medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. June) is the feast day of:
1) Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165). J. was born of pagan parents in Flavia Neapolis (today's Nablus) in Palestine. A philosopher by training, he became a Christian and devoted himself to expounding the truth of his religion. His surviving works are an _Apology_ to the emperor Antoninus Pius and to his adoptive sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, another addressed to the Senate of Rome, and the _Dialogue with Trypho_, a Jew and rabbi whom he had met at Ephesus. At some point J. moved to Rome, where he was put to death in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Apparently genuine Acta survive from his trial before the city prefect Junius Rusticus (162/63-167/68).
2) Proculus of Bologna (d. ca. 304, perhaps). The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology lists a Proculus for this date, place of martyrdom unspecified. Our P.'s cult at Bologna was known to the late fourth-/early fifth-century writers Victricius of Rouen and Paulinus of Nola. His church there goes back to the early eleventh century. Later medieval members of the adjacent monastic community created various Vitae for P., including a twelfth-century one (BHL 6954) that made him a military martyr under the early sixth-century emperor Justin I and a thirteenth-century one identifying him as the P. of Narni and thus a bishop (BHL 6956, drawing on the early medieval _Legenda XII Syrorum_, whose own account of that P.'s feast had already in the twelfth century been read in the dioceses of Bologna and Ravenna on 1. June).
Here's a not very good view of the fifteenth-century facade of Bologna's San Procolo:
http://kidslink.bo.cnr.it/besta/lavoro/3s3r/procolo.html
And here's a view of Michelangelo's statue of P. (1494) on St. Dominic's monumental shrine in Bologna's San Domenico:
http://tinyurl.com/3y4g37
3) Caprasius of Lérins (d. after 434). The Provençal hermit . accompanied St. Honoratus and the latter's brother Venantius on a journey to the East that ended at Modon in the Peloponnese, where V. died. C. returned with H. to Provence, where they founded the famous monastery of Lérins. Late antique ecclesiastical writers of Gaul (Sts. Eucherius of Lyon and Sidonius Apollinaris) praise his sanctity. C. enters the martyrologies with Florus of Lyon.
4) Simeon of Trier (d. 1035). According to his early eleventh-century Vita (BHL 7963) by abbot Eberwin of Trier, S. (also Simeon; sometimes called "of Syracuse") was a Greek-speaking native of Syracuse who grew up in Constantinople and who became a monk first in Palestine and later at St. Catherine's in Sinai. He was sent from the latter to Normandy to collect a debt from duke Richard II, traveling part of the way with his future biographer,m who was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When S. arrived at his destination the duke was dead, his successor would not pay, and S. returned to Palestine as tour guide to a group of pilgrims from Trier. Later he moved to Trier and became a hermit in a gate in the Roman city wall. Here's a view of it, saved when the rest was torn down in 1803 because it housed a chapel dedicated to him:
http://tinyurl.com/yvz9ng
S. was canonized papally in 1042.
Best,
John Dillon
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