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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