medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. August) is the feast day of:
1) St. Peter in Chains. A translation from the Italian 'San Pietro in
Vincoli', this feast celebrates the dedication of the Roman church of
that name, founded in the first half of the fifth century to house the
chains with which St. Peter had been secured when he was imprisoned in
Jerusalem (Acts 12: 6-7). At first called the _titulus Eudoxiae_
(perh. after Eudoxia, the wide of Valentinian III, thought by some to
have helped pay for it), it was dedicated by Sixtus III both to Peter
and to Paul and for centuries was also known as the _titulus
Apostolorum_. Its present designation (also late antique in origin)
when expressed in Latin usually occurs as _(Ecclesia) Sancti Petri ad
vincula_; hence also the customary Latin name of the feast, _Sancti
Petri ad vincula_. The poet Arator gave a public reading of his _De
actibus Apostolorum_ here on four consecutive days in 544.
The church was restored by Adrian I (772-95) and rebuilt under Sixtus
IV (1471-84) and Julius II (1503). At some point the chains thought to
have held Peter when he was imprisoned at Rome prior to his execution
were brought from the so-called Mamertine Prison (not attested as an
ancient designation) and were added to those said to be from
Jerusalem. According to legend, they fused of their own accord. They
are now on display in the confessio before the high altar:
http://roma.katolsk.no/img/pietrovincoli_relics1.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/zubuk
By the later Middle Ages St. Peter in Chains had become today's
principal feast in the Roman church. It was removed from the general
Roman Calendar in 1969.
Rome's church of San Pietro in Vincoli houses a funerary monument well
known to some on this list:
http://keptar.demasz.hu/arthp/art/b/bregno/andrea/bregno.jpg
Oh, were you perhaps expecting this one?:
http://inillotempore.com/blog/images/Julius2Tomb.jpg
The first is of the philosopher and ecclesiastical administrator
Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), appointed cardinal priest of this church by
Nicholas V. The second is of course the tomb of Julius II with its
statue of Moses by Michelangelo:
http://inillotempore.com/blog/images/Moses_by_Michelangelo.jpg
There are other dedications in Italy to St. Peter in Chains. Here are
some views of Pisa's late eleventh-/early twelfth-century church of San
Pietro in Vinculis (a.k.a. San Pierino):
http://tinyurl.com/jp72o
http://www.stilepisano.it/immagini8/index1.htm
and of the church of San Pietro in Vincoli (1363; later modifications)
at Limone Piemonte (CN) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/he2pj
http://www.hulsen.net/images/Piemonte-Limone001.JPG
Peter in Chains is Piemonte Limone's patron saint.
2) The Seven Holy Maccabees (and their Mother). One of the oldest
feasts of the Roman sanctoral calendar, this celebration was once
subsumed into that of St. Peter in Chains but even now in the Roman
church is trumped by that of a modern saint of the Regno, Alphonso
Liguori (1696-1787). It honors the seven brothers (and their mother)
of 2 Macc. 7, gruesomely put to death in the second century BC by
Antiochus IV Epiphanes and widely revered in the early church as
martyrs for Judeo-Christian faith and thus as Christians before the
letter. The feast appears in eastern and in western calendars from the
fifth century onward. Their chief early cult center was at Antioch,
the presumed venue of their martyrdom. In the sixth century remains
said to be theirs were translated to Rome and housed in the church of
St. Peter in Chains, which had been dedicated on their day. Their
present location is in a crypt behind and below the shrine containing
Peter's chains (on which, see above).
The feast's popularity in the West in the early Middle Ages is attested
to by its listings in the Gelasian Sacramentary and in the Marble
Calendar of Naples. In the latter (which does not mention Peter in
Chains) it occurs as that of the Passion of the Macchabees and of St.
Felicity, thus giving the mother a name (taken, it would seem, from the
Felicity of 23. November, also the mother of seven sainted sons).
A translation of a letter from Bernard of Clairvaux explaining why this
feast should be kept is here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/letters.xlvii.html
A women's monastery dedicated to the Seven Holy Maccabees was founded
at Cologne (Köln) in the twelfth century. See:
http://tinyurl.com/h8btc
And the same city's Dominican church of St. Andreas (the resting place
of Albertus Magnus) houses an impressive early sixteenth-century
reliquary of them described on this page:
http://www.sankt-andreas.de/kirchenfuehrer/english.php/1
and shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/z7gzz
Best,
John Dillon
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