medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (6. August) is also the feast of:
The Transfiguration of Christ. Also known as the feast of the Holy
Savior, this initially Eastern celebration is said to have spread to the
Latin West in the ninth and tenth centuries (though the representation
of the Transfiguration in the 6th-century apse mosaic at Ravenna's
Sant'Apollinare in Classe suggests the feast's presence in Greek-ruled
parts of the Latin West rather earlier than that). In southern Europe,
at least, it usually took place on 6. August; in 1456 Calixtus III
announced on this day Hunyadi's victory over the Turks before Belgrade
and extended the observance to the universal church.
and the feast day of:
Chremes, venerated at Francavilla di Sicilia (d. ca. 1099). Francavilla
di Sicilia is a town in the upper Alacantara valley north of Etna, in an
area of Sicily that harbored monastic communities during the island's
period of East Roman (Byzantine) rule and that was in part resettled by
Greek-speaking monks in the wake of the eleventh-century, Norman-led
termination of Muslim rule in these parts. A diploma of Roger I dated
1092 grants to the hermit Chremes the site of ruinous former monastery
on a hill near today's Francavilla di Sicilia (ME) for the erection upon
it of a new monastery and adjacent church dedicated to the Most Holy
Savior. The rest of what's "known" about C. is either tradition or
inference. The date of his passing not having been preserved, he's
celebrated liturgically on the feast of his monastery's dedicatee.
C.'s monastery was already abandoned and in ruins when it fell victim to
the great earthquake that shook eastern Sicily in 1693. The site is
now occupied by an eighteenth-century former convent of Benedictine nuns
now serving as the Collegio Salesiano S. Basilio. Some idea of the
local terrain may be formed from this view looking south across
Francavilla di Sicilia with Etna in the background:
http://www.vallealcantara.it/images/veduta.jpg
Three views of the Transfiguration mosaic in Sant'Apollinare in Classe
are here:
http://vandyck.anu.edu.au/introduction/add/Christ.iconog/jpgs/Ah441-054.jpg
http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/smr04/101910/Slide9.25.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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