medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (18. August) is the feast day of:
1) Agapitus of Praeneste (?). A saint of this name, from Praeneste,
the Roman-period predecessor of today's Palestrina (RM) in Lazio, is
recorded for this date in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, in the
Gelasian and the Gregorian sacramentaries, and in the Marble Calendar of
Naples. His earliest mention appears to be _CIL_ (_Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum_) 14. 3415, found about a mile away from Palestrina. This is
a large fragment of a fourth-century dedication to an 'Agap sancte'
erected by an otherwise unknown bishop Jucundus. As the area in which
it was found is known from other inscriptions to have been a late
antique Christian cemetery for Praeneste, the practice since the
nineteenth century has been to expand 'Agap' into 'Agapite' (and, often,
to report the inscription as though the other letters were actually
present). By the ninth century a legend had grown up making A. a
youthful martyr under Aurelian (270-75): a brief version is Ado's
Martyrology and longer ones inform different versions of his Passio (BHL
125-27).
A dilapidated basilica at Praeneste dedicated to A. was restored by
pope St. Leo III (795-816). Whereas ruins in the locale where the
aforementioned inscription was found have been interpreted as those of
this structure, it seems more likely that Leo's church was the
predecessor of Palestrina's present cathedral, consecrated by pope
Paschal II in 1117 and dedicated to A. The latter utilizes remains of
an ancient Roman hall thought to have been connected with the massive
temple complex of Fortuna Primigenia located just up the hill (and
largely buried until it was revealed by bombing in World War II). The
cathedral has been rebuilt many times and is presently undergoing
another restoration. Its unlovely facade, the result of the removal in
1957 of an early nineteenth-century external loggia, has at least the
merit of revealing some of the building's medieval stonework:
http://tinyurl.com/gu4kd
http://tinyurl.com/zgmz9
Two pages of expandable views are here:
http://www.nardinirestauro.it/galleria/palestrina/g1/index.htm
And here's a view of an engaged tufa column and travertine capital once
part of the cathedral's late antique predecessor:
http://tinyurl.com/z2o8v
Relics said to be those of A. have been translated to many places,
perhaps most notably Kremsmuenster in Austria (at whose great
Benedictine abbey he is still honored today).
2) Helen (d. 329). The mother of Constantine the Great, H. hailed from
Drepanum in Bithynia and is said to have originally been of low social
standing. After the battle of the Milvian Bridge (312), C. gave her a
large swath of property south of Rome along the Via Labicana that
included both the Christian catacomb _ad duas lauros_ and a nearby
cemetery used by Maxentius' horse guards. Neatly wiping out this place
of memory for his despised opponents, he erected here a basilica
dedicated to Sts. Marcellinus and Peter and attached to it a grandiose
mausoleum that ultimately came to be used for H.
In 324, after C.'s defeat of the other remaining Augustus, Licinius, H.
received the title of Augusta. It is not known when she converted to
Christianity, or when she was baptized, or by whom. In 327 H. made a
trip to the Holy Land whose religious aspects are covered in some detail
by Eusebius. E.'s silence about the discovery of the True Cross, first
attributed to H. in the 380s, permits the conclusion that she had
nothing to do with the appearance of this potent relic, whose existence
is not reported prior to the 340s. Her date of death is inferred from
her disappearance from Roman coinage after 328/29.
The mausoleum in which H. was laid to rest was once a grandiose
structure, well described by Ross Holloway at pp. 86-93 of his recent
_Constantine & Rome_ (New Yaven: Yale University Press, 2004). It has,
of course, long been a ruin. Various views of it are here:
http://tinyurl.com/jmbal
http://liceokant.gioventudigitale.net/english/ss-marcellino/s-elena0.htm
http://www.asvilladesanctis.it/
http://members.tripod.com/romeartlover/Vasi50b.html
expandable:
http://tinyurl.com/h5rt5
The large porphyry tomb in which H.'s remains were deposited in this
structure is now in the Vatican Museums:
http://www.billpetro.com/trips/EuroTour-Rome_2/pages/IMGP0045.html
http://harpy.uccs.edu/roman/helensar.jpg
http://classics.furman.edu/~rprior/imgs/RCU4/4-079.jpg
Its battle scenes constitute a major reason for the view (not
universally accepted) that the mausoleum was originally intended for
Constantine himself.
Some other representations of H. and some dedications to her:
Her fourth-century statue in Rome's Musei Capitolini:
http://www.indiana.edu/~leach/2000/helena.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/o3mp9
Her ninth-century church at Verona, rebuilt in the twelfth:
http://tinyurl.com/j4wee
The late twelfth-century abbey church of Sant'Elena at Serra San Quirico
(AN) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/fcbgt
http://tikal.bo.astro.it/~zavatti/carolingi/santelena.html
H. in the narthex frescoes (completed, 1270) of the monastery church of
the Holy Trinity at Sopocani (Kosovo), Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/hcvvo
larger context (with True Cross and Constantine):
http://tinyurl.com/kbwkw
Her thirteeenth-/fourteenth-century church at Wheathampstead, Herts:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/i.rose/wheathampstead.htm
Her early sixteenth-century window in Aosta's cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/l6wxo
Her baroque tomb in Rome's Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, into which church
her supposed remains are said to have been translated in the twelfth
century:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Ara_Coeli_2.jpg
In Eastern-rite churches H. is celebrated on 21. May.
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
|