medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (14. April) is the feast day of:
1) Tiburtius and companions (??). T. is a Roman martyr of the cemetery of Praetextatus, entered under this date in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology along with other martyrs named Valerian and Maximus. Their appearance in this compilation under other dates and at other cemeteries has been rationalized by the supposition that Valerian and Maximus had been buried elsewhere and that their remains were later brought into proximity with those of T. at his resting place. But V. and M. may have had martyred homonyms (they have very common names) and matters are further complicated by the existence in the seventh century of a martyr's church for a T. at the cemetery _ad duas lauros_ on the Via Labicana. He was probably the saint of this name celebrated on 11. August with the legendary Susanna of Rome and may well have been the T. of _Epigrammata Damasiana_, 31.
Legendarily, T., V., and M. are brought together in the Passio of St. Cecilia, where V. is C.'s husband in a chaste union, T. is his brother, and M. is a Roman official who converts and is martyred with them. This Passio's _dies natalis_ for T., V., and M. (21. April) was used medievally for their joint Roman feast on that day. Seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome report today's T. as still reposing in the cemetery of Praetextatus. In the eighth century pope St. Gregory III restored their burial sites and in the ninth pope St. Paschal I transferred the remains of T. and companions to his rebuilt church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Arnolfo da Cambio's late thirteenth-century ciborium in that church places statues of T., V., M., and C. in niches at the upper corners:
http://tinyurl.com/t3nyg
http://www.romecity.it/Berninieglialtriscultori02.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yr3sqv
In this view of the originally ninth-century apse mosaic, V. is the second saint on Christ's left:
http://tinyurl.com/36twew
T., V., and M. repose with C. in the crypt. The latter, rebuilt in the early twentieth century, retains its medieval cosmatesque floor:
http://tinyurl.com/2e4nho
A different view of the floor:
http://tinyurl.com/y2n5y8
An expandable view of an early fifteenth-century French miniature depicting V. with C.:
http://tinyurl.com/33lcrz
2) John of Montemarano (d. 1094 or 1095). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is the first known bishop of today's Montemarano (AV), a population center in south central Irpinia that seems to have been raised to episcopal dignity only in the eleventh century. He has a very brief medieval Vita (BHL 4414) and a set of presumed remains said to have been incorrupt at the times of their respective translations within Montemaro's then cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in 1624 and 1726. His cult was confirmed in 1906.
According to the Vita, J. was a monk whom pope St. Gregory VII, during his exile in Salerno, named as bishop upon the request of the clergy and people of Montemarano. It has been inferred from this that J. was of local origin. He is said to have led the people in prayer when a church at Montemarano that he had dedicated became unusable due to an infestation of worms; this expression of collective piety caused the church's priest to confess that he had fouled this temple by using it repeatedly for sexual trysts. On another occasion, J. was in charge of a group of laborers engaged in clearing land near the river Calore; when it proved impossible to provide sufficient wine for them, J. had water drawn from the river, blessed it, and the Lord, honoring his servant, converted it into wine.
Montemarano's Santa Maria Assunta was rebuilt in 1494 to such an extent that it received a new consecration. It has been rebuilt several times since, most recently after the great Irpine earthquake of 1980. The crypt retains some medieval capitals visible here:
http://tinyurl.com/la7k2
and is also said to have in its central apse two late eleventh- / twelfth-century frescoes, one of which portrays a seated bishop whom Riccardo Sica, writing in the _Storia illustrata di Avellino e dell'Irpinia_
http://www.cesn.it/Pubblicazioni/varia/storia_avellino.htm
, identifies as J.
In the crypt, J.'s presumed remains are kept here:
http://tinyurl.com/gc32r
Details:
http://tinyurl.com/osuqg
The crypt is also said to contain a fifteenth-century wooden bust of J. The earliest representation of him whose reproduction I could find readily on the Web is this sixteenth-century statue in silver:
http://tinyurl.com/jq582
Montemarano's diocese was folded into that of Nusco in 1818. One of its treasures was this fifteenth-century folding chair (said to be one of but three of its kind now known to exist in Italy), preserved in part because it was later said to have been J.'s:
http://tinyurl.com/kca4e
3) Lidwina (d. 1433). L. (Liduina, Ludwina, Lidwigis, etc.) was born into a poor family in the Rotterdam suburb of Schiedam. At the age of fifteen she fell while ice skating and broke a rib. Her injury never healed, complications ensued, and for the remainder of her life she was bedridden and suffered greatly. L. fasted (for the last twenty years of her life she is said to have eaten only the Eucharist) and received visions. Some medical historians consider L. to have been a victim of Multiple Sclerosis. She has a Vita (BHL 4923-24) written before 1436 by a Father Hugo, subprior of the Sint-Elisabethklooster at Rugge near Den Briel, and another (BHL 4926) by the Franciscan Johannes Brugman that survives in various versions and was very popular. L. was canonized in 1890.
An illustration in a printing of Brugman's _Vita S. Lydwinae_ in 1498 and depicting L.'s accident is thought to be the oldest surviving pictorial representation of of ice skating. Herewith two views of it, perhaps from different copies:
http://tinyurl.com/2gprht
http://tinyurl.com/23lhmj
That printing's illustrated title-page:
http://tinyurl.com/2zq6ww
As a child, L. is said to have had a great devotion to the Virgin of Schiedam. The first illustration on this page comes from the same printing and shows her kneeling in prayer before that effigy of the BVM:
http://tinyurl.com/38gu2p
This advertisement for a reprint of an English-language translation of J. K. Huysmans' retelling of L.'s Vita calls her story incredible:
http://www.marianland.com/saints086.html
Best,
John Dillon
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