medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. April) is the feast day of:
1) Isaac of Spoleto (d. 6th cent.). According to the _Dialogues_ of Gregory the Great (3. 14), I. (also I. the Syrian, I. of Monteluco) was a Syrian who, late in the fifth century, arrived one day at Spoleto, entered a church, and stayed there praying for three days. A custodian, put out by I.'s obvious unwillingness to leave the premises, called him a fraud and beat him. When the custodian immediately succumbed to diabolic possession, he was cured by his charitable victim (or perhaps he just calmed down a bit and regained his composure). Locals, hearing of this miracle, offered land and money to the holy man that he might build a monastery in the vicinity.
I., whose absolute dedication to the ideal of monastic poverty Gregory emphasizes, refused all these offers and, going out into adjacent uninhabited territory, built for himself a hovel in which he lived as a hermit. In time, adherents collected around him, forming a monastic community which recognized I. as its leader. I. continued to live very austerely; he also performed several miracles by which he confounded people who wished to take advantage of him.
Although Gregory gives us no reason to conclude that I.'s hermitage must have been located on the nearby height of Monteluco, a later Benedictine monastery there claimed him as its founder and honored his presumed remains at its church of Santa Giulia. Papebroch's _Praefatio_ to the account of I. in the _Acta Sanctorum_ managed to poke all sorts of holes in the versions of this story known to him. Nonetheless, today's RM continues to commemorate I. as the founder of the monastery at Monteluco.
In 1143 a church in Spoleto proper that had been built over the remains of an ancient temple and adjacent space in what had been the city's Roman-period forum was dedicated to saints Ansanus and Isaac. Its crypt (now called that of saint Isaac), which seems to be of eleventh-century origin and whose floor consists of paving stones from the forum, contained a twelfth-century sarcophagus enclosing I.'s presumed remains said to have been translated from Santa Giulia. The sarcophagus is now located in a museum in Cardinal Albornoz' great fortress above the city
(1359-1370); the crypt, which survived when the original church was first reworked in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then replaced by the present Sant'Ansano at the end of the eighteenth, houses a copy.
A view of Sant'Ansano's Cripta di Sant'Isacco is here:
http://tinyurl.com/lbgcx
A different view will be found on this page, which also lists the subjects (insofar as these are identifiable) of the recently restored late eleventh- and/or early twelfth-century frescoes which adorn the crypt:
http://www.conventosantansano.it/cripta_di_sisacco.htm
I.'s sarcophagus is visible (just not very well) at right here:
http://tinyurl.com/3xog54
2) Guthlac (d. 715). G. was a Mercian warrior who underwent a religious conversion, spent two years at the monastery at Repton in today's Derbyshire, and then became a hermit in the East Anglian fens, establishing himself at Crowland in today's Lincolnshire. His sister, St. Pega, opened his grave a year after his death, found his body to be incorrupt, and placed it in a memorial chapel. The latter was soon honored by Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, who before he was king is said to have spent time with G. at Crowland and who clearly had a special devotion to him. Croyland Abbey grew up on the site. In the eighth century G. received a Vita by Felix of Croyland (BHL 3723). The early thirteenth-century Guthlac Roll in the British Library (Harley Roll, Y.6) commemorates him pictorially. Here's a view of its depiction of G., aided by St. Bartholomew, preparing to defend himself against demons intent on carrying him off to Hell:
http://tinyurl.com/3dveup
A detail from another roundel showing Pega and G., plus smallish reproductions of two further roundels in this roll are here:
http://www.umilta.net/pega.html
An expandable view of yet another roundel is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2jlolt
3) Stanislas of Cracow (d. 1079). C. was a canon of Cracow cathedral who became bishop there in 1072. He fell afoul of king Boleslas II, whom he is said to have reproached repeatedly for various cruelties and for infidelity in marriage. His assassination was blamed on B., who in one account is reported to have murdered S. himself. S. was canonized by Innocent IV in 1253. He is one of Poland's patron saints.
Here, from his chapel in the lower church of St. Francis at Assisi, is an earlier fourteenth-century depiction of S.'s martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/yspxr3
and here's an earlier sixteenth-century depiction, from the National Museum in Poznań:
http://tinyurl.com/2mg6t9
Best,
John Dillon
(Isaac lightly revised from an earlier post)
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