medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (8. May) is the feast day of:
1) Victor Maurus (d. 303, supposedly). V. is also called Victor of Milan, a better name for him as his cult has always been centered on that city and as the Mauretanian origin used to distinguish him from other saints Victor could easily be legendary, though it is already present in the Ambrosian hymn _Victor, Nabor, Felix, pii_. This makes him a Roman soldier stationed at Milan and martyred for the faith at Lodi. His later Passio (BHL 8580; other versions at 8581 and 8582) adds details that one may read in English translation here:
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/Victor.html
V.'s fourth-century martyr's chapel is now the Sacello San Vittore in Ciel d'Oro in Milan's Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio. Views of his representation in its probably fifth-century mosaics will be found on these pages:
http://tinyurl.com/2hk7om
http://tinyurl.com/2goysl
For those with access to JSTOR, much clearer black-and-white renditions of this image will be found in Gillian Mackie, "Symbolism and Purpose in an Early Christian Martyr Chapel: The Case of San Vittore in Ciel d'Oro, Milan ", _Gesta_ 34 (1995), 91-101, at pp. 92 and 94. A partial reproduction in color is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2px4r2
Milan's perhaps originally eighth-century former monastery church of San Vittore in Corpo, attested from the late tenth century onward and rebuilt in the sixteenth century, has relics believed to be V.'s whose authenticity was confirmed by the archdiocese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio has another set, whose authenticity was confirmed by the archdiocese early in the twentieth century. The seventeenth-century church of San Vittore in Isola Bella (VB) in Lago Maggiore has another set.
2) Arsenius the Great (d. ca. 450). A. is one of the major Egyptian Desert Fathers. The offspring of a family of senatorial rank, he exchanged a career at the court at Constantinople for a cell in Egypt. Various sayings of his are preserved in the _Apophthegmata patrum_. A. has a nicely imagined Bios by St. Theodore the Studite (d. 826).
3) Boniface IV, pope (d. 615). Today's less well known saint of the Regno came from Marsican territory in today's Abruzzo. The son of a physician, he had been papal dispensator under pope St. Gregory I, whom he imitated by turning his own house into a monastery. He was elected pope in 608. In 609 he dedicated Rome's church of Santa Maria ad Martyres. In 609-610 B. was hospitable to the exiled bishop St. Mellitus of London. The last letter that we have from St. Columban is addressed to B. Written on behalf of the Lombard king Agilulf and his wife Theodolinda, it urges the pope to repair the divided state of the Church in Italy. B.'s response is not preserved.
Boniface VIII promoted B.'s cult, elevating his remains to a newly built altar in Old St. Peter's (over which the later pope then placed his own tomb).
Some views of Santa Maria ad Martyres:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/2yvf83
http://tinyurl.com/2ctht3
http://tinyurl.com/yuhzrv
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/yqxy2u
http://tinyurl.com/yudug2
http://tinyurl.com/yotzg4
The legendary tradition of the monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes in Catalunya (a house first documented from 878) associates B. with relics of St. Peter that had been placed for safekeeping at the site. Herewith a few views of the remains of the monastery's eleventh- and twelfth-century structures:
http://tinyurl.com/2a3l4k
http://tinyurl.com/2bedf5
http://www.monestirs.cat/monst/aemp/ae42rode.htm
4) Wiro (d. late seventh century, supposedly). W. is the patron saint of the diocese of Roermond in The Netherlands. Medievally he was also a patron of the diocese of Utrecht. His ninth-century Vita (BHL 8973) makes him an Irish missionary bishop; though discounted by modern scholars, this suspect datum, sometimes altered to make him Anglo-Saxon, is presented as established fact in many English-language "popular" accounts of W. and of his supposed companions, Sts. Plechelm and Otger. The Vita also credits W. with the foundation of a church and a monastery at Odilienberg near Roermond.
The monastery, obviously in already in existence at the time of the Vita's writing, later transformed itself into a house of canons regular who moved to Roermond in 1361, taking with them relics believed to be W.'s. At Roermond these relics have had a history of repeated neglect and rediscovery in different churches. Utrecht is said to have W.'s head.
The former monastery's eleventh- and twelfth-century church was restored in the later nineteenth century, destroyed by German soldiers in 1945, and rebuilt in the later twentieth century to resemble its predecessor. Two discussions with multiple views:
http://limburgchurches.tripod.com/odilienbergwiro.html
http://www.kerkgebouwen-in-limburg.nl/view.jsp?content=736
Best,
John Dillon
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