medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. June) is also the feast day of:
Agrippina (d. ca. 256, supposedly). A virgin martyr of Rome said to
have been put to death in the reign of Valerian (253-60), A. is unknown
to the early martyrologies. Whereas her cult has traveled widely, she
is essentially an Italo-Greek saint of Sicily principally venerated at
today's Mineo (CT) on the northeastern edge of the Monti Iblei.
A.'s legend is attested to by a Latin-language Translation from Rome to
Mineo (BHL 173; thought to be of the later eleventh or twelfth century
and derived from a Greek-language predecessor) as well as by a
Greek-language Office, Canon, and brief _menaion_ entry, all transmitted
in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century printed sources drawing upon
older Sicilian manuscripts. These together form a reasonably coherent
dossier suggesting that this legend, as we now have it, goes back as
least as far the eighth century (possibly earlier if a post-mortem
miracle said to have occurred during a Muslim raid is a later
accretion). For a popularly written English-language synopsis, see:
http://www.northendboston.com/aggripina/agrippina.html
A. is said to have been brought to Mineo shortly after her death and to
have been buried at a spot where a church was later erected in her
honor. This will have been the Byzantine-period ancestor of Mineo's
Chiesa di S. Agrippina, a fourteenth-century construction severely
damaged in the earthquake of 1693 and extensively rebuilt in the
following century. Two views showing the front with its baroque
entrance are here:
http://www.comunedimineo.it/m2-citta/foto/citta/Chiesa%20Santa%20Agrippina.jpg
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/dpet3
http://www.turismo.catania.it/Images/Mineo/Architettura/Chiesa_S_Agrippina_(prospetto_principale).jpg
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/bgr6o
And two showing the rebuilt apse and apsidioles are here:
http://www.comunedimineo.it/m2-citta/S.AGRIPPINA.jpg
http://www.comunedimineo.it/m2-citta/foto/citta/santa%20agrippina%20abside.jpg
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/9zs6n
At some point in the central Middle Ages A.'s cult reached
Constantinople; from there it spread as far as Russia. In the West, an
offshoot developed in Köln (Cologne; the Roman _Colonia Agrippina_),
where the sequence _Gaude felix Agrippina_, said to be addressed to the
saint, occurs in a combination gradual-antiphoner (Erzbischöfliche
Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Ms. 226) prepared in 1353-58 and presented
in the latter year to that city's Stift Maria ad Gradus. See:
http://utopia.ision.nl/users/ikedl/chant/ike/manuscripts/D-KNd_226_ms.htm
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/7hopb
A by-product of Hohenstaufen rule in late twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Sicily, I suppose. A. is patron of both Köln and
Mineo. Sicilian emigrants to the U.S. brought her cult to Boston (MA),
where she is now the focus of a major festival every August (late August is
also when her _patronale_ occurs at Mineo).
Best,
John Dillon
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