medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. March) is the feast day of:
1. Leander of Seville (d. 600 or 601). An older brother of St. Isidore of Seville, L. saw to I.'s education and preceded him as archbishop. The leading light of his time in the Visigothic church, he was a friend and correspondent of Gregory the Great, whom he had gotten to know ca. 580 when they were both in Constantinople. L. was the author of anti-Arian treatises which have not survived and was credited with the conversion to Catholicism both of king Leovigild's son, St. Hermenegild (whose wife and whose mother were both Catholic), and of Leovigild's successor, king Reccared I. His surviving writings are the closing sermon of the third council of Toledo (589) and a treatise _De institutione virginum et de contemptu mundi_ dedicated to his sister, St. Florentina.
Gregory the Great's _Moralia in Iob_ is addressed to L. Here's an illumination from a twelfth-century manuscript (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 2) showing both of them:
http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/glossary/dalmatic.php
Here, from the same manuscript, is the opening of G.'s prefatory letter to L.:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/Beowig1.gif
And here again are the two of them, at the opening of the same letter in another twelfth-century manuscript, Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque de l’agglomération, Ms. 12):
http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/gregorio/preview/img_schede_big/24.jpg
2. Heldrad of Novalesa (also Eldrad; d. ca. 842). H., who is said to have been of Provençal origin, was the founder, in 726, of the abbey of Sts. Peter and Andrew at Novalesa in today's Piedmont near the Italian side of the pass of Mont-Cenis/Moncenisio. Devastated by a Muslim raid in about 906, after which the community relocated to its daughter house at Breme in southern Lombardy, the monastery here experienced an uptick in in its fortunes in the eleventh century, when as a priory of Breme it was substantially rebuilt and also received a written history in the form of its imaginative chronicle, the _Chronicon Novaliciense_. H. is one of its heroes, but neither from this source nor from his Life (BHL 2445) do we really learn much about him. In his time, though, the abbey operated a hospice at the Mt. Cenis Passand also had a priory further to the southwest at Pagno (fairly close to the Lautaret Pass); their establishment is sometimes attributed to H.
The monastery at Novalesa was secularized in 1798 but was re-acquired by Benedictines in the early 1970s and resettled in 1972 with monks from Venice. Restoration of the surviving buildings and conservation/restoration of their surviving mural paintings begain almost immediately. Some of the results are indicated below.
The abbey in winter:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/images/dallalto-n_piero_small.jpg
Chapel of Sts. Heldrad and Nicholas (tenth-/eleventh-century; internal frescoes are of the later eleventh century):
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/s.Eldrado.htm
http://www.vdveer.myadsl.nl/assets/images/novalesa1.jpg
According to this account of the Novalesa chapels, that Last Judgment suffered very badly from 19th-century restoration attempts:
http://tinyurl.com/6ok8y
apse frescoes:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/abside_eldrado.htm
cycle of St. Heldrad:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/ciclo_s.eldrado.htm
cycle of St. Nicholas:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/ciclo_s.nicola.htm
An illustrated, Italian-language account of the Heldrad and Nicholas cycles is here:
http://tinyurl.com/6ut3n
The eighteenth-century abbey chapel retains in its presbytery fragmentary frescoing from its eleventh-century predecessor. Shown is the stoning of St. Stephen:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/images/affresco-s.stef_small.jpg
Twelfth-century fresco in the cloister:
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/images/01010094_small.jpg
The abbey also has several free-standing chapels on the premises. Shown are:
St. Mary chapel (eighth-century.; restored in the eleventh century):
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/S_Maria.htm
St. Michael chapel (eighth-/ninth-century):
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/s.michele.htm
Holy Savior chapel (eleventh-century):
http://www.abbazianovalesa.org/salvatore.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(Heldrad lightly revised from last year's post)
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