medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> Does anyone know of a Roman soldier or centurion who was around at the time of the
> Crucifixion and later became a Christian, and who *wasn't* Longinus? I'm trying to explain the
> presence of such a character in an image of the Road to Calvary. He has no halo, so may never
> have become a saint. It seems to me that the gospels allow for the possibility of two good
> soldiers at the Crucifixion- one who recognised Christ as the Son of God, the other (in Luke)who
> bore witness at the piercing of Christ's side. The Golden Legend seems to collapse them both in
> to St. Longinus, but I'd like to know if there was any medieval tradtion of a good 'unknown
> soldier'.
Laura,
The centurion who, according to Matthew 27:54, recognized Christ as the Son of
God when an earthquake marked his death on the Cross was, I believed, unnamed.
Gertrud Schiller, vol. 2, p. 13, is not as informative as usual on this, but seems to
indicate that there could have been some conflation with Longinus, as in the Golden
Legend, as early as the Acta Pilati of the 5th or 6th centuries. This figure began to
appear in Crucifixion scenes, usually pointing up at Christ to indicate his
recognition, in Carolingian Crucifixion scenes and became very common in the later
Middle Ages. His separate identity from Longinus in these scenes certainly
suggests that his identity was considered separately, but I don't know about textual
sources for this.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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