medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (9. February) is the feast day of:
1) Apollonia of Alexandria (d. 249). Like yesterday's Quinta/Coint(h)a, A. is a martyr of the anti-Christian riots in Alexandria in the year preceding the Decian persecution. According to Eusebius (_H. E., 6. 41) or, more precisely, to an account by Dionysius of Alexandria from which Eusebius quotes, A. was a virgin advanced in years all of whose teeth were knocked out by blows to her jaw and who leapt onto the blazing pyre that had been prepared for her should she refuse to join the crowd in its blasphemous proclamations.
Since A.'s _elogia_ in Florus and in Ado specify that her persecutors knocked her teeth out, the common later understanding that A. (who has become patron of dentists) had her teeth extracted with a forceps would not seem to be down to Rufinus' translation of the _Historia Ecclesiastica_.
A. is second from the left in the predella paintings of Simone Martini's Santa Caterina altarpiece (1319) at the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa:
http://tinyurl.com/28cyzv
Here she is in the wing altar (ca. 1430-1440) of the Johanniskirche at Wernigerode in Sachsen-Anhalt:
http://tinyurl.com/3bucks
Here's Jean Fouquet's version of A.'s martyrdom:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Sainte_Apolline.jpg
A version from 1470 (Bibliothèque Municipale de Chambéry, ms 0001 f. 204):
http://tinyurl.com/2btky9
And a sixteenth(?)-century one from the church of San Tommaso di Canterbury at Corenna (CO) in Lombardy:
http://www.dervio.org/qd/luoghi/visite/affr5.htm
A Benedictine convent dedicated to A. was established in Florence in 1339. It was expanded starting in 1445 and was extensively frescoed by Andrea del Castagno between that year and 1450. The small part that remains is today's Museo di Andrea del Castagno. Some views are here:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenacolo_di_Sant'Apollonia
2) Sabinus of Abellinum (d. early 6th cent.). Abellinum was the Roman predecessor of today's Campanian provincial capital of Avellino, which kept the name when it changed location in the early Middle Ages. Outside late antique Abellinum was a necropolis, some of whose Christian burials were honored in a hypogeum called "the martyrs' grotto" (_specus martyrum_; the veneration of saints at this locale is first attested from the year 357). A fourth-century basilican church was built on the site and around this there grew the settlement that became medieval and modern
Atripalda (first attested from 1086). Located in the grotto, now incorporated in the crypt under Atripalda's church of St. Hippolystus (S. Ippolisto), are the graves of Sabinus, bishop of Abellinum, and of his associate, the deacon Romulus, who outlived him.
We know nothing about either of these saints of the Regno other than what their late antique funerary inscriptions tell us: these allow a rough dating of both men by noting that Sabinus followed a bishop Timotheus (documented as being still in office in 499). Both inscriptions (Sabinus: _CIL_ X. 1194; Romulus: _ibid._, X. 1195) include verse epitaphs in elegiac distichs. Sabinus' funerary inscription gives today as his _dies natalis_.
Some medieval frescoing and sculptural fragments survive in the crypt of Atripalda's originally twelfth-century church of Sant'Ippolisto. The crypt, reopened to the public in 1998, is the subject of Giuseppe Mollo, _Specus Martyrum. Arte e Restauri_ (Viterbo: BetaGamma, 1998), whose cover is shown here:
http://www.betagamma.it/collane/cmc/descrizioni/31cmc.htm
3) Sabinus of Canosa (d. 566?). Bishop of ancient Canusium, today's Canosa di Puglia (BA) in Apulia, this saint of the Regno is known from several mentions in the _Dialogues_ of Gregory the Great as a friend of St. Benedict of Montecassino. He is thought to have accompanied pope John I on a mission to Constantinople in 525 and is recorded as the head of a papal delegation in that city in 535-36. He has an early ninth-century Vita (BHL 7443) and a complicated translation history bound up in part with the ecclesiastical politics of eleventh-century Bari, whose cathedral is dedicated to him. John the Archdeacon, better known as the author of the diocesan account of the translation of St. Nicholas of Myra to Bari, has an interesting narration of S.'s translation to this city (BHL 7445); also ascribed to John is a metrical Vita of S. in mostly epanaleptic elegiac distichs (BHL 7444).
An inscription in Canosa's originally mid-eleventh-century cathedral of San Sabino records the building's re-dedication to S. in 1101 by pope Paschal II. Its immediate predecessor had been dedicated to Sts. John and Paul. Much rebuilt, it is notable for its eleventh-century ambo and episcopal chair as well as for its annexed tomb of Bohemond of Antioch. An illustrated, Italian-language page on this church is here:
http://www.canusium.it/Pages/Luoghi/Normanno/normanno.htm
Views of the ambo:
http://tinyurl.com/2on3d7
http://tinyurl.com/39arqt
http://www.campidiomedei.it/ambone.gif
Further views of the chair:
http://tinyurl.com/3896dy
http://tinyurl.com/2vgdhp
For an extended discussion, see Ann Wharton Epstein, "The Date and Significance of the Cathedral of Canosa in Apulia, South Italy", _Dumbarton Oaks Papers_ 37 (1983), 79-90. An Italian-language account of the examination in 1992 of the cathedral's supposed relics of S. is here:
http://www.storiamedievale2.net/Rec/canosa.htm
An illustrated, Italian-language account of Bari's twelfth-century cathedral of San Sabino is here:
http://www.bennyweb.it/Bari/Foto_04_Cattedrale.htm
A website on this church is here:
http://www.storiamedievale2.net/Reporter/Bari/cattedrale.htm
And one dealing with its restoration is here (views on several pages):
http://www.storiamedievale2.net/Rec/cattedrale.htm
http://www.storiamedievale2.net/Rec/cattedrale03.htm
Three interior views are here:
http://www.bennyweb.it/Bari/Foto_05_CattedraleInt.htm
And a detail of the (reconstructed) ambo is here:
http://www.immaginidistoria.it/immagine2.php?id_img=38&id=8
An Italian-language account account of its crypt is here:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/SanSabino/Luogo.htm
A plan and various views of this church's crypt, etc. are here:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/SanSabino/Pianta.htm
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/SanSabino/Costruzione.htm
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/SanSabino/Soccorpo.htm
And here's S.'s altar therein:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/SanSabino/index.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
|