medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. February) is the feast day of:
1) Dionysius of Augsburg (d. ca. 304, supposedly). D. is the legendary protobishop of Augsburg, martyred under Diocletian. In the Conversion of St. Afra (BHL 108) he appears as her maternal uncle, ordained priest and later consecrated bishop by the missionary bishop Narcissus of Gerona and martyred after his niece. Today is the anniversary of the elevation, authorized by Alexander IV in 1258, of his supposed remains in Augsburg's church of St. Ulrich, the predecessor of today's originally late fifteenth-century Basilica of Sts. Ulrich and Afra. An illustrated, German-language account of this later church is here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilika_St._Ulrich_und_Afra
2) Faustinianus of Bologna (d. 4th century, supposedly). F. is the traditional second bishop of Bologna. He has been tenatively identified with an Italian bishop named Faustinus (see unknown) said by St. Athanasius of Alexandria to have signed the synodal letter of the Council of Serdica/Sardica in 343.
3) Porphyry of Gaza (d. 420). We know about P. from his Bios by Mark the Deacon (BHG 1570). This tells us that P. was a monk in Egypt and in Palestine who was ordained priest in Jerusalem and who later became bishop of Gaza. In the latter city he labored mightily in the face of persecution by local pagans, whose temples he ultimately was able to have destroyed by soldiers of the empress Eudoxia. He replaced the largest with a cruciform church paid for by E. and called the Basilica Eudoxiana.
4) Victor the Hermit (d. 6th cent.?). V. is said to have been a hermit at today's Arcis-sur-Aube (Aube), of which he is now the patron saint. His cult seems to be at least as old as the ninth century but we really have no information about him as a person before his not very reliable perhaps eleventh-century Vita (BHL 8654d; twelve lections). V. is the subject of sermons by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who also wrote an Office for him.
5) Ottokar of Tegernsee (Blessed; d. 8th cent.). Together with his brother Bl. Adalbert of Tegernsee (1. November), O. (also Otkar, Oatkar) is the traditional founder of what became the great imperial abbey at Tegernsee in southeastern Bavaria. Reliable information about the pair, said to have been counts of Warngau and Tegernsee, is not abundant. At the foundation A. (d. ca. 800-804) became the first abbot and O., who predeceased him, became a monk.
In 1445, during the reforming abbacy of Kaspar Ayndorffer, the founders' relics were translated from a chapel in the abbey church of St. Quirinus to a newly built sepulchre in the nave. In 1457 this monument received a) an inscription, since lost, attesting to A.'s and O.'s working of miracles and b)a cover showing the two founders in relief. That cover (with O. at right) now adorns the church's west portal:
http://www.gen.heinz-wember.de/tegernsee/bilder/Image2.html
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
|