medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (22. June) is the feast day of:
1) Acacius (??). A. (also Achatius), said to have been a Roman centurion under Hadrian and/or Antoninus Pius, is the principal character in the legendary Passio of the Ten Thousand Martyrs of Mount Ararat (BHL 20, etc.). In this confection, foisted upon the ninth-century Anastasius Bibliothecarius by an anonymous writer of the twelfth century, the martyrs are said to have perished either by crucifixion or by being driven off the mountain into a great forest of thorny trees, whose spines killed them. The Passio was condemned as spurious by the late fourteenth-century canonist Radulphus de Rivo but was accepted as genuine by his contemporary, the martyrologist Petrus de Natalibus. From it A. entered the late medieval cult of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and was invoked against fear of death, headache, and other maladies.
In a version widely disseminated from the thirteenth century onward, A. is said to have been bishop of Seleukia (now Silifke in southwestern Turkey). Here's an early sixteenth-century painting, at Denmark's Skive Gamle kirke, of A. as bishop with the martyrs below him:
http://www.sognekirke.dk/helgen/images/achatius.jpg
2) Paulinus of Nola (d. 431). Meropius Pontius Paulinus, today's well known saint of the Regno, belonged to a wealthy senatorial family of Bordeaux and was educated there by the poet and rhetor Ausonius. Before 381 he was Suffect Consul and in 380/81 he served as governor of Campania. In 385/86 P. was in Vienne, where St. Martin not yet of Tours cured him of an ocular impairment. In 393 he was baptized in Bordeaux together with his friend St. Sulpicius Severus. P. then abandoned his worldly career, married the dedicated Christian Therasia, sold his vast estates in Septimania, and went to live in Spain.
In 395 P. and T. moved to the vicinity of Nola in Campania, where at today's Cimitile (NA) they erected a monastery and basilican church in honor of St. Felix of Nola. From there P. carried on an extensive correspondence that included many Christian luminaries (among them Sts. Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Martin of Tours, Sulpicius Severus, Honoratus of Lérins, Eucherius of Lyon, and pope St. Anastasius I), composing as well a substantial amount of Christian poetry. P.'s cult was immediate. We have a letter by the priest Uranius describing his passing (BHL 6558).
Cimitile became an important late antique and early medieval pilgrimage center. A brief, illustrated, English-language discussion is here, s.v. "Nola":
Views of the ancient parts of this site's Basilica di San Felice in Pincis showing some of the surrounding structure as well:
http://www.napoligold.com/coast/napolisud/soggetto/de24067.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/vkvao
http://www.fondazionepremiocimitile.it/img/02.jpg
Other views of San Felice are here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/panorami/cimitile.html
Apse and belltower (P. is traditionally credited with having introduced the use of church bells):
http://www.fondazionepremiocimitile.it/img/05.jpg
Better view (old postcard) of the belltower:
http://www.fondazionepremiocimitile.it/img/basilica1.jpg
3) Innocent V (Bl.; d. 1276). The Savoyard Peter of Tarentaise was elected pope on 21. January 1276 and took the name Innocent. The first Dominican pope, he was a theologian by training who had taught at Paris and collaborated with Sts. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. His commentary on the Lombard's _Sentences_ exemplifies the thirteenth-century transition from Augustinian to Aristotelian modes of thought. Today is his _dies natalis_.
4) John Fisher and Thomas More (d. 1535). Along with Cardinal Wolsey, Fisher and More are surely the best known Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation. Learned humanists, they had pursued very different careers. Fisher rose to become vice-chancellor of the university of Cambridge, bishop of Rochester and, shortly before his execution, cardinal. The lawyer More had been a royal councillor and, from 1529 to 1532, lord chancellor of the realm. Today is Fisher's _dies natalis_; More's is 6. July.
Best,
John Dillon
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