medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. June) is the feast day of:
1) Blastus and Diogenes (??). B. and D. are Roman martyrs of the Via Salaria buried in the now lost cemetery _in clivum cucumeris_ ('at Cucumber Incline'). They are absent from the (brief) Depositio Martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 but are recorded in the seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome and are entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.
2) Cyria and Musca (??). C. and M. are martyrs of Aquileia, whose liturgical tradition (followed by that of Udine) makes them sisters and virgins, one a recluse and the other not. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology adds to their entry the names of Valeria and Maria. As the Aquileian breviaries are silent about the latter, the suspicion exists that their appearance in this entry results from one of the (ps.-)HM's numerous editing errors and that, _pace_ local enthusiasts, V. and Maria are not part of the (ps.-)HM's deposit of early Aquileian saints.
3) Nicander and Marcian (d. 303, supposedly). Today's less well known saints supposedly from the Regno are the chief personae of a Greek Passio (BHG 1330) that makes them martyrs of Durostorum in the Roman province of Moesia Inferior. Their cult is first recorded in the fourth-/early fifth-century Syriac Breviary, where they appear on 5. June, the traditional date for the commemoration of Marcian, Nicander, Apollonius and others, martyrs of Egypt. It spread to southern Italy where it was localized in Venafrum (today's Venafro [IS] in Molise) and, so localized, was transmitted in Latin translations/adaptations of their Passio whose earliest surviving versions (BHL 6070, 6072) come to us in codices of the eleventh century.
One of these versions (BHL 6072) is summarized by the Cassinese student Herbert Bloch as follows:
"a moving tale of two soldiers, who, obeying the call of the Lord, leave the Roman army to spread the Gospel and immediately tangle with the Roman authorities. The 'praeses Maximus' tries to reconvert them to the Roman religion but without success; on the contrary, Nicander's wife Daria so strongly encourages him in his stand that she is sent to prison, where she is joined by the two soldiers. Maximus gives them twenty days to change their minds, but in vain, and they are sentenced to death. Whereas Daria does everything to hearten her husband, Marcianus' wife only bitterly reproaches him, and he asks that she be led away. At the execution site Marcianus kisses her and blesses his small child. The two martyrs embrace each other, and Daria ... bids [Nicander] goodbye without a word of self-pity. Then they are beheaded. Their bodies are buried in Venafro where they had found martyrdom, and a church is built there in their honor."
--Herbert Bloch, _The Atina Dossier of Peter the Deacon of Monte Cassino: A Hagiographical Romance of the Twelfth Century_ (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1998; Studi e Testi, vol. 346), p. 88.
The church in question is that of St. Nicander at Venafro, attested since the eighth century (when, however, it may have been dedicated to the now shadowy St. Nicander of Capua). The present structure of this name is variously said to be of eleventh-/twelfth-century origin or to have been begun in the late thirteenth century and has been much rebuilt. See the photo on this page, where even the facade is mostly modern (the result of a medievalizing "restoration" in 1950-60):
http://www.pagus.it/progetto/comuni/venafro/snicandro/index.htm
Here's how the same church appeared in 1905:
http://www.venafro.info/index.php?showimage=187
By the year 1110 there was a church of St. Marcian at Atina in today's Lazio; within a few decades this was claimed by Peter the Deacon in his version of the martyrs' Passio (ed. Bloch, pp. 189-206) to have been their burial place. The cult spread widely in southern Italy, where it survives in toponyms, in designations of M. an N. as local patrons, and in the dedication to M. of the church shown here at L'Aquila (AQ) in Abruzzo:
http://tinyurl.com/2w4kny
But the cult's primary locale remained Venafro, where in the early modern period N.'s alleged remains were discovered in what had been the town's Roman cemetery. Prior to its revision in 2001, the RM placed the scene of N. and M.'s martyrdom at Venafrum rather than at Durostorum.
BHL 6072 was edited by Erich Caspar in his _Petrus Diaconus und die Monte Cassineser Fälschungen_ (Berlin: J. Springer, 1909), pp. 226-29. In 2003 there appeared a richly illustrated volume commemorating the seventeenth centenary of the martyrdom of Venafro's patron saints; for details see:
http://www.vitmar.com/monumentalia/nicandromarcianoedaria.htm
(The chiefly North American collective catalogue WorldCat has no record for this title!)
4) Hervé of Brittany (d. 6th cent., supposedly). H. is a popular saint of Brittany with a late Vita (BHL 3859-60) that makes him blind from birth, the son of a bard and himself an accomplished singer and musician. Collectors of hagiographic topoi might note that he is said to have successfully commanded noisy frogs to be still and to have obtained the services of a wild animal (in this case, a wolf) that had slain a domestic one on which he had relied. H. is particularly associated with Lanhouarneau (Finistère), where he is reported to have settled a small monastic community of which he, though by his choice only in minor orders (an exorcist), was abbot.
5) Rayner of Pisa (d. 1160). One of the new breed of Italian lay saints prominent in his century, R. (in Italian, Ranieri) was a merchant, pilgrim, hermit, and thaumaturge. He eventually became Pisa's patron saint. R.'s lengthy twelfth-century Vita by his contemporary Benincasa (BHL 7084) was edited by Réginald Grégoire as _San Ranieri di Pisa (1117-1160) in un ritratto agiografico inedito del secolo XIII [sic]_, Biblioteca del "Bollettino storico pisano". Collana storica, vol. 36 (Pisa: Pacini, 1990).
Here's a scene by Andrea da Firenze (Andrea Bonaiuti; active 1343-1377) illustrating R.'s Vita in the frescoes of Pisa's Camposanto Monumentale:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Rainer_von_Pisa.jpg
Here's R. at left in Turino Vanini's Madonna con San Ranieri e San Torpè (1397), kept in Pisa's church of San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno in Pisa:
http://tinyurl.com/yvwk7h
R.'s mummified body is kept in this display reliquary in a chapel (not medieval, I fear) in Pisa's cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/3c5z48
http://tinyurl.com/27rdxr
Best,
John Dillon
(Nicander and Marcian revised from last year's post)
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