medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Wednesday, March 2, 2005, at 10:23 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (3. March) is the feast day of:
> Arthelais (d. c. 560) An odd legend tells that Arthelais was the
> daughter of a proconsul in Constantinople. She was so beautiful that
> Emperor Justinian fell in lust with her. A. fled to her uncle in
> Benevento, her coming foretold by a series of miraculous events. A.
> then settled down to a life of prayer and fasting until she died at
> the ripe old age of sixteen.
It _is_ an odd legend. And a puzzle in several ways. A few further
details present in the two brief versions printed in the _Acta
Sanctorum_ (BHL 719-720) might throw a little more light on the matter.
Arthellais' (Arthelais, Artelais, etc.) uncle in the story is called
Narsus; he has the rank of _patricius_ and is generally taken to be
Narses, Justinian I's general in, and later prefect of, Italy. His
brother-in-law, A.'s father (Lucius; unknown to the _Prosopography of
the Later Roman Empire_), is not only a man of proconsular rank but
also on friendly terms with the emperor's family, as after his daughter
flees he escapes Justinian's wrath by hiding out in the home of J.'s
nephew Justin (presumably the future emperor Justin II). So A. is very
well placed imperially. And her family is wealthy.
When A. flees, she does so in the company of several household servants
(eunuchs); presumably because she is a minor, these have control of the
fortune she has been given to aid her on her journey and to sustain her
in voluntary exile. Once the party reaches Bulona (identified in the
_Acata Sanctorum_ as Budua, on the Adriatic just north of Albania), it
is attacked by robbers, who capture and imprison A., while the eunuchs
escape and perform works of charity with some of A.'s money. One
recipient of this largesse turns out to be Jesus Christ, disguised as a
pauper. By way of recompense, JC causes the bandits (who in the
meantime had been planning to put A. in a brothel) to perish in demonic
fits and sends an angel to liberate A. from her prison, slaying the
jailer and his henchpeople in the process.
A. and her eunuchs now cross the Adriatic and arrive at Siponto. From
here they go to the sanctuary of St. Michael on the Gargano, where A.
makes a large donation. They return to Siponto, are met by uncle
Narsus, and journey by way of Lucera to Benevento. Here A. makes an
even larger donation at the church of the BVM in the middle of the
city. Remaining in Benevento, A. performs miracles, catches a fever,
and dies. She is buried in the church of St. Luke on the city's
eastern side.
Thus far the basic story. A longer version (BHL 718), printed by
Stefano Borgia in vol. 1 of his _Memorie istoriche della pontificia
citta' di Benevento_ (Rome, 1763-69; reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1968)
adds more incidents and lengthens A.'s journey by an episode in
Thessalonica _after_ her liberation at Bulona (so whoever wrote this
lacked the Bollandists' scholarly knowledge of that city's later name
and actual location); though its manuscript source, which has survived
in the cathedral chapter library at Benevento, is relatively late (14th-
cent.), it neither disagrees in essentials nor changes the location of
A.'s burial and so could easily represent the early medieval original
of which the undated BHL 719 and 720 would then be abbreviated versions.
A reasonable guess would be that this Vita is of Beneventan origin,
documenting a local saint of whom nothing was known at the time of its
writing. The latter will have been sometime between Benevento's late
eighth-century taking control of the sanctuary of St. Michael on the
Gargano and the other places in northern Puglia named in the Vita and
its loss of these to a resurgent Roman Empire of the East roughly a
century later. In addition to linking the sanctuary and the two Apulian
cities to a Beneventan cult figure, the Vita also presents Benevento as
a worthy alternative to the empire, a refuge of choice for the great and
good on the outs with an evil emperor in Constantinople. This is in
line with official Beneventan posturing from the eighth century (think
of Arechis II's erection of a ducal church of Holy Wisdom in 762)
through to the principality's collapse in the eleventh century and makes
the Vita an interesting expression of Benevento's much vaunted status as
an autonomous Christian state poised between East and West.
By the late eleventh century Benevento had a church of St. A., probably
a replacement for that of St. Luke, as the location is different). This
still existed in 1370. At some point after that A.'s relics were moved
to Benevento's medieval cathedral (a later version of the church of the
BVM mentioned in the Vita), where in the eighteenth century they were
said to repose below the main altar. With any luck they will have
survived the terrible bombing of the cathedral by American warplanes on
12 September 1943. The cathedral has since been rebuilt and A. remains
one of the principal patrons of Benevento.
Benevento's cathedral, whose origins are said to go back to the sixth
century, sports a twelfth-century facade in the "Pisan Romanesque" style
familiar either from Pisa itself or from a number of churches in
northern Puglia (e.g., the cathedral of Troia). Some views (in later
twentieth-century reconstruction) are here:
http://fujiso3.hp.infoseek.co.jp/na01hp/pna507.html
http://digilander.libero.it/actelese/iniziative/sport/congresso.jpg
http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/laserdisk/artsurvey/bysite/00063.html
and a side view showing the modern construction is here:
http://digilander.libero.it/actelese/iniziative/sport/duomo.jpg
The cathedral's chief entrance has long been distinguished by a set of
unsigned bronze doors, often said to be the work of the Oderisio da
Benevento whose masterpiece at Troia we saw photos of during the
discussion of Secundinus of Troia (11. February). But its panels don't
appear to me to be the work of the same sculptor. For an
Italian-language discussion attributing the Benevento doors to an
anonymous master, see:
http://www.beneventocity.com/turismo/beneventostorica/porte_di_bronzo/porte.asp
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/6rpts
In any event, the doors were smashed to smithereens during the
aforementioned bombing in 1943. In 1999 a careful but necessarily
incomplete reconstruction was mounted in their place. A site that
allows one to see each of the new panels in turn is here:
http://www.liceoartistico.bn.it/portadibronzo/pbi2.htm
and some details are here:
http://www.diocesidibenevento.org/html/porta.htm
Some of the cathedral's other medieval treasures are shown here:
http://www.diocesidibenevento.org/html/museodiocesi.htm
and its statue of St. Bartholomew is shown here:
http://www.diocesidibenevento.org/html/museodiocesi.htm
Better photographs of some of the cathedral's treasures and a different
panel-by-panel presentation of the reconstructed bronze doors can be
found at this site, whose java applets may cause some browsers to seize
up in some configurations:
http://www.donatocalabrese.it/benevento/duomo.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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