medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (28. June) is the feast day of:
1) Irenaeus of Lyon (d. ca. 202). According to Gregory of Tours, I. was sent by St. Polycarp to Lyon, where he succeeded the martyred protobishop St. Photinus (Pothinus). We know from his own writings that he was a Greek of Asia Minor; if the connection with Polycarp is accurately reported, he will have come from Smyrna. I. was already in Lyon by 177 or 178, when the church there sent him to Rome with an anti-Montanist tract. It was on his return that I. succeeded Photinus, who had been killed in the persecution of Marcus Aurelius.
Little is known about I. as bishop. According to Gregory, through I.'s preaching Lyon became an entirely Christian city. Eusebius provides a list of I.'s writings, most of which have perished. His chief work, a defence of apostolic tradition against other Christian viewpoints, principally Gnosticism, is generally known by the name of the Latin translation in which it survives entire (_Adversus haereses_). St. Jerome considered I. a martyr. Though this last datum is now widely questioned, it was routinely accepted in the Middle Ages.
In Gregory's time I. reposed at Lyon in a church of St. John. The latter's originally Carolingian successor was dedicated to I. Though Lyon's present église St-Irénée is of the nineteenth century, it preserves at least one structural fragment from the late antique church and the apse of its crypt is said to be a rebuilding of the Carolingian one. I.'s tomb there was destroyed in 1562. Here's a view of the present crypt:
http://www.lyon-st-irenee.org/images/gd_crypte_stirenee.jpg
Two early nineteenth-century reconstruction drawings of the medieval church as it was before 1562, one showing an ornamented portal, are reproduced here:
http://www.lyon-archeologie.com/sti03.htm
Here's a reduced reproduction of an earlier engraving showing the damage of 1562:
http://www.lyon-archeologie.com/sti02.htm
And here's a view of I.'s originally later medieval church at Châtillon la Palud (Ain):
http://tinyurl.com/ypu9ho
2) Paul I, pope (d. 767). A Roman from a wealthy family, P. was orphaned early and was brought up in the Lateran. Pope St. Zachary ordained him deacon. In 757 P. succeeded his older brother Stephen II (III) as pope. He continued S.'s policy of relying on the goodwill of Pepin the Short (Pepin III) to protect the papal territories from Lombard aggression and he repeatedly admonished the iconoclast emperor Constantine V to restore the icons. Following the example of pope St. Gregory the Great, first Stephen and then P. converted their boyhood home into a monastery dedicated to Sts. Stephen and Sylvester. Its church, rebuilt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is today's San Silvestro in Capite.
3) Gero of Köln (d. 976). The son of a margrave of Thüringen, G. was a court chaplain under Otto I. He was elected archbishop of Köln in 969 and in that year had made for him at Reichenau the sumptuously illustrated Gospel manuscript that bears his name. An illustrated, English-language account of the Gero-Kodex (Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Hs. 1948), with expandable views of two portraits of G., is here:
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2007/03/gero-codex.html
In 971 G. was sent to Constantinople to escort the future empress Theophanu to Rome, where in 972 she married the future Otto II. G. returned to Köln with the relics of St. Pantaleon that T. had brought with her and deposited them in the church of the Benedictine monastery founded by Otto I's brother St. Bruno, archbishop of Köln. Both the church and the monastery soon became known by the name of St. Pantaleon.
St. Pantaleon underwent major transformations in the eighteenth century and was heavily damaged in World War II. Most of what one sees today is restoration work. Herewith two illustrated, German-language accounts:
http://www.romanische-kirchen.de/asp/sitec7f4.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Pantaleon_(K%C3%B6ln)
For Köln's cathedral G. had made the ornamental crucifix now known as the Gerokreuz. An illustrated, German-language account of that is here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerokreuz
According to the early eleventh-century chronicler Thomas of Merseburg, G. miraculously caused a crack in the crucifix' head of Christ to close without trace by inserting in it a consecrated host and a splinter from a relic and by then successfully praying for the repair to work (apparently, ordinary filler and paint simply would not do). An eleventh-century depiction of this miracle can be seen in altarpiece of the cathedral's Stephanuskapelle:
http://tinyurl.com/ytdh59
Best,
John Dillon
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