medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (30. October) is also the feast day of several less well known
saints (and one blessed) of the Regno:
Marcian of Syracuse (1st cent., supposedly). We have no information
about the legendary proto-bishop of Syracuse prior to the late seventh
and early eighth centuries, when he is the subject of a hymn by Gregory
of Syracuse and of an anonymous Encomium (BHG 1030) that makes him an
Antiochene disciple of Peter sent to Sicily to preach the Gospel and
martyred at Syracuse after having made many conversions there. In the
sixth century a basilica thought to have been dedicated to M. was built
in and over part of what had been a late antique Christian cemetery
(last dated inscription from the early fifth century) at Syracuse, with
a martyr's tomb in the crypt; in the eighth or very early ninth century
M. was also depicted in a fresco in that city's catacombs of St. Lucy.
In 842, during the ongoing Muslim conquest of Sicily, relics said to be
his were translated to the Campanian port city of Gaeta, where he
subsequently became one of that city's patron saints. At about the
same time his _dies natalis_ was recorded for today on the Marble
Calendar of Naples; this festal date for him is also recorded in a
Capuan codex of 991 and in the eleventh- through thirteenth-century
menaia of the Greek abbey at Grottaferrata. In around 1092, after the
Latin reconquest of Syracuse, M.'s basilica there was rebuilt as a
church of St. John the Apostle and its crypt, now called that of St.
Marcian, was amplified and re-worked. Illustrated, Italian-language
accounts of this crypt are here:
http://www.siracusacity.com/Monumenti/CriptaS_Marziano.htm
http://www.ibmsnet.it/siracusa/chgiovan.html
and especially here:
http://tinyurl.com/853yx
Germanus of Capua (ca. 541). Germanus, bishop of Capua, has a vague
and unreliable Vita (BHL 3465; late but earlier than 873-74) that tells
us that he was born in that city of illustrious parents and that he,
upon his father's death and with his mother's consent, sold off his
entire inheritance and dedicated himself to the poor. The _Liber
Pontificalis_ offers details of his role in the papal embassy to
Constantinople of 519-20 which brought about the end of the Acacian
schism. Gregory the Great has two stories about him in the
_Dialogues_. In one (4. 40), G.'s prayers secured the release from
purgatorial punishment of the deceased Roman deacon Paschasius, now
toiling as a bath attendant at a place identified medievally as Agnano
in the Phlegraean Fields; in the other (2. 35), St. Benedict, having
been granted a vision of the whole world all at once, also saw the soul
of G. ascending to heaven. In 887 Louis II brought G.'s remains from
Capua to Monte Cassino, where the new city at the foot of the mountain
became known as San Germano (in 1863 this became today's Cassino [FR]);
the relics themselves were later moved to a chapel in the abbey church,
where they were destroyed in the Allied bombardment of 1944.
Two reproductions of a thirteenth-century miniature from the Biblioteca
Angelica copy (ms. 1474) of Peter of Eboli's _De Balneis Terrae
Taboris_ (vel sim.; title varies) showing Germanus and Paschasius at
upper left are here:
color:
http://www.nsula.edu/campaniafelix/sites/agnano/Images/manuscript02.jpg
black-and white, larger:
http://www.sin-italy.org/jnonline/vol17n2/329.html
For a discussion of this image and of the corresponding passage in
Peter's poem, see this page by Jean D'Amato Thomas, the American
doyenne of medieval and early modern Phlegraean Field studies:
http://www.nsula.edu/campaniafelix/sites/agnano/purgatory.htm
Gerard of Potenza (d. 1122). An account of this sainted bishop of the
Basilicata will be found in the archives of this list for 30. October
2003:
http://tinyurl.com/9q545
Balsam of Cava (blessed; d. 1232). The tenth abbot of the famous
Benedictine abbey of the Most Holy Trinity at Cava dei Tirreni (outside
of Salerno), B. enjoyed exceptionally good relations with his king,
the emperor Frederick II; greatly expanded the abbey's holdings, and
maintained high standards of austerity, scholarship, and doctrinal
purity within his community. The abbey's scribe John of Capua,
creating in 1295 a copy of abbot Peter II's _Vite_ of the first four
abbots of La Cava, added a poem on the its rulers down to his own day
in which B. is called _gemma sacerdotum prelatorumque monile_ ("jewel
of priests and neck ornament of prelates"). B., who died on 24.
November and who until recently was commemorated on that day (as, for
all I know, he may yet be in the Benedictine family), was beatified in
1928. The Chiesa Cattolica Italiana's "Santo del Giorno" page for
today and the "Santi Beati" site to which it links now list B. under
today's date.
The abbey's probably autograph copy of Benedict of Bari's _De septem
sigillis_ ("On the Seven Seals"), written under B., contains both a
metrical dedication to him and the presentation illustration reproduced
here:
http://tinyurl.com/b432t
Best,
John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|