medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (28. April) is the feast day of:
1) Vitalis of Ravenna (??). The late fifth- or early sixth-century Inventio/Passio of Sts. Gervase and Protase (BHL 3514) includes a legendary narration of how their parents, Vitalis and Valeria, were martyred at Ravenna as was also the Ligurian physician Ursicinus, then practicing in that city. This tale, dubious in many respects and utterly implausible in some, got V., V., and U. removed from the general Roman calendar in 1969. But the revised RM of 2001 still commemorates Vitalis on this date and does so in a _laterculus_ that not only names Valeria and Ursicinus as saints along with Gervase and Protase but recognizes all five as having had a _cultus ab immemorabili tempore_. Though the true antiquity of their cult(s) is unknown, Vitalis and Ursicinus had dedications in the sixth century and all are depicted among the saints in the mosaics of Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare Nuovo.
V.'s great monument is his sixth-century basilica at Ravenna. A very nice, illustrated, Swedish-language site on that church is here:
http://www.formonline.se/kyrkor/Ravenna/SanVitale/
This has links at bottom to subpages on particular details (mostly mosaic). Other, expandable views are here:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/San_Vitale.html
Some expandable architectural views, including a plan and sections, will be found here:
http://intranet.arc.miami.edu/rjohn/ARC%20267/Byzantine_2002.htm
2) Pamphilus of Corfinium, venerated at today's Sulmona (AQ) in Abruzzo (d. 7th century, perhaps). According to apparently factitious local tradition, today's less well known saint of the Regno was bishop of Valva (today's diocese of Sulmona and Valva) during a time of dissension between Catholics and Arians. His seat was at Corfinium (the area's chief town in Roman times) and he is said to have incurred papal suspicion for his practice of celebrating Sunday mass at midnight and of devoting the time at daybreak to providing a large meal for the poor. An investigation confirmed his doctrinal orthodoxy and his pastoral practices subsequently received papal approval. After P.'s death his body was removed to Sulmona.
Corfinium suffered badly from Muslim and Magyar raids in the ninth and tenth centuries and its ancient cathedral church of St. Pelinus had by the eleventh century come to occupy a semi-rural location. Sulmona, now the diocese's chief center of habitation, had a church dedicated to a saint Pamphilus since at least 1042. In 1075 abbot Transmundus of San Clemente a Casauria, who was also bishop of Valva, undertook to rebuild both this church and that of St. Pelinus, maintaining both of them as cathedrals of the one diocese (as they still are today). It would seem that P.'s Vita (BHL 6418-19) was initially created, either then or sometime earlier in the eleventh century, in order to reinforce Sulmona's episcopal dignity.
Sulmona's cathedral of San Panfilo has been rebuilt several times but still retains some of its medieval character. There's a brief, English-language account here:
http://www.tuttoabruzzo.it/english/religious_arch_sanpanfilo.html
And a much more detailed account (with good photographs of "romanesque"elements) in Italian here:
http://tinyurl.com/cauvt
Most of this page from the "Italia nell'Arte Medievale" site comments on, and has expandable views of, San Panfilo:
http://tinyurl.com/2rl6xk
In today's Caporciano (AQ) in the same diocese is the marvelous thirteenth-century oratory of San Pellegrino at Bominaco. Around the walls of the presbytery is a painted liturgical calendar. Here's a view of its page for April, listing bishop P.:
http://tinyurl.com/fcr8x
3) Adalbero of Augsburg (d. 909). A., who belonged to the family of the counts of Dillingen, was a monk of Ellwangen and ultimately its abbot. He then became abbot of Lorsch, which he is said to have reformed, and, in 887, bishop of Augsburg, where he was served as chamberlain by his nephew and successor in that see, St. Ulrich. A. was also principal advisor to king Arnulf of Bavaria and tutor to the latter's son Ludwig. He is presumed to have been the bishop A. to whom Regino of Prüm dedicated his universal chronicle (perhaps intended in part for L.'s education).
Best,
John Dillon
PS: Prior to its latest revision today was also the day of commemoration in the RM of a fictitious saint of the Regno, Mark of Atina, a Galilean disciple of St. Peter who became the protobishop of today's Atina (FR) in southern Lazio. This M. was a creation of the twelfth-century Cassinese hagiographer, chronicler, and forger Peter the Deacon, who during a period of exile from Montecassino engaged in all three of the aforementioned occupations to endow the nearby town of Atina, in which he was now living, with an ancient and even relatively recent episcopal history that it never possessed in fact. The texts so created, including the _Passio beatissimi Marci Atinae civitatis episcopi_ (BHL 5298; written in 1128), have been edited by Herbert Bloch in his _The Atina Dossier of Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino: A Hagiographical Romance of the Twelfth Century_ (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1998; its Studi e testi, no. 346).
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