medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. September, being the last Sunday of this month) is also a
feast day of:
Greca (dates unknown). Santa Greca (Medieval Latin: Sancta Grega;
Sardininian: Sant'Arega) is honored now at several places in western and
in southern Sardinia but especially at Decimomannu (CA), where a
monastery dedicated to her is recorded with certainty from 1363; this is
probably also the monastery in the diocese of Cagliari revenues from
whose abbess are recorded in the _rationes decimarum_ for 1341, 1342,
and 1356-60. A notice of the appointment of a new abbess in 1413 brings
with it our first evidence for G.'s being venerated as a martyr. A
Greek-language funerary inscription for a nun named Greca (one would
think "Greka" but my only source for this is not so specific) is said to
have been dated to the ninth century by the well known epigrapher
Antonio Ferrua and to be thought to have come originally from
Decimomannu. If this is so (for what it's worth, I could not find the
inscription in Andre Guillou's 1996 _Recueil des inscriptions grecques
medievales d'Italie_), the nun could already have been named for a local
saint or, on the other hand, her epitaph -- or that of another Greca --
could have provided the impetus for this cult.
In the early seventeenth century, though, a long-standing conflict
between the dioceses of Cagliari and of Sassari for the primacy of
Sardinia led to the discovery through excavation of numerous "martyrs'"
remains, most of which were those of ordinary late antique Romans whose
sepulchral inscriptions were misread in various ways to bring about the
desired result. In the course of this activity the bishop of Cagliari
Francesco D'Esquivel caused excavations to be undertaken in the vicinity
of the parish church at Decimomannu (presumably once connected with the
now vanished monastery); these yielded a Roman-period funerary plaque of
a twenty-year old Christian named Greca who had been interred on 12.
January of some year. This perhaps not newly found inscription (it is
said to have been known to bishops of Cagliari since ca. 1560) is shown
here:
http://www.santagreca.it/im/lapide.gif
and is apparently authentic (though Mommsen, thinking it might be one of
the fakes from the hunt for "corpi santi", stigmatized it with an
asterisk in the _Corpus inscriptionum latinarum_, where it's X. 1225*).
But, D'Esquivel's epigrapher Serafino Esquirro to the contrary, its
initial "B. M." does not signify "Beata Martyr" (since "Greca" is in the
nominative, the likeliest explanation is "Bonae Memoriae"). And the
inscription is hardly proof of G.'s sanctity, let alone of her status as
a martyr.
D'Esquivel, making use of an authority granted to the Spanish church by
Gregory XIII (Sardinia was a Spanish possession at this point), entered
G. into the liturgical calendar for his diocese, creating for her both
an Office and a Mass, and had some of the human bones associated with
this find deposited in his magnificent Crypt of the Martyrs beneath
Cagliari's cathedral. The remainder were reinterred in the parish
church of Decimomannu, which latter was built anew in the late
eighteenth century and is attached to what appears to be the apse of a
small paleochristian church (presumably associated with the necropolis
where G.'s remains were found):
http://www.santagreca.it/img/c03.htm
G. was removed from the Calaritan calendar by the Sacred Congregation of
the Rites in its 1882 purge of Sardinian saints but, with the title of
"martyr", was one of those readmitted in the following year for local
veneration only. In 1914 the Sacred Congregation extended this
veneration, along with that of all the Martyrs of Cagliari, to all
Sardinia. There have been at least two solemn recognitions of G.'s
remains since D'Esquivel's day (1789 and 1928, both at Decimomannu).
Decimomannu treats 12. January (the date on the plaque) as her _dies
natalis_; the "Santi Beati" site ignores this and focuses on her
patronal feast on the last Sunday in September.
Local saints with movable feasts present problems for calendrically
organized listings of "saints of the day" and the like. But even if we
know a good deal less about G. than her modern ecclesiastical promoters
have supposed (and I've not even mentioned her inventive early modern
Life or the chains supposedly remaining from her supposed
incarceration), she _was_ venerated medievally and deserves a mention
here when the chance arises.
Best,
John Dillon
PS: Like so many these days, Greca has a home page:
http://www.santagreca.it/
There's a useful discussion (but the documentation could be better) in
Antonio Francesco Spada, _Storia della Sardegna Cristiana e dei suoi
Santi_ (Oristano: S'Alvure, 1994-98), vol. 1, pp. 190-92. Spada's vol.
2, pp. 193-204, has a good treatment of the seventeenth-century "Corpi
Santi" episode.
Decimomannu AB:
http://www.awtideci.com/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/decimomannu.htm
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