medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Stella Rock asks:
> Does anybody know a good source for material on the feast
of
> St Urban, preferably primary sources complaining about it
(the earlier
> the better)?
This St Urban should be Urban I, whose feast day is on 25
May. We have something about sixteenth-century complaints
about the festivities in The Oxford Companion to the Year
(now out in a second printing, with some corrections):
Pope Urban I (d. 230), allegedly martyred with a nail
through his head, therefore invoked against migraine. In
Germany he is the patron saint of wine-growers; if his day
is fine, plentiful good wine is expected ('Hat Urbanstag
schön Sommerschein, verspricht es viel und guten Wein'); in
former times his statue was sprinkled with wine, but on a
rainy day water or worse:
But if the day be clowdie nowe, or given unto raine,
On him they lift not to bestow such honour, nor such paine,
Poore knave into some ryver than, they cast him cruellie,
And all to souse him in the streame, or durtie let him lie.
Naogeorgus, fo. 54v [= Thomas Naogeorgus [Kirchmeyer], The
Popish Kingdome or Reigne of Antichrist written in Latin
Verse by Thomas Naogeorgus and Englyshed by Barnabe Googe
1570, ed. Robert Charles Hope (London, 1880)]
Hence a Protestant almanac represents the peasants as
complaining against the Gregorian reform, for moving St
Urban ten days earlier:
Hettest doch nur in seiner massen,
S. Urbans tag vns bleiben lassen,
Da wir Bawren vns trancken voll,
So gefiel vns dein Kolender wol.
Aber du hast den auch entzogen,
Und mit dem Weinwachss vns betrogen.
'Bawrenklag Vber des Röm. Bapsts Gregorii XIII newen
Calender', cited in Uhl, 101 [= Wilhelm Uhl, Unser Kalender
in seiner Entwicklung von den ältesten Anfängen bis heute
(Paderborn, 1893)]
That is to say, if the Pope had only left the peasants St
Urban’s day in its proper place, when they were used to
drinking their fill, they would be well content with his
calendar; but he has taken that away too, and cheated them
of their predictor for the wine-harvest.
Bonnie Blackburn
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bonnie J. Blackburn
67 St Bernard's Road, Oxford, OX2 6EJ
tel. +44 (0)1865 552808
fax +44 1865 (0) 512237
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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