of Saint Augustine. In that congregation he was formed in the common life, liturgical prayer, and the pastoral work associated with regular canons in the reforming Church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

At Santa Maria di Reno he gained a reputation for personal austerity, devotion, and learning, and later accounts state that he served as prior of the community. The canons of Reno belonged to the wider movement of regularized clergy that sought to restore apostolic common life in the wake of the Gregorian Reform. Guarinus’s subsequent career suggests that he combined monastic discipline with the administrative competence expected of a major superior. Precise details of these years are scarce: surviving notices are largely those preserved in later hagiography and in the brief entries of cardinalatial catalogues rather than in a full contemporary vita.

In 1144 Pope Lucius II created him Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina, placing him among the suburbicarian bishops who ranked at the head of the College of Cardinals. Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, lies in the hills east of Rome and was one of the traditional sees reserved for senior cardinals. Later legend relates that Guarinus tried to avoid the promotion out of humility, hiding from those sent to fetch him, and that he accepted the office only under obedience. Whether or not that episode is historical, he did take up the see. As cardinal-bishop he is described as retaining the simple habits of a regular canon and as applying his revenues to charity and to the needs of his church rather than to display.

During more than a decade in the Sacred College he took part in the papal elections of 1145, 1153, and 1154, which resulted in the accessions of Eugene III, Anastasius IV, and Adrian IV. Those elections belong to a turbulent period in which the papacy contended with the Roman commune, with the lingering consequences of the Investiture Controversy, and with the politics of the Italian kingdom and the German emperors. Guarinus appears to have resided chiefly at Palestrina, governing the diocese while fulfilling his duties as a cardinal elector and counsellor. Writers of a later date praise his almsgiving, his penitential manner of life, and his fidelity to the observance he had learned among the canons.

He died at Palestrina in 1158. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 6 February, the date generally assigned to his death, though a minority of older notices mention early January. He was buried in the cathedral of Palestrina. A local cult arose after his death and his name was entered in the martyrology; he was not the subject of a formal canonization process of the later medieval or Tridentine type, and no pope is securely recorded as having issued a bull of canonization in his regard. Historical knowledge of Guarinus depends on a thin dossier of liturgical, cardinalatial, and hagiographical sources. The outline of his origin in Bologna, his profession as an Augustinian canon regular, his appointment to Palestrina in 1144, his role in three papal elections, and his death in 1158 can be regarded as established; many pious anecdotes attached to his name cannot be verified from contemporary evidence.