medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (15. September) is the feast day of:
1) Nicomedes of Rome (?). N. is a poorly documented but much venerated
martyr, absent from the _Depositio Martyrum_ of 354 and from the oldest
witness of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. Our earliest testimony,
a Passio (BHL 6062; later revision, BHL 6237) thought to be originally of the
fifth or sixth century, is not a separate piece of writing but rather a segment
of the much larger Passio of Nereus and Achilleus (BHL 6058). The latter
provides highly fictional stories for a number of saints some of whom are
known to have been real because their burial places are attested
archaeologically. While there is always the possibility that N. is a complete
fiction, it does seem probable that when in this account (which makes him
a priest martyred under Domitian) he is said to have been buried on the Via
Nomentana outside the city that much at least is accurate and that at the
time of its writing he had a _memoria_ of some sort in that vicinity.
Boniface V (619-25) erected at this reported burial site a basilica in N.'s
honor that is a fixture in the seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome and
that was restored by Adrian I (772-95). A feast on 1. June for the
dedication of this church occurs in the Gelasian and the Gregorian
sacramentaries, in the historical martyrologies, and in later manuscripts of
the (ps.-)HM. All of these also list N. for today. A later Passio (BHL 6238),
thought to be no earlier than the seventh century, gives 1. June as N.'s
_dies natalis_ and makes him a martyr under Maximian.
N.'s relics are said to repose in Rome's church of Santa Prassede. But
all in Parma know that in 876 bishop Wibod brought them to today's
Salsomaggiore Terme (PR) in Emilia, where they were used for the
dedication of a new church in N.'s honor. This was replaced by one of
the twelfth century, reworked in the fourteenth with later modifications
(e.g. the nineteenth-century facade) but preserving remnants of the
ninth-century original in the crypt and in lower portions of the walls.
A brief, Italian-language account of it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/glb2l
Some single views:
http://www.cattedrale.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=209165
http://www.parchi.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=140735
http://turismo.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=207997
N. is second from left in Benedetto Bembo's Polyptych of Torchiara
(1462) formerly in the Oratorio di San Nicomede in the Castle of
Torrechiara at Langhirano-Torrechiara (PR) and now in Milan's Castello
Sforzesco:
http://tinyurl.com/fbfs2
There's a much clearer, black-and-white view of N. alone from this
composition in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 9, col. 982.
2) Jordan of Pulsano (Bl.; d. 1145). In 1139 today's less well known
holy person of the Regno succeeded St. John of Matera both as abbot
of the latter's relatively recently founded abbey at Pulsano on northern
Apulia's Gargano Peninsula and as general of the nascent Pulsanese
Benedictine congregation. The sainted founder's later eleventh-century
Vita (BHL 4412), thought to have been written by J.'s immediate
successor, Bl. Joel (d. 1177), describes J. as as a good and just man,
considerate both to God and to men, who governed _strenue, juste,
pie, atque fideliter_. This Vita also calls J. _beatus_ and associates him
with the founder in the miraculous extrication of a wayward brother who
while riding ahead of their party had fallen with his horse into a crevasse
corresponding physically to the spiritual pit into which he had already sunk
(the words used are _terrae vorago_ and _fovea_).
J.'s entry (BHL [Suppl.] 4452b) in the dismembered thirteenth-century
Pulsanese lectionary and martyrology preserved in the BAV (Vat. lat. 5419)
and elsewhere (the martyrology in is the BN at Naples) says that he came
from a prominent family of today's Monteverde (AV) in Campania, that he
had been schooled at Benevento, where he lived with an uncle who
mistreated him, and that, barely recovered from a serious illness, he had
fled into a wood where John of Matera, then on his way from Capua to
Apulia, discovered him and took him on as an acolyte. During his brief
generalship J. both expanded his congregation's holdings in Apulia and
increased its north Italian presence through the founding, at the behest of
the bishop of Piacenza, of the monastery of Santa Maria di Quartazzola in
today's Gossolengo (PC) in Emilia. Today is his _dies natalis_. J.'s cult
was immediate, though recognition of him as a saint seems to have been
limited to the Pulsanese Benedictine congregation and (perhaps) to the
former diocese of his native Monteverde, where he is also commemorated
today.
The abbey church of Santa Maria di Pulsano (most of which is thought to
have been built under abbot Joel) abuts, and uses as its apse, a cave said
to have been revealed by the BVM to John of Matera in a vision as the site
of his new monastery on the Gargano. Here's a view of its sanctuary:
http://tinyurl.com/yrms5b
Those doorways on either side of the altar lead to chapels containing altars
with the relics, respectively, of J. and of the Blessed Joel.
Two multi-page sets of views of the abbey are here:
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Foggia/Pulsano.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/pulsano/index.htm
The Pulsanese lectionary, etc. referred to above has been reproduced in
facsimile as Alberto Cavallini, ed., _Laus Deo, anima Pulsani. Il Libro dell'Ufficio
del Capitolo della Congregazione monastica degli eremiti di Pulsano_ (Cittą del
Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2005). For the the early history of
the Pulsanese congregation see: Francesco Panarelli, _Dal Gargano alla
Toscana. II monachesimo riformato latino dei Pulsanesi (secoli XII-XIV)_
(Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1997; = its Nuovi studi storici,
no. 38).
Best,
John Dillon
(Nicomedes of Rome lightly revised from last year's post)
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