medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, January 8, 2006, at 4:52 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (9. January) is the feast day of:
> Hadrian of Canterbury (d. 709 or 710) Hadrian (or Adrian) was an
> African, serving as abbot of Nerida when Pope Vitalian asked him
> to
> become archbishop of Canterbury.
If Lerida and Merida are in today's Spain, what of Nerida? Spanish too
(or, at least, Iberian)? Or perhaps African, like Hadrian himself?
Alas, no; neither life nor toponymy is that simple. Nerida or, rather,
the place meant by its occurrence here, is said in our only source for
this datum (Bede, _Historica ecclesiastica_, 4. 1) to have been not far
from Naples.
In Plummer's ed. of the _Historia ecclesiastica_ (Oxford, 1896), this reads:
_Erat autem in monasterio Niridano, quod est non longe a Neapoli
Campaniae, abbas Hadrianus_ ("Now there was in the monastery Niridanum
[or, in the monastery of/at Niris, or Nirida, or Niridum], which is not
far from Naples in Campania, an abbot Hadrian").
_Niridano_ here is a variant reading; the edition of Colgrave and
Mynors prefers _Hiridano_ instead and in that it is followed by the
widely used translation by McClure and Collins (Oxford, 1994). Neither
Nirida(num) nor Hirida(num) is otherwise attested, nor do we know the
degree of close proximity to Naples signified by Bede's _non longe a
Neapolis Campaniae_. One widely rejected guess identifies the place
with Nardo' in Apulia's Salentine Peninsula, which is rather a long way
off; a widely accepted guess identifies it with today's Nisida, a
little island at the western end of Posilippo between Naples and
Pozzuoli. The best statement on behalf of the latter position is still
Reginald Lane Poole's "Monasterium Niridanum", _English Historical
Review_ 36 (1921), 540-45. An informative, if necessarily speculative,
treatment of Hadrian in his Campanian context will be found in Michael
Lapidge's chapter 3, "Abbot Hadrian", in his and Bernhard Bischoff's
_Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and
Hadrian_ (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 82-132.
None of this explains the curious name-form 'Nerida', not transmitted in
the manuscripts of Bede and not attested as a variant either of _Nesis_
(acc.: _Nesidam_), the Latin name for the island, or of Italian
_Nisida_. It appears in the account of H. at volume 1 (London, 1926),
page 125, of what became the Thurston/Attwater revision of Butler's
_Lives of the Saints_:
Hadrian "was Abbot of Nerida, not far from Naples".
Perhaps someone who has the newly revised Butler can tell us if 'Nerida'
is present there and, if so, what justification the revisers have given
for retaining it.
Nisida derives its name from the Greek _nesis_ ("islet"). The latter is
a fairly common toponym in the Greek-speaking world and so does not
betoken an especial lack of imagination on the part of the Greek
settlers who first named it thus. Seen from the land (to which since
the early twentieth century it has been connected by a causeway), it
looks like this (with the Gulf of Pozzuoli and Capo Miseno in the
background):
http://www.sfonditalia.it/images/RitaChiliberti/Nisida_800.jpg
Seen from above, it reveals itself as a partly submerged volcanic cone:
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/nisidacrater.jpg
In ancient Roman times the Caesarian tyrannicide Q. Caepio Brutus had a
villa on the island; Cicero had a long conversation with him here
shortly after the assassination. In the early Middle Ages it must have
been an out-of-the way place, suitable for a monastery (esp. if
substantial remains of ancient villas were still present). But our
first evidence for such a community on Nesida does not come until the
eleventh century and is rather iffy. During the War of the Sicilian
Vespers the insular Sicilian admiral planned a landing on the island as
the initial phase of a lightning campaign to seize the mainland capital,
Naples; Angevin naval resistance caused him to stand off. After the
fall of Rhodes in 1522 the Grand Master and his fleet were quarantined
here for several weeks before being allowed to enter Naples. The island
was used as a quarantine station into the twentieth century; from at
least the eighteenth century until the twentieth it also housed a prison
of very ill repute. Today it is probably best known as the site of a
penal institution for minors.
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
|