medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. November) is the feast day of:
Cyprian of Calamizzi (Cyprian of Reggio; in Italian: Cipriano di
Calamizzi, often C. dei Calamizzi; d. ca. 1215). Today's less well
known saint from the Regno was a medical doctor from a wealthy family
(his father was also a physician) of Reggio di Calabria who by turns
became a monk, then a hermit on family property at Pavigliana in the
coastal hills south of the medieval city (whence he is also sometimes
called Cipriano di Pavigliana), and finally abbot of the Greek monastery
of St. Nicholas of Calamizzi near the city's old harbor.
In the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the area around Reggio was
rural and largely Greek-speaking, with a populace that supported
numerous small monasteries as well as a cultured elite of lay
professionals descended from the nobility of what until recently had
been a Byzantine possession. Cyprian, who seems to have been
responsible for the development of a locally significant scriptorium at
the Calamizzi monastery (which he rebuilt and embellished), represents a
link between these two elements of the population. Both his Bios
(written by March 1242) and the surviving hymns in his honor (four
stichera and a theotokion) are modest productions. The former, though,
is noteworthy for its survival only at the monastery of St. Catherine in
the Sinai. Though its presence there is explainable from that
monastery's having had a dependency at Messina, diagonally across the
strait from Reggio, it also serves as a reminder that texts of
Italo-Greek origin could travel widely in the greater Byzantine cultural
area. A prose prayer for healing found in Italo-Greek manuscripts
circulated under C.'s name as well as anonymously.
C.'s monastery of St. Nicholas survived the seismic sinking of the
Calamizzi promontory in 1562 but fell victim to the very destructive
earthquake of 1783. There are caves in the hills above Pavigliana that
were once hermitages; C. is thought to have lived for a while in one of
these.
Best,
John Dillon
(an older post lightly revised)
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