medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (8. September) is the feast day of:

1)  The Nativity of Blessed Virgin Mary.  This feast originated in fifth-century Jerusalem at a church honoring her birth and spread slowly, being first attested at Rome only in the pontificate of St. Sergius I (687-701; no. 3 below).  Herewith a few visuals:
a)  A German-language page and various views of the early thirteenth-century Pfarrkirche "Unsere liebe Frau Mariae Geburt" in Schöngrabern (Niederösterreich):
http://www.archiv-verlag.at/inhalte/loseblatt/noearchiv1.html
http://tinyurl.com/5p3xwx
http://www.burgenseite.com/cpg132/thumbnails.php?album=5
The apse before cleaning:
http://tinyurl.com/5fnmvy
b)  Two English-language accounts and some views of the early thirteenth- to early sixteenth-century cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God at Suzdal (Vladimir):
http://tinyurl.com/65p7qs
http://tinyurl.com/6rrpnl
http://tinyurl.com/62osx5
http://tinyurl.com/6jlt2k
http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/suzdal1.jpg
There are some good views of the building in the fifth row from the top here (incl. a detail view of portal carvings):
http://tinyurl.com/6rdsrs
c)  Giotto's fresco of the Birth of Mary (ca. 1305) in the Cappella dei Scrovegni in Padua:
http://tinyurl.com/55bduy
d)  Milan's cathedral, begun in 1376 and dedicated to Santa Maria Nascente (the vast majority of cathedral dedications to the BVM in Italy are to Mary of the Assumption):
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/milan-duomo.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Cathedral
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/milancath/duomo.html
http://www.duomomilano.it/ground1024_en.html  


2)  Hadrian of Nicomedia (d. early 4th cent., supposedly).  H. (also Adrian) and his spouse Natalia are the subjects of several legendary, originally late antique Passiones in Greek (BHG 27-29) and in Latin (BHL 3744-3745e) that make him a member of the emperor's bodyguard (which emperor it is varies in these accounts) who at Nicomedia is so moved by the constancy of Christian prisoners under torture during the Great Persecution that he publicly declares himself a Christian also and is martyred with what are now his fellow prisoners.  Natalia, who is secretly a Christian, encourages her husband and after his death buries his body at what later becomes the Constantinopolitan suburb of Argyropolis. 

In Greek-Rite churches H. and N., both considered saints, are celebrated on 26. August.  In the Roman Rite, H. alone is celebrated and on this day, in commemoration of pope Honorius I's consecration, in about 630, of a church dedicated to him in the Roman Forum.  The church of Sant'Adriano al Foro was several times rebuilt; it lasted until the 1930s, when it was demolished under Mussolini in order to restore the older Roman structure into which it had been built, the Curia Julia.  Some of its frescoes were detached and are now in the Crypta Balbi, e.g.:
http://tinyurl.com/57r6rp

A tenth-century dedication in Italy to both H. and N. was the church of the monastery founded by St. Nilus of Rossano and then directed by his successor St. Proclus of Bisignano at today's San Demetrio Corone (CS) in Calabria.  Rebuilt in the late eleventh century when it was briefly a dependency of the abbey of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni (SA) in Campania, it became an archimandrital church in 1115 as part of Roger II's re-organization of the Basilian houses in his domains.  Ferrando I reconfirmed the monastery's privileges in 1472.  After the monastery's suppression in 1794 its church passed to an arm of what is now the Italo-Greek Catholic Church and has continued to serve a liturgically Greek population initially made up of Albanians whom Ferrando resettled in 1471 in San Dimitrio (as the town was called then).
An illustrated, Italian-language site on this monument is here:
http://www.arbitalia.it/speciali/sant.adriano/mazziotti_indice.htm
and the Italia nell'Arte Medievale's page on it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/f7j7v  
Other expandable views of some of the mosaic figures in the pavement are here:
http://tinyurl.com/5oq5s9
http://tinyurl.com/64hxdp

At the other end of Italy, some views of the originally eleventh-/twelfth-century chiesa di Sant'Adriano at Olgelasca, a locality of Brenna (CO) in Lombardy:
http://www.iubilantes.it/i/gallery/120/12151014610003.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/6x7crd
http://tinyurl.com/6xt8wm
http://tinyurl.com/5kvhss
http://tinyurl.com/645pn2
http://tinyurl.com/643vh4

Some illustrated, Dutch-language pages on the originally fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Sint Adriaanskerk (restored, 1959-68) in Dreischor, a locality of Schouwen-Duiveland (Zeeland):
http://www.dreischor.com/nl/dekerk.php
http://www.buurtatlas.nl/Sint_Adriaanskerk_Dreischor
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/5u5uha
http://tinyurl.com/5k2hsp

A. as depicted by Hans Memling on the left wing of his Triptych of Adriaan Reins (1480), now in the Memlingmuseum at Brugge/Bruges:
http://tinyurl.com/6gk5a8

An illustrated, French-language page (expandable views, mostly towards the foot of the page) of the originally late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century chapelle Saint-Adrien at Saint-Barthélemy (Morbihan):
http://tinyurl.com/5c7zcb

A. is said to have been killed by having his limbs struck off over an anvil.  Not altogether surprisingly, he became a patron of butchers and of smiths.  Herewith a couple of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century images showing his standard iconography (soldier holding in his right hand an upwards-pointing sword, in his left an anvil):
a)  Two images of a page from a later fifteenth-century Flemish illumination (from Gent/Gand) showing Louis XI of France and his queen Charlotte de Savoie at prayer before an altarpiece of A. (Wien, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 2619, fol. 3v):
http://tinyurl.com/642bse
http://tinyurl.com/5l6w6r
b)  A. (at right) as depicted in the later fifteenth-century chapel frescoes of the château of Montreuil-Bellay (Maine-et-Loire):
http://tinyurl.com/5pnpor
c)  An illumination from a later fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century Flemish Book of Hours (from Brugge/Bruges; Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Library, ms. 7, fol. 205r):
http://tinyurl.com/5ll3js
d)  Statue of A., from somewhere in Seine-Maritime (Bosc-Guérard-Saint-Adrien? Cany-Barville?), shown at an exposition at the château de Martainville-Epreville, May 2006 - January 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/6ljtvn


3)  Sergius I, pope (d. 701).  S. was born at Palermo of émigré parents from Antioch on the Orontes.  During the pontificate of St. Adeodatus (II; 672-76) he moved to Rome where he later became titular priest of Santa Susanna on the Quirinal.  In 687 he was elected pope in a compromise between factions supporting the candidacies of the archdeacon Paschal and the archpriest Theodore.  To secure the approval of the exarch in Ravenna S. was obliged to made a very large donation in gold previously promised by the unsuccessful Paschal (whom S. promptly packed off to a monastery).

S.'s pontificate is notable chiefly for his refusal to subscribe to the acts of the Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo; 692), whose canon 36 affirmed the equal authority of the sees of Rome and Constantinople.  Justinian II's attempt resolve this situation by having S. arrested and brought to the imperial capital was thwarted when the militias of Ravenna and the Pentapolis sided with S. and effectively imprisoned Justinian's emissary in the Lateran until S. allowed him to return in disgrace to Constantinople.  (Justinian was overthrown in a coup in 695; his successors, who had more pressing matters to attend to, appear not to have pursued the matter.)

In other highlights, S. had the remains of pope St. Leo I translated in 688 to a newly ornamented resting place in (old) St. Peter's.  In 689 he baptised the recently abdicated king Cædwalla of Wessex and authorised the latter's burial in St. Peter's a week or so later.  In 693 he approved St. Willibrord's first mission to Frisia and two years later, on W.'s return to Rome, consecrated him archbishop of the Frisians.  In 700, after the Council of Pavia, he received the submission of Aquileia, thus ending the "Three Chapters" schism.  The introduction of the Agnus Dei into the Mass has been attributed to S.; likewise the start of Roman processions on the greater Marian feasts.

In an a development of the legend of St, Hubert of Liège unknown to his Carolingian hagiographers, the saint's twelfth-century Third Vita (BHL 4000) relates that when H. was on his way to Rome on pilgrimage an angel appeared to pope Sergius in a dream, revealed to him that bishop St. Lambert of Tongeren-Maastricht had just been murdered and, producing L.'s pastoral staff, bade him consecrate as his successor the already divinely elected H., who would be arriving in Rome that day.  S. awoke, found the staff next to him, made sure that he was informed about arriving pilgrims, and managed to notify H. of these events that very day.  A version of that tale in which the angel also brings to S. Lambert's priestly vestments seems to underly this fifteenth-century panel painting that has been attributed variously to Rogier van der Weyden and to a late fifteenth-century follower and is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles:
http://www.abcgallery.com/W/weyden/workshop3.html
Detail (S. asleep):
http://tinyurl.com/5j7pbb


4)  Corbinian  (d. ca. 725).  C. is documented through a not awfully reliable Vita by Arbeo, bishop of Freising (d. 784).  According to this account (BHL 1947), C. was a Frank who after fourteen years as a hermit in the vicinity of today's Melun (Seine-et-Marne) went to Rome and was there consecrated a missionary bishop.  He was active in Bavarian territory both in the South Tirol, where he is said to have died at Kains (near Merano), and in and around Freising, where he is credited with having founded a predecessor of the former abbey of Weihenstephan.  Arbeo's Vita of C. was written for the occasion of the translation of his remains from Kains to Freising.

Legendarily, C. is said to have compelled a bear that had killed his packmule to replace it as his beast of burden on a journey across the Alps to Rome.  The bear bearing a pack is Freising's heraldic animal (as we've been reminded recently in the discussion of Moors, His Holiness Benedict XVI has placed Freising charges on his papal coat of arms; one of these is C.'s bear).  C. is also credited with the miraculous appearance of a spring at the site of Weihenstephan that later lay dormant until it bubbled forth again at his translation.  Here's an expandable view of a late fifteenth-century panel painting of C. at his spring:
http://aeiou.iicm.tugraz.at/aeiou.history.docs/000134.htm
And here's a view of a late fifteenth-century painting (by Jan Polack) of C. and the bear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Corbinian_polack.jpg

Best,
John Dillon
(Sergius I and Corbinian revised from last year's post)

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