medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (29. June) is the feast day of:
1a) Peter, apostle (d. 64?). P. was a Jew of Galilee who became a Roman martyr of the Vatican cemetery. He is listed in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, and in the earliest sources for the Roman liturgy. The seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome all mention P.'s memorial basilica on the Vatican hill. That building did not long survive the Middle Ages, but twentieth-century excavation beneath it successor revealed a small monument attributed to the second century and thought to have been P.'s memorial. He comes first in the early lists of the bishops of Rome.
1 b) Paul, apostle (d. 67?). P. was a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia who became a Roman martyr at an unknown location (traditionally, Aquae Salviae = modern Tre Fontane) not far from the Via Ostiensis. The _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 locates his burial site in that vicinity. He is entered for today in (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the earliest sources for the Roman liturgy. The seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome all mention the memorial basilica over his grave, now generally known as San Paolo fuori le Mura.
2) Cassius of Narni (d. 558). We know about this bishop of Narni in Umbria from his surviving funerary inscription (_CIL_, X. 2, no. 4164) as well as from passages in the _Dialogues_ of pope St. Gregory the Great and in one of G.'s sermons. C. had married a woman named Fausta from whom he later separated in order to enter Holy Orders. He was consecrated bishop of Narni on 9. October 536. C.'s time in office coincided with Justinian's Gothic War, a dangerous period for Italian cities; according to Gregory, he carried out his ministry with zeal and prudence and on one occasion cured of demonic possession a swordbearer of the Gothic king Totila.
3) Emma of Gurk (d. 1045). E. (in Latin, Hemma) founded the short-lived Benedictine double monastery of Gurk in Kärnten (Carinthia) whose assets were used in the late eleventh century for the erection of the diocese of Gurk. According to the early thirteenth-century Elogium (BHL 3803; shortly after 1227) for her Office at Gurk, she was the very wealthy widow of a landgrave of Friesach who had earlier lost both her sons (supposedly murdered in an insurrection).
A German-language page on E. with a view of a fifteenth-century stature of her is here:
http://www.kath-kirche-kaernten.at/pages/bericht.asp?id=405
E.'s legend as depicted (early sixteenth-century) in the cathedral of Gurk:
http://www.gurktal.or.at/dom-1.htm
Two illustrated, German-language pages on Gurk cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/2892qr
http://tinyurl.com/2dj53x
4) Salome and Judith of Niederaltaich (Bl.; d. late 11th cent., supposedly). According to their legendary late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Vita (BHL 7465), the virgin S., a relative of a king of England, lost her sight in the vicinity of Regensburg while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She then fell into the Danube, was rescued with difficulty, contracted leprosy, stayed in the area to recover and a few years later immured herself as a recluse in the choir of the convent church of today's Niederaltaich (Kr. Deggendorf). Her cousin Judith, a young widow, went looking for her, found her by accident, and immured herself as a recluse in the atrium of the same church.
Best,
John Dillon
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