medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. June) is the feast day of:
1) Marcian, Nicander, Apollonius, and companions (??). M., N., A.. et socc. are a group of martyrs from Egypt recorded for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, whence their entries, also for today, in the Carolingian martyrologies of Florus, Ado, and Usuard. They have a complex of legendary Passiones forming part of that of the Ten Martyrs of Egypt (BHG 11194, 1194ab; BHL 5260, etc.) that do not agree on the persecution in which they suffered and on whose reliability very different views have been expressed. M. and N. _may_ be the saints of this name, celebrated today in some early calendars, who are said to have been martyred at Durostorum in Moesia.
2) Eutichius of Como (d. 539). E.'s name is often normalized classically as 'Eutychius'. But his marble tombstone, now preserved in the Civici Musei di Como, shows the common late antique practice of using an 'i' in names of Greek origin where the vowel in Greek had been upsilon. The inscription on this stone, which was found in the 1870s in Como's church of St. Abundius, tells us that E. was a bishop, that he was aged 57 at his death, and that he was laid to rest on the nones of June in the year 539. The liturgical tradition of Como makes E. a native of that city and a man given to solitary prayer.
E. was laid to rest among his predecessors the ancient basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, the predecessor of today's Sant'Abbondio. In the later Middle Ages (opinions vary as to whether this was in the thirteenth century or the fifteenth) E. was translated to Como's church of San Giorgio in the neighborhood (medievally, a suburb) where he is said to have been born. A lay confraternity and an adjacent pilgrim hospice were named for him. E. now reposes in a marble sarcophagus of the late thirteenth or fourteenth century whose three historiated panels are illustrated in photographic reproduction atop his entry in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_ (vol. 5, cols. 321-22). A partial view heads the non-expandable thumbnails on p. 2 of this six-page, Italian-language account of San Giorgio:
http://www.sistemalagodicomo.it/chiese.php?n=C&s=Como&id=408&p=1
3) Dorotheus of Gaza (d. ca. 570). The ascetic writer D. was born in Antioch on the Orontes. An enthusiastic student in his youth, he had an excellent education, after which he became a monk at an oasis to the southeast of Gaza. From there he was in context with such Palestinian desert fathers as Sts. Barsanuphius and John of Gaza (J. the Prophet), composed monastic works in a variety of genres, and founded a hospital next to his monastery. He was the teacher of St. Dositheus, who died young, and wrote his Bios (Latin version: BHL 2334).
4) Boniface of Mainz (d. 754). B., whose original name was Wynfreth, was born in Devon. He is sometimes referred to as B. of Crediton (Ian Wood's account of him in the _Oxford Dictionary of National Biography_ adds, "apparently without justification"). A largely successful missionary and eccclesiastical organizer in today's Germany and The Netherlands, he was the first archbishop of what became the see of Mainz. B. and a large body of followers were martyred at Dokkum in today's Dongeradeel in Netherlandic Friesland. In accordance with his wishes he was buried at Fulda.
5) Eoban, Adelar, and companions (d. 754). The companions in martyrdom of Boniface of Mainz (see above). E. was the first bishop of Utrecht; in the later Middle Ages A. was considered the first bishop of Erfurt. They have had feasts of their own (sometimes including their companions other than B.) in these dioceses as well as in that of Fulda. E. was the name-saint of the fifteenth-/sixteenth-century Latin poet Helius Eobanus Hessus.
Best,
John Dillon
(Eutichius of Como edited down from last year's post)
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