The Life of Augustine by Gozzoli

We started off our day by having breakfast in the St. Augustine Convento. After that, Father Joe began our tour of the St. Augustine Church. Later on, Father Brian Lowery, continued and explained the history of the 15^th century Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes found in the church. He told us about how the whole church was restored and how one fresco, depicting the nativity scene, was found by chance. We also saw the famous frescoes depicting St. Augustine’s life that were located behind the altar.  A Villanova ACS class had analyzed some of the scenes for a project and Fr. Brian mentioned how their ideas had shed some new insight into how he saw the paintings.

After the tour, we had a small prayer service inside the chapel in the monastery. Then we had some time for group reflection where the pilgrims were invited to speak about what they had gotten out of the pilgrimage so far.

We then had our final lunch with our Scottish and British friends. They thanked everyone at the monastery for their hospitality and expressed their wishes to see us, the Villanova pilgrims again. After lunch, we went outside and took pictures with them and said our final goodbyes.

For the rest of the afternoon we had free time. Father Joe suggested we take some time for private reflection. We also spent the time visiting the Duomo of San Gimignano, shopping, exploring other parts of the town and bonding with the other pilgrims.

 

For dinner, we went to a nearby restaurant with Fr. Brian and Brother Delphio. The owner loves opera so we watched as we ate. Afterwards we all went out for gelato and gathered in the monastery again to watch Tea with Mussolini because it featured many scenes from San Gimignano.