medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. June) is also the feast day of:
Nicander, Marcian, and Daria (d. 303). Today's less well known saints
from the Regno are the chief personae of a Greek Passio (BHG 1330) that
makes them martyrs of Durostorum in the Roman province of Moesia
Inferior. Their cult, first recorded (without Daria) in the
fourth-century Syrian Martyrology, spread to southern Italy where it was
localized in Venafrum (today's Venafro [IS] in Molise) and, so
localized, transmitted in Latin translations of their Greek acta whose
earliest surviving versions (BHL 6070, 6072) come to us in codices of
the eleventh century.
One of these versions (BHL 6072) is summarized by Herbert Bloch as: "a
moving tale of two soldiers, who, obeying the call of the Lord, leave
the Roman army to spread the Gospel and immediately tangle with the
Roman authorities. The 'praeses Maximus' tries to reconvert them to the
Roman religion but without success; on the contrary, Nicander's wife
Daria so strongly encourages him in his stand that she is sent to
prison, where she is joined by the two soldiers. Maximus gives them
twenty days to change their minds, but in vain, and they are sentenced
to death. Whereas Daria does everything to hearten her husbnd,
Marcianus' wife only biitterly reproaches him, and he asks that she be
led away. At the execution site Marcianus kisses her and blesses his
small child. The two martyrs embrace each other, and Daria ... bids
[Nicander] goodbye without a word of self-pity. Then they are beheaded.
Their bodies are buried in Venafro where they had found martyrdom, and
a church is built there in their honor."
Herbert Bloch, _The Atina Dossier of Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino:
A Hagiographical Romance of the Twelfth Century_ (Citta' del Vaticano:
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1998; Studi e Testi, vol. 346), p. 88.
The church in question is that of St. Nicander at Venafro, attested
since the eighth century (when, however, it may have been dedicated to
the now shadowy St. Nicander of Capua). The present structure of this
name is variously said to be of eleventh-/twelfth-century origin or to
have been begun in the late thirteenth century and has been much
rebuilt. See the photo on this page, where even the facade is mostly
modern (the result of a medievalizing "restoration" in 1950-60):
http://www.pagus.it/progetto/comuni/venafro/snicandro/index.htm
Some idea of what late medieval facade will have really looked like may
be gleaned from the bottom photograph on this page devoted to Venafro's
cathedral (a co-cathedral of today's Diocese of Isernia-Venafro):
http://www.giubileo.molise.it/itinerari/eucaristico/concattedrali02.htm
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/deljy
By the year 1110 there was a church of St. Marcian at Atina in today's
Lazio; within a few decades this was claimed by Peter the Deacon in his
version of the martyrs' Passio (ed. Bloch, pp. 189-206) to have been
their burial place. But though the cult spread widely in southern
Italy, its primary locale remained Venafro, where in the early modern
period the Nicander's alleged remains were discovered in what had been
Venafro's Roman cemetery.
BHL 6072 was edited by Erich Caspar in his _Petrus Diaconus und die
Monte Cassineser Faelschungen_ (Berlin: J. Springer, 1909), pp. 226-29.
In 2003 there appeared a richly illustrated volume commemorating the
seventeenth centenary of the martyrdom of Venafro's patron saints; for
details see:
http://www.vitmar.com/monumentalia/nicandromarcianoedaria.htm
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/7s7su
Best,
John Dillon
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