medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Thursday, December 22, 2005, at 10:30 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (23. December) is the feast day of:
> Servulus (d. 590) Servulus appears in one of Gregory the Great's
> homilies.
This Servulus (not to be confused with the martyr of Trieste) also
appears in Gregory's _Dialogues_, 4. 14, where one learns that at the
hour of his death he heard with "the ear of his heart" the joy of those
in heaven that his soul was about to join them.
> Margaret of Savoy (d. 1464) Margaret was a daughter of Count
> Amadeus
> of Savoy; her mother was sister to one of the Avignon popes. M.
> married the marquis of Montferrat, and when he died she refused to
> marry again and settled down to a life of good works. She founded
> a
> convent at Alba. Her cult was confirmed in 1669.
M. is in the online, Italian-language version of the new Roman
Martyrology on 23. _November_ (her _dies natalis_) and seems now to be
celebrated on that date in northern Italy, at least. She and her
convent were Dominican (in 1671 Clement X extended her cult to the
entire Dominican order, fixing her day of commemoration as 27.
November); the convent still exists and is still Dominican but has been
at its present site only since 1956. M.'s remains are preserved in a
chapel in Alba's chiesa della Maddalena. Since that's a baroque
structure, here instead are a few views of Alba's late
thirteenth-century chiesa di San Domenico:
http://www.astiin.it/cgi-bin/cartoline/alba-s.domenico2.jpg
http://www.hulsen.net/images/Piemonte-Alba004.JPG
http://www.ilmonferrato.info/cn/alba/domenico.jpg
Keeping straight the Margarets and the Amadeuses in the ruling family of
Savoy is not alotgether easy. But it helps if one uses the comital
numbers of the Amadeuses. This Margaret's father was Amadeus VII, the
Red Count; she was sister to Amadeus VIII (perhaps also, depending on
one's loyalties in the Great Western Schism, pope Felix V of blessed
memory). She was thus the aunt of her near contemporary the Margaret
of Savoy who was married early and briefly to Louis III of Anjou (one of
Giovanna II's designated successors to the throne of mostly mainland
Sicily) and whose rescue from shipwreck off the coast of Sorrento in
1434 resulted in the presentation to Montevergine of the magnificent
(and extremely early) pictorial ex-voto shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/7scrj
As we are now dealing with prominence in the Regno, it may be added that
the Apulian coastal town of Margherita di Savoia (FG), famous for its
salt marshes, is named for neither of the above but rather for a later
member of the family, the first queen of united Italy (d. 1926). Her
husband, Umberto I (assassinated in 1900), seems to have been declared a
servant of God; for a brief biography of him and of many other saints,
blesseds, and servants of God from the house of Savoy (but _not_
including the Margaret celebrated on 23. November), see:
http://www.cartantica.it/pages/collaborazionisavoia.asp
Best,
John Dillon
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