medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. April) is the feast day of:
1) Agape, Chionia (Chione), and Irene (d. ca. 304). A., C., and I. are said to have been martyrs of Thessaloniki. In their surviving acta they are presented as three sisters who had converted to Christianity and whose faith was discovered during the Great Persecution when A.and C. refused to partake of food that had been offered in sacrifice to the gods. Hauled before a governor of Macedonia named Dulcetius or Dulcitius, they denounced idolatry and refused to offer sacrifice. I. was also found guilty of possessing Christian writings. Once convicted, A. and C. were executed by being burnt alive; the Christian books were burnt as well. I. was sentenced to serve in a brothel but when she came to no harm there she too was executed (in one account, she was shot with arrows).
Some have thought that a genuine trial record underlies part of this account. But the punishments, at least, are probably later developments. These saints' Passio (BHL 118) is incorporated in the greatly synthetic one of Anastasia of Sirmium/Rome. The latter brings together in a single fiction a number of cults from the upper Adriatic and, in the case of these sisters, excites suspicion both by making them residents of Aquileia sent by Diocletian himself all the way to Thessaloniki for trial and by having it be Anastasia who is responsible for their sepulture.
Aldhelm's recounting of these martyrs' Passio in his verse _De virginitate_ is BHL 119. Did this version circulate separately? The parallel account in Aldhelm's earlier prose _De virginitate_ doesn't seem to have a BHL number. BHL 120 is Hrotsvit of Gandersheim's play _Dulcitius_, whose formal title is _Passio sanctarum virginum Agapes Chioniae et Hirenae_ ('The Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins Agape, Chionia, and Irene').
2) Mary of Egypt (d. 5th cent.?). M.'s story is probably too well known to require summation. For those who would like a refresher, an English-language translation of her Bios (BHG 1042) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/23zedz
Some visuals might be nice, though. We could start with M.'s former church in Rome. Dedicated in 872 and deconsecrated in the 1920s, this is now better known as the Temple of Portunus or the Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Picky classicists, the sort who like to refer to the Colosseum as the Flavian Amphitheatre (in Rome), recognize the iffiness of such identifications and prefer to call this building "the oblong temple in the Foro Boario" ("oblong" because there's a circular one there as well). Here are two views of the church of Santa Maria Egiziaca as it will have appeared in the eighteenth century (the second, at least, is from an engraving by Piranesi):
http://www.robertfrew.com/images/F26261.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/3ysx6u
Some more recent views (note the walled-up windows and the parklike surround):
http://tinyurl.com/fjhan
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi94f2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/28od9c
And some depictions of M., starting with this miniature from the Theodore Psalter (1066):
http://tinyurl.com/2q3pxc
Miniature, Hours of Jean Dunois (between 1436 and 1450):
http://tinyurl.com/2ajaed
Wall painting (fifteenth-century) in the Cappella di Santa Maria at the abbey of Novalesa:
http://tinyurl.com/2evzhz
Panel painting by Hans Memling (Triptych of Adriaan Reins, 1480):
http://tinyurl.com/2c3l8m
Polychromed statue, Burgos Cathedral, Chapel of the Constable of Castile, Altarpiece of St. Anne (very late fifteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/344ued
3) Hugh of Grenoble (d. 1132). H. was a canon of Valence of reforming temperament who when still a young man was elected bishop of Grenoble. Disdaining as a simoniac the then archbishop of Vienne, H. chose instead to be consecrated at Rome by pope St. Gregory VII. Intermittently successful at reforming his diocese, he twice tried monastic life instead, first as a Cluniac at La Chaise-Dieu and later with St. Bruno at the Grand Chartreuse, in whose foundation H. had assisted as the local bishop. On the first occasion he was recalled by Gregory and on the second Bruno told him that he really should return to his diocese. At least, that's how prior Guigo I of the Grand Chartreuse relates these events in his Vita of H. (BHL 4016), an important document for early Carthusian history.
Grenoble's église de St-Hugues is an essentially thirteenth-century church on a twelfth-century base, adjacent to the cathedral of Notre-Dame. In this view, St-Hugues is at left and the church with the belltower over the porch is the cathedral:
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=46039
In this view, they are both at center left:
http://tinyurl.com/2dub75
Further views of the cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/2nw7w4
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=46041
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=46040
These churches were renovated relatively recently. Here's a page of expandable pre-renovation views of the cathedral (does anyone know why it's called "Saint-Jean" here?), showing the lamentable and now vanished facade added in the nineteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/38m8k7
A French-language account of the cathedral is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2jgweh
It's perhaps best to begin by clicking on "(Pour en savoir plus)".
In 1101 H. gave Benedictines permission to found in his diocese the monastery of Chalais, near Chartreuse. A three-page site on this now Dominican institution, with some views of medieval features, begins here:
http://tinyurl.com/3dm9to
Many more views of the church (esp. sculptural details) can be accessed from this page:
http://www.chalais.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=5
Best,
John Dillon
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