medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, June 25, 2006, at 5:29 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Today (26. June) is the feast day of:
>
> Vigilius (d. 405) Vigilius was the son of a Roman family resident
> in
> Trento. After an education at Athens, V. came home and was soon
> elected bishop. He was largely responsible for the conversion of
> the
> Trentino and the Italian Tyrol to Christianity. V. went around
> preaching in the mountain villages himself. He finally annoyed a
> group of peasants so badly (he knocked over a statue of Saturn)
> that they stoned him to death.
Our first testimony for Vigilius' supposed martyrdom is the _Passio sancti
Vigilii episcopi et martyris_ (BHL no. 8602), whose basic text seems to
have been written at some point during the seventh, eighth, or ninth
century; our next is the mid-ninth-century matryrology of Florus of Lyon,
which latter probably furnishes a _terminus post quem_ for the
Passio. Earlier sources are silent on this point, including the (pesudo- )
Hieronymian Martyrology, though the latter does devote space to the martyrs
of the Val di Non (Sisinnius et al.; 29. May), put to death -- as V.
himself tells us in the second of his two letters announcing the event --
before a cult statue of Saturn. Scholars have consequently long been
inclined to treat the Passio's tale of V.'s death as hagiographic
fiction drawing on that earlier martyrdom. Not so, however, the
Ramsgate Abbey _Book of Saints_, whose entry for V. is much like
Phyllis' and whose intent to let the reader know when information given
is "uncertain or debatable" (5th ed., p. ix) seems in this instance as
in others not to have been carried forward to execution. V. is now
thought to have died in the year 400. He _was_ bishop of Trent. The
other biographical details given above either derive from the Passio or
are inferences based on the aforementioned letters. They are all
suspect in one way or another.
Those more critically minded than Phyllis' source seems to be might have
a look at Igino Rogger (the distinguished ecclesiastical historian of
Trent), s.v. "Vigilio, vescovo e patrono di Trento, santo, martire", in
the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 12 (1969), cols. 1086-88 (an article
whose bibliography curiously lists his own writings on Vigilius as the
work of one "I. Rogers"), esp. this at col. 1087: "Il titolo di martire
quindi esprimi piuttosto una categoria culturale che un fatto storico."
("The martyr's title thus expresses a cultural category rather than an
historical fact."). For more recent assessments of the historical
Vigilius and of his legendary Passio, see Sofia Boesch Gajano,
"L'identita' storica di Vigilio e il suo destino storiografico," in
Roberto Codroico and Domenico Gobbi, eds., _Vigilio vescovo di Trento
tra storia romana e tradizione europea. Atti del Convegno, Trento 12-13
ottobre 2000_ (Trento: Civis, 2000), pp. 19-30, and Severino Vareschi,
"Storia tradizione, leggenda nella _passio sancti Vigilii_. Studio di
una fonte agiografica," _ibid._, pp. 235-57.
Luigi F. Pizzolato, _Studi su Vigilio di Trento_, Studia patristica
mediolanensia, vol. 23 (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002), offers on pp.
141-214 a fresh, annotated edition of V.'s only surviving writings, the two
letters on the martyrs of the Val di Non.
Trento's thirteenth-/fourteenth-century cathedral is dedicated to V.
A brief, English-language account is here:
http://floc99.itc.it/turism/trento/duomo.htm
Various views:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Trento_Duomo.jpg
http://www.arcidiocesi.trento.it/giubileo/giub_cattedrale.htm
http://www.arcidiocesi.trento.it/arte/trento_fr_piazza_duomo.htm#inizio_pagina
(click on red words and on green for pop-ups)
http://www.girovagandointrentino.it/puntate/2003/estate/trento/trento.htm
(scroll about a quarter of the way down the page)
http://community.webshots.com/album/499085563FsPsfx
Best,
John Dillon
(a post from 2004 lightly revised)
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