medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. December) is the feast day of:
Ado of Vienne (d. 875). A. obtained both his geographic suffix and his status as a saint of the Roman church through his having been archbishop of Vienne from 860 until his death. A letter of recommendation for that post from the celebrated Lupus of Ferrières tells us that A. was of noble ancestry, that he was a monk of Ferrières and a disciple of L. who had been sent to the abbey of Prüm, that he had gone on to Lyon for further study, and that Lupus had then written to the archbishop of Lyon and to the bishop of Grenoble confirming his approval of this move. The letter also makes it clear that A. had had his detractors at Prüm and that Lupus himself had at one point been publicly unhappy with him.
As archbishop A. enjoyed good relations with pope Nicolas II and consistently (as far as is known) sided with him in opposing the divorce of Lothar II. It is tempting to see the latter's restitution of various properties to the abbey of St. Peter at Vienne in 863 as an attempt to curry A.'s favor. When A. died he was buried, as most of his predecessors had been, in the abbey church of St. Peter. In the eleventh century his successor Leodegar (Léger) effectively styled him a saint (thus making him the first bishop of Vienne to be so honored after the initial forty). A.'s feast only begins to appear in local breviaries of the fifteenth century; likewise his appearance in litanies of the saints. He entered the RM through sixteenth-century printed additions to Usuard.
In addition to the martyrology for which he is now well known, A. is the author of an expanded Passio of St. Desiderius of Vienne (BHL 2150), of a Vita of St. Theuderius (BHL 8130), and of a chronicle ending in the year 869. Not everyone accepts Quentin's demonstration that the _Parvum [or _Vetus_] Martyrologium Romanum_ prefixed to A.'s own martyrology is in reality a forgery by A.
Herewith some views of the originally fifth-century église de St.-Pierre at Vienne (with twelfth-century belltower and porch), now serving as a lapidary museum:
exterior:
http://www.manoirdesforges.com/public_html/images/st-andre0694.jpg
http://www.vacanceo.com/img/album/47833.jpg
interior:
http://www.manoirdesforges.com/public_html/images/st-pierre0896.jpg
http://archaeology.eu.com/tours/2007_pro/vienne_1.jpg
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/vienne/en/pratique22.htm
And some visuals relating to A.'s martyrology:
Fragments of a tenth-century Ado, Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Fragment K02:C112:
http://tinyurl.com/vukf4
(images expandable)
An Ado of 1087, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. Vat. lat. 4958 (written at Montecassino),
fol.15v (saints of 27. February - 1 March):
http://www.unigre.it/pubblicazioni/lasala/WEB/T14_S.HTM
(image expandable)
NB: The very first line here offers a better text than that provided by Dom Jacques Dubois and Geneviève Renaud, _Le martyrologe d'Adon, ses deux familles, ses trois recensions: texte et commentaire_ (Paris: Eds. du CNRS, 1984), a work whose failure to identify the manuscripts used as the base text for each recension is, to say the least, regrettable. At p. 95 of their edition, where Ado is speaking of the gouty St. Julian being carried in a litter, Dubois and Renaud print _cellula_ rather than _sellula_.
An Ado of 1318 (Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque Municipale, ms. 0014),
f. 13v (Agnes and other saints of 21. January):
http://tinyurl.com/ydaylm
f. 61v (detail of Protase and Gervase, 19. June):
http://tinyurl.com/y2jkxq
Title page of Domenico Giorgi's edition of 1745 (editio princeps of the text as transmitted in the second family of manuscripts):
http://www.sanrufopostino.it/pagine/SanRufo/martire.htm
Best,
John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|