medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, March 25, 2005, at 8:59 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (26. March) is the feast day of:
>
> Castulus (d. 286) Legend tells that Castulus was an imperial
> chamberlain---and a Christian. He sheltered Christians, arranged for
> Christian services at the palace (!), and converted a lot of people.
> C. was eventually denounced by an apostate, tortured, and then
> smothered in a pit.
That is (since there are various means of smothering someone), he was
placed in a pit and then buried under a lethal quantity of "sand"
(_arena_; probabably volcanic ash -- see below). So our only source
for details of C.'s life and martyrdom, the legendary Acta of St.
Sebastian (BHL 7543). This also tells us that it was C.'s widow,
Irene, who found the Holy Hedgehog (yes, that's excessive; the Acta
merely say that S. was shot so full of arrows that he appeared to be
_quasi hericius ... hirsutus_) still alive after Diocletian's archers
has left him for dead and who nursed him back to health, thereby
permitting S. to later confront D. with his divinely ordained
recovery. What happened next is well known and, besides, has naught to
do with the departed C.
Some of the martyrs named in the _Acta sancti Sebastiani_ are otherwise
unattested; others, like S. himself, are attested early martyrs of whom
virtually nothing is known (and of whom virtually nothing probably was
known when, seemingly in the fifth century, these Acta were composed).
C. falls into the latter category: he was a genuine martyr honored in a
catacomb named after him on the via Labicana on the outskirts of Rome
(rediscovered in the 1670s, this was badly damaged by railway
construction in 1864 and by Allied bombing in 1943). This is one of
several catacombs that had more or less secret entrances through
adjacent pozzolana quarries ('pozzolana' is compacted volcanic ash;
ancient Romans used it for their cement), known in Latin as _arenariae_
(lit., 'sand-works'). The _Acta sancti Sebastiani_, in the paragraph
following that describing C.'s martyrdom, say that the martyrs
Marcellianus and Marcus, the next to be dispatched, were buried along
the via Appia at a place called _Ad arenas_ because quarries of "sand"
used for the building of the City walls were located here (_in loco qui
vocatur Ad arenas, quia cryptae arenarum illic erant, ex quibus Urbis
moenia struebantur_). So when in the previous paragraph we are told
that C. was put in a pit and had a mass of "sand" descend upon him,
it's reasonable to assume that pozzolana is meant there as
well.
By the year 809 relics of C. had reached the monastery at Moosburg in
southern Bavaria (today's Moosburg an der Isar). Moosburg's present
collegiate church of St. Castulus / Kastulus (begun 1171) was the
monastery's church until the latter's closing in the early seventeenth
century. The second image here shows the BVM and C. flanking Christ in
the tympanum over its main entrance (ca. 1175):
http://www.moosburg.org/info/tour/castulus.html
The same church has a striking Castulus-altarpiece from 1514, whose
central portions are shown here:
http://www.moosburg.org/info/tour/alteng1.html
and one of whose side-panel reliefs may be seen here in an expandable
image:
http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/kultdoku/kataloge/36/html/2739.htm
In 1604 C.'s relics were transferred to the monastery of St. Martin
(now of Sts. Martin and Castulus) at nearby Landshut, where most of
them still remain in the "gothic" church of St. Martin:
http://tinyurl.com/43nvq
better interior view:
http://www.smertenko.de/eltern/fotos/kirchen/landshut.JPG
Happy Easter to all,
John Dillon
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