medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. June) is also the feast day of:
Nicholas and Tranus (before 1218). Today, being the fourth day of
June, is the day in which these two saints of northern Sardinia are
commemorated in the RM. Being the first Sunday in June, it is also the
day in which they are celebrated in the diocese of Tempio-Ampurias. In
1519 the latter's bishop, Luigi Gonzales, issued an encyclical account
of the construction by two Franciscans in 1218 of three churches at
Capo Soprano, one to the BVM, one to saint Nicholas, and one to saint
Tranus. The latter two saints were said to have been hermits the
location of whose bodies had been revealed to the Franciscans in a
dream. Gonzales' source was the now lost _condaghe_ (record book) of
the monastery administering these three churches. The early
seventeenth-century Sardinian annalist Salvatore Vidal claimed to have
seen in the same _condaghe_ a record of the dedication in 1229 (or
1219; I've seen both in what are presented as quotations of the
identical text) of an altar, by a titular bishop of Selymbria,
dedicated to saint Peter, to saint Nicholas the confessor, and to saint
Tranus the martyr. In the later Middle Ages the site became known by
the name it still bears today: Luogosanto ('Holy Place'). Remains of
the monastery were still visible in 1636.
Who these saints really were, and when they may have lived, is anyone's
guess. In recent centuries reliance on N. and T.'s Greek names
('tranos' means 'clear'; think of Clarus, the hermit of Saint-Clair-sur-
Epte) and on T.'s reported status as a martyr has led to the
supposition that this was in origin an early Christian cult. But that
T. was really a martyr is dubious. And there seems to be no epigraphic
evidence for an early cult site here, let alone any remains of a
martyrium. Chances are that the Franciscans (who are unlikely to have
come up with T.'s name on their own) found a local cult surviving from
Sardinia's early medieval Greek church and adapted it to their own ends.
T.'s little church outside of today's Luogosanto (OT) is thought to be
the direct successor, on the same site, of its early thirteenth-century
homonym. Sometimes referred to (but not by the diocese) as the church
of saints Nicholas and Tranus, it is built up against a cave said to
have been that of these hermits. A couple of distance views (in the
second, the church is at the lower right):
http://www.galluraethos.it/san_trano3.htm
http://www.luogosanto.info/images/Luogosanto.gif
Three closer views of the exterior:
http://web.tiscalinet.it/luogosanto/s.trano(1).JPG
http://tinyurl.com/qpqje
http://www.galluraethos.it/san_trano2.htm
A couple of views of the interior, showing the cave:
http://tinyurl.com/ondrn
http://tinyurl.com/ntw7j
To give a more general idea of where this is, here's a map of the
diocese of Tempio-Ampurias with Luogosanto near the center:
http://www.diocesitempio-ampurias.it/territorio.asp
Best,
John Dillon
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