medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. August) is also the feast day of:
Herbert of Conza (Herbert of Middlesex; d. 1181, probably). Today's
less well known saint from the Regno is thought, on the basis of a
confused notice in the _Ymagines historiarum_ of Ralph of Diceto (a.k.a.
Ralph of Diss), to have been an Englishman who moved to the kingdom of
Sicily and who was appointed archbishop of Conza by William II. What
Ralph actually says is that H. was made archbishop of Cosenza in
Calabria and that he perished in a great earthquake there (presumably,
the one of 1184). But H. is documented in the see of Conza from 1169
through 1179, when he took part in Lateran III, and his death date was
inscribed, presumably from local records, as 20. August 1118 (thought to
have been an error for 1181) on a pilaster in the cathedral of Conza
that was destroyed by the earthquakes of 1694 and 1732 (as opposed to
its eighteentn-century replacement that collapsed in the great Conza
earthquake of 1980). H. was interred beneath a side altar there and
was moved to the high altar in 1684 in connection with a canonical
recognition of his relics. A sarcophagus said to be his was housed
until recently in the Museo Provinciale Irpino at Avellino but is now
back at Conza. H. has no surviving Life and no medieval Office. Get a
Life, Herb!
Conza (today's Conza della Campania [AV]) is a good example of a now
obscure place that medievally was rather more significant. A hill town
in southern Irpinia, it overlooks the upper valley of the Ofanto not far
below the Conza Saddle. The latter is a rare low point (700 meters
above sea level) in the southern Appennines permitting relatively easy
travel across the peninsula from the Sele valley in the west to the
Ofanto valley in the east. Already militarily significant in Roman
times, Conza was the seat of an important gastaldate (later, county) in
the duchy/principality of Benevento and in the latter's successors in
this region, the principality of Salerno and the kingdom of Sicily. It
is first recorded as a diocese in Lombard times (743). Always centrally
isolated, it has a population today of ca. 1500 and now forms part of
the archdiocese of S. Angelo dei Lombardi, Conza, Nusco, e Bisaccia (the
others all having been, as far as we can tell, dioceses newly created in
the eleventh century). In consequence of an earthquake said to have
demolished Conza in 990, Conza's bishops aare thought to have relocaed
their residence to today's Sant'Andrea di Conza, some fifteen kilometers
away. Though the latter place is not actually documented until 1161, it
does seem that Herbert will have lived here rather than in Conza proper.
Seismic events of the sort indicated in the preceding paragraphs have
pretty well eliminated any monumental remains of Conza's medieval past
(though the Episcopio at Sant'Andrea di Conza is a former baronial
fortress of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries). A
fairly recent view of the ruined eighteenth-century cathedral is here:
http://www.corriereirpinia.it/domenicale/cu_03_07_12_2003.php
Adjacent to this is Conza's archeological park (Parco Archeologico
dell'antica Compsa), with pre-Roman and Roman antiquities on display:
http://www.archemail.it/1sconza.htm
Some idea of the local terrain may be gleaned from the photograph of
Conza della Campania on this page:
http://www.goleto.it/itinerari/conza.htm
and from the view from the castle of Cairano (across the Ofanto valley
from Conza) here:
http://www.avellinonet.it/comuni/cairano/davisitare.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post, lightly revised)
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