medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (6. August) is the feast day of:
1) The Transfiguration of Christ, also celebrated as the feast of the
Holy Savior. For details, see this month's separate
thread "Transfiguration date". See also 3) below.
2) Hormisdas, pope (d. 523). H., who hailed from Frosinone in Lazio,
had been married before he began his career as a senior churchman. He
was a close collaborator of pope St. Symmachus, whom he succeeded. H.
put an end both to the Laurentian schism in Rome and, with the support
of the emperor Justin I, to the Acacian schism between Rome and the
east. The 'Formula of Hormisdas' re-establishing Chalcedonian
orthodoxy affirmed Rome's status as the preserver of undefiled
apostolic tradition; the patriarch of Constantinople who signed it
added a gloss implying the parity of these two sees. Dionysius
Exiguus' second edition of his collection of church canons was made at
H.'s direction. H.'s letters are an important source for the history
of the papacy in the sixth century. H. was buried in Old St. Peter's;
his epitaph (in six elegiac distichs) was written by his son, the
future pope St. Silverius.
For an expandable view of the opening pages of an eleventh-century
manuscript of H.'s letters and decrees, see:
http://193.206.215.4/mostra/sala7-s2.htm
The PL text of H.'s decree affirming that of pope St. Gelasius I on
canonical and non-canonical scripture is here:
http://tinyurl.com/hpqh8
The transenna sections on either side of the central aperture in the
chancel screen at Rome's Basilica of San Clemente are thought to date
from O.'s time:
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/sanclem1.jpg
http://www.emmauscollege.nl/images/tekenen/clement2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/j849l
The largely twelfth-century church of San Pietro Apostolo at Albano
Laziale (RM) utilizes a hall from an ancient Roman baths complex and is
considered a rebuilding of the basilica that, according to the _Liber
pontificalis_, H. erected here:
http://www.comune.albanolaziale.roma.it/Guida/tour20.htm
http://tinyurl.com/f54u7
3. Clement/Chremes of Placa (d. ca. 1099). In 1092 Roger I granted to
the Greek hermit Clement or Chremes (the surviving abstracts of Roger's
now lost diploma differ on this point differ and the names in Greek are
very similarly formed) land on the hill of Placa near today's
Francavilla di Sicilia (ME) in northeastern Sicily for the erection of
a new monastery dedicated to the Most Holy Savior. The rest of
what's "known" about C. is either tradition or inference, though he
does have a very nice Vita composed by the late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar Ottavio Gaetani (the miracle of
Roger and the tame animals is particularly fine). Records from the
early years of the monastery are virtually nonexistent: even the names
of the abbots between C. and the Theodoret who was in office in 1179
are unknown. The date of C.'s passing not having been preserved, he
was by the Early Modern period celebrated liturgically on the feast of
his monastery's dedicatee. As the monastery had been subordinated in
the early twelfth century to the archimandrite of the monastery of
Santissimo Salvatore de lingua phari at Messina, and as we know that
(in common with much of Christianity in southern Europe) the latter
celebrated the Transfiguration on this day, chances are excellent that
the founder's commemoration at San Salvatore di Placa took place on 6.
August much earlier than the scanty record would suggest.
C.'s monastery seems to have survived the great earthquake that shook
eastern Sicily in 1693 but by 1747 it was already abandoned and in
danger of collapse. A little bit of rubble is said to be all that's
left of it. A view of the hill on which it was sited, showing the
remains of a fortress with which it shared this elevation from the
later twelfth century onward, is here:
http://www.ipaesaggi.it/Itinerari/Francavilla.htm
For details of this cult, erroneously reported in the Bibliotheca
Sanctorum as still alive at Francavilla di Sicilia, see Mario
Re, "Dell'abate Clemente divenuto San Cremete", _Rivista di Studi
Bizantini e Neoellenici_ n.s. 33 (1996), 181-92.
Best,
John Dillon
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