medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. December) is the feast day of:
Antiochus of the Sulcis (??). A. was originally the local saint of the late Roman city of Sulci, now the town that bears his name on the homonymous island in the southwestern Sardinia district of the Sulcis. He has a legendary Passio (BHL 566d), not older than the eleventh century and probably of the twelfth or early thirteenth, that makes him a physician active in Galatia and Cappadocia who converted many to Christianity, was arrested and tortured by Roman authorities, and defended the faith in a lengthy colloquy with the emperor Hadrian. According to that account (which up to this point is adapted from a Passio of St. Antiochus of Sebaste), A. was exiled to the island of Sulci, where he became a hermit and continued to practice Christianity. Denounced to the pagan rulers of Calaris (today's Cagliari), he was granted a peaceful entry into heaven after soldiers sent to seize him reached the cave in which was dwelling.
Thanks largely to his supposed medical prowess, A. has been popular in various parts of Sardinia from the central Middle Ages onward. But it is the cave that's really interesting, as this is the Passio's concept of the early state of the chamber beneath the church at Sant'Antioco in which A. has been venerated since late antiquity. This chamber, formed within a cluster of hypogea going back to Sulci's pre-Roman and Roman Punic past and later expanded and rebuilt with stones from Sulci's Roman city wall, contains a late antique sarcophagus that in 1615 held remains said to be A.'s. At that time the sarcophagus bore a marble slab (now in the cathedral of Iglesias on the Sardinian mainland) with a Latin inscription, seemingly carved in the sixth or very early seventh century and thought from its versification to be a copy of a fifth-century text. This identified the spot as the resting place of A., characterized as a saint but not as a martyr.
In the early Middle Ages Sardinia was an outpost of the Byzantine commonwealth and its church became Greek. Sulci dwindled to a small community with a church in the form of a Greek cross surmounting A.'s burial chamber. This was an Eigenkirche of the house of Lacon-Gunale since at least the tenth century; in the late eleventh century it belonged to that branch of the family who ruled the judicate of Cagliari. By 1089 judge Constantinus Salusius II had given land next to the church to the Victorines of Marseille for a monastery dedicated to A. When the church was reconsecrated in 1102 it had been rebuilt on a Latin-cross plan and the area beneath may have already become the two-apsed complex known today as the Catacombe di Sant'Antioco. In 1124, when judge Marianus Torchitorius II and others in his immediate family gave the income of the entire island of Sant'Antioco to the monastery, they could still refer to the church as their hereditary property.
Members of the same house were in the eleventh and twelfth centuries judges of Arborea and of Torres; they may have been responsible for the extension of A.'s cult into those judicates. A.'s Passio and the hexameter verse celebrating his martyrdom that accompanies it in his Office were probably written by the Victorines, perhaps at Cagliari rather than at Sant'Antioco itself. The Office is still read on 13. November, A.'s feast day within the ecclesiastical region of Sardinia. A. is a patron saint of all Sardinia.
An Italian-language introduction to A.'s much rebuilt church at Sant'Antioco (CI) is here:
http://www.sardegnacultura.it/j/v/253?s=18134&v=2&c=2659&c1=2630&t=1
To the bibliography add now Pier Giorgio Spanu, _Martyria Sardiniae. I santuari dei martiri sardi_ (Oristano: S'Alvure, 2000), pp. 83-95 and (text of the Office) 177-85.
For more on the recent reworkings, see:
http://tinyurl.com/y948ld
Some views, starting with the facade:
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/facciata.jpg
Nave:
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/int_chiesa.jpg
Sanctuary and apse (A.'s relics at left):
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/altare.jpg
A.'s relics:
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/reliquie.jpg
So-called catacombs beneath the church:
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Sardegna/images/santioc05.jpg
http://www.sardinia.net/carbonia/img/archeo/sant16.jpg
http://www.sardegnacultura.it/immagini/7_70_20060308130424.gif
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=310/035
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Sardegna/images/santioc03.jpg
A.'s sarcophagus:
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/catacombe_1.jpg
http://www.basilicasantantioco.com/immagini/catacombe_2.jpg
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=311/902
Two other Sardinian churches dedicated to A.:
The eleventh- and twelfth-century chiesa di Sant'Antioco di Bisarcio, at Ozieri (SS), formerly in the judicate of Torres:
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Sardegna/bisarcio.htm
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=201/034
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=201/036
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=201/039
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=201/038
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=201/035
The fifteenth-century chiesa di Sant'Antioco at Atzara (NU), formerly in the judicate of Arborea:
http://www.barbagiamandrolisai.it/atzara/atzara_paese.html
Best,
John Dillon
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