medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (12. February) is the feast day of:
1) Eulalia of Barcelona (d. ca. 304, supposedly). E. is one of Barcelona's principal patron saints. Opinions are divided on whether she is a doublet, with a first locally and later internationally significant cult, of E. of Mérida (10. December) or else an altogether different person whose hagiographic dossier has from the seventh century on been strongly colored by (contaminated by) elements of the legend of her much earlier attested homonym from Mérida. Not until after her invention and translation of 878 (recorded in BHL 2697) did her cult spread outside her northern Iberian homeland.
Barcelona's late thirteenth- to twentieth-century Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia is dedicated to E. in part. A brief, English-language account is here:
http://www.aviewoncities.com/barcelona/barcelonacathedral.htm
Plan:
http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aa121800d.htm
A page of multiple views (expandable) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2hr35z
An exterior view:
http://tinyurl.com/33r2qb
Various views of the interior:
http://tinyurl.com/ytr3pj
http://tinyurl.com/2a2pwy
http://www.pbase.com/19sweetcorn92/image/67129160
http://tinyurl.com/yswp2g
http://tinyurl.com/yt57ka
http://www.ontarioarchitecture.com/navebarc500.jpg
http://www.wystawy.fta.pl/?s=1&id_w=10&page=53
Cloister:
http://tinyurl.com/ywxnmq
http://tinyurl.com/2do4sy
http://tinyurl.com/2ytzyl
E.'s sarcophagus in the crypt (1327-1339, by mastersfrom Pisa and Siena):
http://tinyurl.com/ytnfdn
http://tinyurl.com/29vqaq
http://www.kunstreis.com/images/barcelona/HPIM3184.jpg
2) Gemulus (early 11th cent.?), cephalophore. By decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Rites in 1960, today is G.'s feast day but only so at Ganna, a locality of today's Valganna (VA), and Bosto, a section of Varese (VA), both in Lombardy.
According to his legend, G. (also Gemmulus, Hiemulus; in Italian, Gemolo, Gemmolo, Hiemolo) accompanied his uncle, a bishop from across the Alps, on a journey to Rome. One night, bandits stole the bishop's palfrey. G. and an unnamed companion pursued the bandits and were captured by them. When G. was asked by one of his captors whether he would give up his life for Christ, he answered that he would do so willingly. The bandit then decapitated G., who put his head back on his neck, mounted a horse, and rode back to to his uncle's party, where he would allow no one other than his uncle to help him dismount. The uncle/bishop buried G. right there and asked local shepherds to look after him. Miracles occurred overnight and before departing the bishop erected a church over the grave.
That, in essence, is the foundation legend of the monastery at Ganna, which occupied a site on a road between several Alpine passes and Milan and which shortly before November 1095 had come to exist around a church dedicated to G. In or about 1154 Ganna became a priory of the Cluniac abbey of Fruttuaria; in 1477 it was made commendatory and in 1566 its monastic function ceased altogether. Its present church dates from 1100-1125 and the adjacent belltower is said to be from 1175. Parts of its now pentagonal cloister are late medieval. A few views,
etc. follow:
http://www.ilvaresotto.it/inglese/Citta/GannaAbbazia.htm
http://www.provincia.va.it/preziosita/ukvarese/temi/abbazie/gemolo.htm
http://www.iogirovagando.net/laveddasca_vgpag4.htm
G.'s unnamed companion was later declared to have been named Himerius (Italian: Imerio), to have been mortally wounded in the same encounter with the bandits, and to have been laid to rest in a sarcophagus at a church dedicated to St. Michael near Varese. Since 1417 he has been celebrated at Bosto, where his originally eleventh-century church of Sant'Imerio possesses the carved sarcophagus shown here (carvings said to be of the late thirteenth century):
http://www.varesegallery.com/chiese/simerio.htm
In 1960 the Sacred Congregation of the Rites granted him a feast (at Bosco and Ganna only) on 4. February.
For two versions of G.'s legend, see Achille Ratti (later, Pius XI), "Bolla arcivescovile milanese a Moncalieri ed una leggenda inedita di S. Gemolo di Ganna", _Archivio Storico Lombardo_, ser. III, vol. 15 [Anno XXVIII] (1901), 5-36.
Best,
John Dillon
(Gemulus lightly revised from last year)
**********************************************************************
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
|