medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. April) is also the feast day of:
Cyriac of Buonvicino (d. ca. 1042). Cyriac's _dies natalis_ is said to be
19 September and his major civic festival as patron of Buonvicino (CS) in
northern Calabria takes place around that day. Nonetheless, he is listed
for today on the "Santi Beati" site at:
http://www.santiebeati.it/search/jump.cgi?ID=91371
This tells us, inter alia, that today is his present major feast, that of
the recognition of his relics in the first half of the seventeenth century
under the auspices of Defendente Brusato, bishop of San Marco Argentano
(part of today's diocese of San Marco Argentano -- Scalea) after their
location was revealed in a dream (how familiarly medieval!) to a local
priest. As C. appears to have at best local cult status only (Phyllis, is
he in any of your sources?) and does not appear on calendars of the Church
Universal, we may as well consider him today.
C. is said to have been an Italo-Greek saint who was born in today's
Buonvicino in the mid-tenth century, lived as a hermit in a nearby grotto,
and later entered (and ultimately became abbot of) a subsequently latinized
Greek monastery also in the vicinity and now called Santa Maria del
Padre. Although a local cult of a saint of his name is indisputably
medieval in origin (an "abbas S. Chiriachi del Bonovicino" is mentioned in
a diocesan record of 1327), the sources for the details of his life as
these appear on the "Santi Beati" site must be more recent: C. is unknown
both to the _BHG_ and to the _BHL_ (as well as to the _Acta Sanctorum_) and
does not appear in any of the standard surveys of Calabria's numerous Greek
saints evidenced through medieval Lives. Nor are these data necessarily
authentic: when we read, for example, that C. was summoned to
Constantinople by the emperor Michael IV "the Paphlagonian" and there cured
the latter's daughter of demonic possession, we may suspect
(notwithstanding the widespread nature of the hagiographic topos of curing
the ruler's son or daughter) the presence of a detail about the Cyriac of 8
August (C. of Cyriacus, Largus, Smaragdus, et al.) as found in the fabulous
Passion of St. Marcellinus but adapted to the place and traditional dates
of this more recent bearer of the name (the earlier Cyriac is said to have
cured a daughter of Diocletian; Michael IV, an emperor whose failed attempt
to reconquer Sicily gave him several connections with Calabrian history, is
an obvious substitute in the case of a Calabrian saint of about the time of
the empress Zoe and her consorts). That Michael IV was not yet emperor in
1030 is of no consequence to Antonio Borrelli, the author of the "Santi
Beati" account, who, apparently following the tradition of Santa Maria del
Padre, gives that year as the date of C.'s death.
But if the historical Cyriac (in Italian, Ciriaco) is hard to discern
through the mists of later tradition, the same cannot be said of his
physical representation overlooking Buonvicino from a nearby mountain
spur. See the last two photographs at:
http://www.fxguidry.com/italy2003/Calabria/page3.htm
And the final image here:
http://utenti.lycos.it/farsa2000/Buonvicino.html
Best,
John Dillon
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