medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. January) is the feast day of:
1) The Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. Like the 18. January feast of the Chair of Peter, which it follows by one week, this is an originally Frankish celebration, appearing first in Gallican liturgical books from the eighth century. Saul/Paul being too well known to require an introduction on this list, herewith some visuals:
Mosaic of Paul from the Vatican collections:
http://tinyurl.com/2kevkp
(This is at:
http://www.evergreenexhibitions.com/exhibits/st_peter/images.asp
Does anyone know the mosaic's present location?)
Later thirteenth-century fresco of Paul (Vatican, Fabbrica di San Pietro):
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/vaticano/Fb-Paul.jpg
Fra Angelico, illumination of the Conversion (ca. 1430), Florence, Museo nazionale di San Marco, Missale 558, f. 21:
http://tinyurl.com/2hfuvh
http://tinyurl.com/28a2o2
Illumination of the Conversion, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. ser. nov. 2702 (the "Admont Bible"), f. 199v:
http://tinyurl.com/2hldgb
Expandable view of illumination of the Conversion in London British Library, Ms. Yates Thompson 49, vol. 1, f. 44:
http://tinyurl.com/25zv5j
There's a selection of expandable views of illuminations of the Conversion on the first two pages here:
http://tinyurl.com/yrzbpu
2) Ananias of Damascus (d. first century). The Christian who healed St. Paul of his physical blindness and who baptized him (Acts 9:10-18). Here's A. baptizing Paul in a panel of the Retable of St. Paul (late fourteenth-/very early fifteenth-century) at the cathedral museum, Mdina, Malta:
http://www.joannalace.org.uk/pics/fig5.png
And a view of the retable as a whole:
http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images4/st_171-15.jpg
In today's Damascus one may visit a chapel located in a structure alleged to have been A.'s house:
http://tinyurl.com/2lmkql
Does anyone know whether a house so described was also shown at Damascus in antiquity? And what of the basket in which Paul was lowered over the city wall? Was such a relic shown and, if so, are there surviving bits alleged to have once belonged to it?
3) Artemas of Pozzuoli (??). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is a martyr of ancient Puteoli, today's Pozzuoli (NA) in Campania. Listed for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian martyrology, A. was also figured in the now lost cupola mosaics of the late fifth-/early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at today's San Prisco (CE) in Campania, an extramural survivor of (Old) Capua. Local tradition of very long standing makes him a child saint. The cathedral at Pozzuoli has a display reliquary of A.'s ashes.
In the tenth century the talented Neapolitan hagiographer Peter the Subdeacon produced at the request of bishop Stepen of Pozzuoli (956-62) a Passio of A. (BHL 0717) that makes him an adept older pupil of a pagan schoolmaster who put him in charge of teaching letters to other students. In what is doubtless a reflection of tenth-century elementary educational practice in Naples and its environs, the young A. used this opportunity to inculcate as well basic mysteries of the Christian faith. A. was so successful that his pagan charges eagerly told other students -- also pagan -- what they had been learning. These in turn went to the schoolmaster and threatened to report him to the provincial magistrate unless he put a stop to A.'s teaching. The schoolmaster then had some of these students stab A. to death with their styluses.
Peter, who tells a nice story, also gives today as A.'s _dies natalis_. He refers to the schoolmaster at times by the latinized Greek word 'cathigeta' ('head of a school'), which latter some have printed with a majuscule 'C' and which others incautiously have taken to be the schoolmaster's actual name. For his _Passio s. Artemae_ see now Edoardo D'Angelo, ed., Pietro Suddiacono napoletano, _L'opera agiografica_ (Tavarnuzze: SISMEL; Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002), pp. LXXXI-LXXXII and 42-49).
Best,
John Dillon
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