medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. December) is the feast day of:
1) Barbara (?). The megalomartyr B. is an originally Eastern saint absent from the late antique martyrologies and calendars, East and West. Her Passio, which exists in many versions in several languages, is obviously legendary. B. has no readily identifiable late antique cult site. She was localized in several places, most notably Nicomedia in Bithynia, Antioch on the Orontes, and a Heliopolis said to have been in Paphlagonia but possibly the one in Egypt, as it was from Egypt that the emperor Justin was said to have removed her relics to Constantinople.
B.'s first appearance in a Western martyrology comes in the ninth century. Ado, followed by Usuard, lists her under 16. December and purveys a version of her Passio that makes her a martyr of Tuscany. She is listed for today in the early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples. In the ninth century chapels were dedicated to her in Rome. In the later Middle Ages she became one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In the 1960s she was removed from the general Roman Calendar. She still has an entry in the RM, albeit a grudging one: "It seems she was a virgin martyred at Nicomedia."
In widely known versions of her Passio, B. is a virgin shut up in a tower by an aggressively pagan father who discovers that she has turned Christian (in some texts, the three windows representing the Trinity that B. had inserted in the tower were a dead giveaway) and who either turns her over to officialdom for torment or kills her himself. In some of these accounts he is then said to be killed by a lightning bolt. B. is the patron saint of miners, artillerymen, and of people struck by lightning (or who must go out in lightning-rich weather conditions). Herewith some visuals:
B.'s since rebuilt eleventh-century church in Cairo (a rebuilding of a late antique predecessor dedicated to someone else):
English-language account:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Barbara_Church_in_Coptic_Cairo
Other views, etc.:
http://touregypt.net/featurestories/cairovision9.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/barbara.htm
http://www.ask-aladdin.com/barbara.html
B.'s eleventh-century rupestrian church (Barbara Kilise) at Göreme in Cappadocia:
http://tinyurl.com/yh3rlr2
http://www.pbase.com/happypoppeye/image/95434296
http://www.photocompetition.it/reportages/reportage_36_16.jpg
http://family.webshots.com/photo/2977693100049353575MnPInU
http://www.flickr.com/photos/profilacktisch/1762924778/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/yc8s7ph
http://tinyurl.com/yjrpkoe
http://tinyurl.com/ybcjkfk
http://tinyurl.com/y98mnq9
An eleventh-century mosaic of B. in the katholikon of Hosios Loukas in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/yc8pekz
An eleventh-century fresco of B. as a bejewelled princess in the chiesa di Santa Maria della Croce at Casaranello, a _frazione_ of Casarano (LE) in Apulia:
http://www.lytos.altervista.org/italiano/barbara.jpg
Discussion of the mosaics and frescoes:
http://www.lytos.altervista.org/italiano/Casaranello.htm
B.'s twelfth-century church at Erimos in Mani (southern Peloponnese), no. 5 here with expandable exterior view:
http://www.mani.org.gr/en/villages/oitilo/drand/drand.htm
B. at right in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1284-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 96r):
http://tinyurl.com/y9wmsx6
An early fourteenth-century (1310) fresco of B., lower down on the pillar, in the church of Our Lady of Ljeviš in Prizren in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://www.coe.int/t/DG4/Expos/expoprizren/en/epic2019.htm
An earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1312-1321) fresco of B. in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/yfygq52
http://tinyurl.com/ybne3kq
The originally earlier fourteenth-century palatine chapel dedicated to B. in the Castel Nuovo at Naples (upper portions rebuilt after the earthquake of 1456):
Illustrated, Italian-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/yo933d
Single views:
http://www.danpiz.net/napoli/images/MaschioAngioino09.jpg
http://www.napoletanita.it/foto/napoli106.jpg
http://www.napoletanita.it/foto/napoli107.jpg
Fourteenth-century paintings of scenes from B.'s Passio in arcades of the apse of the église Notre-Dame at Savigny (Manche) in Normandy, once a dependency of the abbey of Sainte-Barbe-en-Auge, a little more than halfway down the page here:
http://www.impens.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?P1=105&P2=L&L=FR&X=1,16,50,873
Expandable views of some of these are here:
http://www.asesavigny.fr/
http://www.asesavigny.fr/Album_photo.htm
More views:
http://www.belissor.net/spip.php?article109
B. at center in a late fourteenth-century Pskov School icon now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:
http://tinyurl.com/yc8pekz
B. in an illumination in the very late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century Breviary of Martin of Aragon (Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2529, fol. 414v):
http://tinyurl.com/ylbu3ze
The mostly late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century chapelle Sainte-Barbe at Le Faouët (Morbihan) in Brittany:
http://www.villard.de/cb/56/Faouet1.html
http://tinyurl.com/2kpvy6
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2032966.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ycs6vb9
B.'s mostly late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century cathedral church (Sv. Barbory; restored, nineteenth century) at the Czech mining town of Kutná Hora:
http://tinyurl.com/38mn9k
http://www.pbase.com/ianm_au/image/34082215
http://www.topbicycle.com/H-KutnaHora.htm
B. at right in the Pähl Altarpiece (ca. 1400), now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge3/triptych.jpg
B. in a fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=517
B. in a fresco of 1471 by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the pieve di Sant'Andrea at Sesto Fiorentino (FI) in Tuscany:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/fvb/1barbara.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/ghirland/domenico/1early/1cercin1.jpg
B. at right in a painting from the early 1480s by Hans Memling, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://tinyurl.com/yadj5f3
A late fifteenth-century statue of B. on the église Saint-Pantaléon at Troyes:
http://vieuxtroyes.free.fr/t/stpan/stpan20.JPG
B. in a late fifteenth-century engraving by the Flemish engraver Master FVB, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/master/fvb/1barbara.jpg
Expandable images of many late fifteenth- and earlier sixteenth-century manuscrpt illuminations of B. in Books of Hours and graduals are here:
http://tinyurl.com/yzfn6w3
2) Felix of Bologna (d. 430/31). Paulinus of Milan says in his _Vita Ambrosii_ that F. was a deacon of that city who now (ca. 422) is bishop of Bologna. He is characterized as a saint both in the twelfth-century _Vita sancti Petronii_ and in the so-called Elenco renano, the oldest list of the bishops of Bologna. Bologna celebrates F. liturgically on 3. October. Today is his day of commemoration in the RM.
The only visuals associated with F. that I could find on the Web are views of the Porta San Felice, one of ten survivors of the original twelve city gates in Bologna's final, thirteenth-/fourteenth-century city wall and located at the point where the Via Emilia entered the city (the continuation into the city centre is now called the Via San Felice). The cardinal who returned papal overlordship to Bologna in 1327 made his ceremonial entry through this gate. Views:
http://tinyurl.com/yedh2mt
http://tinyurl.com/yd3kvxu
3) John of Damascus (d. ca. 750). J. was the Arabic-speaking son of a financial officer of the Ummayad caliphate whom he followed in the family business in Damascus until hostility to Christians on the part of a new caliph caused him to move by the year 700 to the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem. There he deepened his understanding of Christian theology and wrote his _Pege gnoseos_ ('Fount of [spiritual] knowledge') and other dogmatic and apologetic works. J. was ordained priest by Jerusalem's patriarch John V (706-735); numerous sermons and panegyrics survive under his name, not all of which are his.
J.'s iconophile positions caused him to be condemned at the council of Hieria in 754; the Second Council of Nicaea (787) affirmed his orthodoxy. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1890. Two excerpts from an English-language translation of J.'s anti-iconoclast writings are here:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/johndam-icons.html
J. (at lower right, with St. George and St. Ephraem the Syrian) in a panel from an earlier fourteenth-century triptych now in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai:
http://tinyurl.com/5ctk4u
J. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1312-1318) of the monastery church of St. George at Staro Nagoričino, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/y9yn4az
J. as depicted, at center right, in the earlier fourteenth-century (1335-1350) frescoes in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/yhfe8sf
J. as depicted in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1365-1371) of the monastery church of St. Nicholas in Psaca (Kriva Palanka district), Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/yk9dhmg
J. as depicted, at center right, in the later fourteenth-century frescoes of the monastery of church of St. Andrew at Matka in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/yz28m2d
4) Sualo (d. 794). We know about the Englishman S. (also known as Solus and as Sola) from his Vita (BHL 7926) by Ermanric of Ellwangen, written between 839 and 842. According to Ermanric, who later became bishop of Passau, S. followed Boniface to Germany, was ordained priest by him, and became a solitary (no pun intended) in the diocese of Eichstätt in a place that became known as Cella Solonis ('Solo's Cell') and to which title was given him by none other than Charlemagne himself. Ermanric adds that Sts. Willibald and Winnebald gave property to S. after Boniface's death and that after S.'s death all of his property was given by Charlemagne to the abbey of Fulda. The latter's necrology records S.'s passing on 3. December.
Notable among the miracles attributed to S. by Ermanric is a plainly allegorical one in which at his bidding an ass on which he had been riding attacks and kills a wolf that was threatening sheep grazing in a pasture with no shepherds present.
Cella Solonis is now Solnhofen (Kr. Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen) in Bavaria. Perhaps better known as the town that Archaeopteryx made famous, it preserves the remains of a ninth-century church (the so-called Solabasilika) built over four predecessors going back to middle of the seventh century (the third church is thought to have been S.'s oratory). A multi-page, German-language introduction to the site is here:
http://tinyurl.com/6xrdlk
And the Wikipedia.de page on Solnhofen has more to say on it:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnhofen
along with this view:
http://tinyurl.com/35grx2
and this plan:
http://tinyurl.com/3cbvaz
The Solabasilika contains a fifteenth-century tomb (opened in 1828 and found to be empty):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Sola-Basilika.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ye9gsl9
Remains of four earlier tombs have been found at the site; one of these may have been the one into which S.'s allegedly intact remains were deposited by Fulda's prior at Cella Solonis shortly before the writing of S.'s Vita.
In view of the time of year of S.'s feast, it may be well to recall that, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, one Sualo doth not a summer make.
5) Osmund (d. 1099). After service as a royal chaplain and as William I's chancellor (in the latter role presiding over the switch from English to Latin as the majority language of royal writs issued in England), O. was advanced in 1078 to the recently created see of Salisbury. He completed the barely begun cathedral within the outer precinct of the royal castle at Old Sarum, introduced a community of learned canons, and established a very active scriptorium. O. was remembered as a person of wisdom and holiness. Miracles at his tomb in Salisbury Cathedral are first reported from the later twelfth century; early in the next century come both the first surviving reference to him as 'saint' and the first canonization petition on his behalf. During the later Middle Ages O.'s reputation grew: he was credited both with establishing the Use of Sarum and with having been a nephew of William I. O. was canonized in 1457.
A view of O.'s tomb in Salisbury Cathedral:
http://flickr.com/photos/dryasadingo/497818017/sizes/o/
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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