medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (8. April) is the feast day of:
1) Dionysius of Corinth (d. later 2d cent.). Like yesterday's Hegesippus, D. too is an ecclesiastical writer preserved fragmentarily by Eusebius. He was bishop of Corinth in about 170, having succeeded Primus, the bishop when Hegesippus sojourned in the Isthmian city. A collection of seven _Catholic Letters_ by D. to other churches was known to Eusebius as were also a couple of private letters from D.'s hand. According to D., they were written on request and, once they had begun to circulate, were also altered by others whom he calls "the devil's apostles". He would seem to have been referring to falsifications by ecclesiastical opponents (some of the letters opposed heresies) rather than to lapses by inattentive copyists. An extract from D.'s letter to pope St. Soter seems to be the first witness to the tradition that Sts. Peter and Paul died in Rome at the same time.
2) Walter of Pontoise (d. 1095 or 1099). W. was a well educated, ascetically inclined Picard who gave up being regent master of a school (with aristocratic patrons) to enter religion at Rebais-en-Brie. While he was there he fed a famished prisoner in the abbot's jail and then released the man upon his undertaking to do no further injury to the church and not to seek revenge for his ill treatment. W. then informed the abbot of what he had done, expecting both a tongue-lashing and a physical beating, both of which he did receive in ample measure. We are not told with what feelings the abbot later greeted the news that his distinguished and troublesome monk had just been named by the young king Philip I to head an abbey being founded at Pontoise, on the opposite side of Paris from Brie.
According to at least his first two Vitae (BHL 8796 and the later 8798), W. was in almost every respect a model abbot. But the stresses of the position caused him twice to flee his burden, the first time becoming a monk at Cluny and the second time a hermit on an island in the Loire near Tours. On both occasions he was quickly discovered and made to return. A subsequent petition to pope St. Gregory VII for permission to resign was denied. From G.'s point of view, presumably, W. could do more good as a reforming abbot in the Ile de France, where he opposed simony and nicolaism and was given to speaking forthrightly to king and to bishops.
W. was buried in the abbey church of St-Martin, at that time still under construction. Miracles were reported at his tomb and a collection of these (BHL 8797) seems to have been drawn up after 1114 but before his canonization in 1153. The latter was performed by the archbishop of Rouen in the presence of the bishops of Paris and of Senlis as well as of emissaries from the archbishop of Reims and from other bishops. Both the abbey of St-Martin and its church have disappeared. W., still resting in his twelfth-/thirteenth-century tomb, now lies in the église Notre-Dame at Pontoise, a late fifteenth-century successor to a thirteenth-century church located in what originally was a faubourg.
At his canonization W.'s feast was fixed for the day following that of the Discovery of the Holy Cross (thus 15. September). Today, on one reckoning, is W.'s _dies natalis_.
Pontoise, now part of the agglomération Cergy-Pontoise (Val-d'Oise), became the seat of a diocese of the same name in 1966. Its cathedral, St-Maclou, is an originally twelfth-century structure that was enlarged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Herewith views of the cathedral's facade:
http://tinyurl.com/24j6yk
and of its chevet:
http://fr.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=56447
3) Manegold of Obermarchtal (Bl.; d. 1204). After service in three parishes as a secular priest M. entered the Premonstratensian Order at Steingaden in today's Landkreis Weilheim-Schongau in Oberbayern. In 1191 he became the fourth provost of his order's house at Obermarchtal in what is now the Alb-Donau-Kreis in southern Baden-Württemberg. Austere in his personal behavior (he is said to have been exemplary in his adherence to the statutes) and solicitous for the welfare of the the sick and the poor, M. was also successful in defending the abbey's property against grasping lords of Obermarchtal. At his death, his house (until 1273 a double foundation) held twenty canons, twenty lay brothers, and forty canonesses.
The present Stiftskirche at Obermarchtal dates from the later seventeenth century. An engraving showing its predecessor of 1239 is here:
http://www.kirchen.de/drs/wochbild/obermarchtal/stiftski1239.htm
The "modernized" belltower with the onion dome became one of the two towers of today's church:
http://tinyurl.com/ypkbwr
Happy Easter to all!
Best,
John Dillon
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