medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (19. June) was the feast day of:
1) Gervase and Protase (??). G. and P. are the names assigned to the two tall, male, decapitated skeletons whose remains St. Ambrose of Milan, acting in 386 upon what he called a presentiment (to St. Augustine of Hippo and to Paulinus of Milan, it was a revelation), found in buried in that city's cemetery near the church of Sts. Nabor and Felix. Certainly it was providential, as A. now had two martyrs with whose remains he could sanctify his new cathedral, then still under construction. G. and P.'s translation to their new resting place, next to the one A. had destined for himself, took place on 19. June. Here they are now, with A. between them, in the crypt of Milan's Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio:
http://tinyurl.com/r5otc
http://static.flickr.com/52/124723968_aff97d80b8.jpg
The bishop of Milan was quick to share with others not only news of his good fortune but also relics by which the cult of G. and P, could be and was extended to other churches. Thus bishop St. Severus of Naples received from A. relics of the two saints which he then placed in the basilica he had built in Naples' catacombs. Thus too, presumably, the originally late fourth-century Roman basilica now generally known as San Vitale had by the year 412 come to include G. and P. in its dedication. Their cult spread rapidly in the Latin West: among its early devotees were Sts. Martin of Tours, Paulinus of Nola, and Gaudentius of Brescia. G. and P. are entered for today in the early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage. Here they are, at left, in the sixth-century mosaics of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna:
http://tinyurl.com/36khyr
G. and P, have a Passio (BHL 3523, etc.) whose earliest form is that thought to be of the late firth or early sixth century. This pretends to have been written by Ambrose himself and makes them twin brothers, gives them as parents Sts. Vitalis and Valeria, and has them martyred under Nero.
2) Bruno (Boniface) of Querfurt (d. 1009). B. was a canon of the cathedral of Magdeburg and a court chaplain of Otto III who while in Italy in 997 met up with St. Romuald of Ravenna, entered the Order of Saint Benedict, and took the name of Boniface. After Otto's death in 1002 B. returned to Germany and soon undertook missionary activity among the Slavs. In 1004 he received the pallium as a missionary archbishop. In March 1009 he and eighteen companions were martyred by Prussians in today's Poland. B. is the author of one of the great saint's Lives of the eleventh century, his Vita of St. Adalbert of Prague (BHL 38) and of the semi-autobiographical _Vita quinque fratrum_ dealing with the Camaldolese martyrs of 1003 ((BHL 1147).
3) Romuald of Ravenna (d. 1027). R. entered the Order of St. Benedict at Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare Nuovo after having been implicated in his father's killing of a relative. Not finding his fellow Benedictines ascetic enough for his taste, he became a hermit in the Venetian lagoon and within a few years gathered a small group of adherents some of whom were very prominent people. The little community so formed moved around through various places in the Veneto, formed connections with Montecassino, settled in Rome, and wound up promoting missions to the Slavs in the early years of the eleventh century. R. went on to found a number of Benedictine hermitages in central Italy and in the next generation was thought of by people at some of these as the spiritual father of their nascent Camaldolese Benedictine community.
One of R.'s foundations was the abbey of Santa Maria di Sitria, begun as a hermitage in 1014 and expanded into an abbey in about 1020. It's located in Isola Fossara, a _frazione_ of today's very rural commune of Scheggia e Pascelupo in Umbria's Perugia province, close to the latter's border with the Marche's Ancona province. A distance view of the remaining structures is here:
http://tinyurl.com/m7de9
and a less appealing closer view is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/AVVENTURA/E1/IMAGECLIP/Sitria.jpg
An illustrated account from Thais in both English and Italian is here:
http://www.thais.it/Romanico/Itinerario/Sitria/Medie/scheda0001.htm
R. died at another of his foundations, the abbey of San Salvatore at Val di Castro, near Fabriano (MC) in the Marche. Views of this monastery, which was rebuilt in the thirteenth century and, of course, has since
been modified, are here:
http://www.guanciarossa.it/leviedellafede/valdicas.htm
An Italian-language account from Thais with views of the apses of the abbey church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/onbpe
And a longer Italian-language account, with perhaps more interesting views, is here:
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/abbazie/valdicastro.htm
In December 1480 Camaldolese monks of Sant'Apollinare in Classe secretly removed R.'s skeleton (said to have been rediscovered in 1477) from the then decaying abbey at Val di Castro. But they brought it only as far as Jesi in today's Ancona province before being discovered. In this last burst of travel of a very wandering saint ('peripatetic' might suggest attainments he is unlikely to have possessed), in February 1481 R. was brought back up the Esino valley from Jesi to Fabriano, where they were installed in the church of the Benedictine abbey of San Biagio (to which the monastery at Val di Castro had belonged since 1427). Views of this church, since rebuilt and renamed as Santi Biagio e Romualdo, are here:
http://www.guanciarossa.it/leviedellafede/fabrianosbiagio.htm
The last view on that page is of R.'s present resting place in the church's crypt.
4) Nazarius of Koper (??). N. is the legendary protobishop of Koper in Slovenia, perhaps better known to some by its Italian name of Capodistria. He was the subject of a poorly dated Inventio (probably in the fourteenth century), spent the period from 1380 to 1422 in Genoa as war booty, and was returned in the latter year and buried in what became the cathedral's high altar. The tradition that dates him to the early sixth century is rendered problematic by the modern understanding that the diocese of Justinopolis/Capodistria/Koper is no older than the year 1177.
Herewith a few views of Koper's cathedral dedicated to N.:
http://www.koper.si/images/users/5/koper_mesto04.jpg
http://digilander.libero.it/nvg/capodistria01.jpg
http://pioceb.republika.pl/29croeng.html
http://teacher.schule.at/eva-maria/Slowenien/Koper1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yux5x6
5) Juliana Falconieri (d. 1341, perhaps). J., who was related to one of the founders of the Servites, founded a community of women religious in Florence whose rule was later extended to Servite nuns in general. Today is her traditional _dies natalis_.
Best,
John Dillon
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