medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. August) is the feast day of:
Paris of Teano (4th cent., supposedly). Today's less well known saint
from the Regno is the legendary first bishop of Teano (CE) in nothern
Campania, once the ancient Teanum Sidicinum and an important crossroads
town on the Via Latina. P.'s Vita (BHL 6466) is a classically informed
melange of familiar topoi featuring an evangelist of foreign origin
(Athenian), a giant serpent fed rich meals in a pagan sacred well, a
bear and a lion who become tame when each in turn is set upon our
intrepid saint, and pope Sylvester I hiding from Constantinian
persecution on Mount Soracte.
P.'s cult seems to be at least early medieval in origin. His church,
the recently restored San Paride ad Fontem, is an 11th- or early
12th-century structure replacing a paleochristian church. Situated
outside the medieval city and built over an ancient cistern (the sacred
well of the legend, no doubt), this was Teano's first cathedral and
retains an early episcopal throne. Whereas P. is said to have been
buried here, he presently reposes in Teano's cathedral of San Clemente,
a 17th-century replacement for an earlier cathedral built about the same
time as the present San Paride in Fontem.
Always essentially a local saint, P. seems to have been venerated from
at least the early modern period onward in other locales in northern
Campania. At present he is co-patron of the diocese of Teano-Calvi,
sharing that distinction with the equally shadowy Castus of Calvi (one
of Campania's several episcopal saints of that name).
An exterior view of San Paride ad Fontem from a photograph seemingly
taken after the restoration of 1988 had begun but certainly prior to its
completion 2004:
http://www.treccani.it/iteronline/rubriche/andate/teano/foto4.htm
That is from a Treccani site with views of the present cathedral
(including the diocesan archeological museum in the crypt) and of
various other monuments in and around Teano:
http://www.treccani.it/iteronline/rubriche/andate/teano/rp5b2.htm#5
A more recent exterior view of San Paride ad Fontem is here:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/San_Paride.htm
That's from the site of the Pro Loco di Teano, which also has these
views of the cathedral's cosmatesque ambo:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/Ambone.htm
The ambo's present parapet (a replacement for the orginal, which had
been badly damaged in the fire of 1608) is composed of panels taken from
a fourteenth-century funerary monument decorated with images of P. and
of other bishops of Teano.
Other views of the interior of Teano's cathedral and of its
fourteenth-century crucifix are here:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/Duomo.htm
Teano's civic Museo Archeologico has a page here:
http://www.archeona.arti.beniculturali.it/sanc_en/mavic/mate/home.html
Best,
John Dillon
(an older post, revised)
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