medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (25. September) is, or until recently was, the feast day of:

Aurelia and Neomisia (Neomasia), virgins (9th century, perhaps).
According to their Passion and Translation to Anagni (BHL 817m), today's
less well known former saints of the Regno were sisters from somewhere
in Asia Minor who made a pilgrimage first to the holy places in
Palestine and then to major shrines in the West.  Traveling south from
Rome on the Via Latina, they were captured by Muslims who had besieged
Capua and were beaten with rods to within an inch of their lives.  A
providential thunderstorm allowing them to escape, they made their way
to what seems to have been today's Macerata (CE) in Campania, where they
settled down and died in peace on 25. September of some unknown year.
Venerated by inhabitants of the area, A. and N. were interred in a local
oratory.  During the papacy of St. Leo IX (1049-54) they were translated to
the cathedral of Anagni (FR) in southern Lazio, where they have been
ever since.

BHK 817m is an obviously legendary document from which the Bollandists
elected to print in the _Acta Sanctorum_ only brief extracts.  It survives in a
single early fourteenth-century manuscript (BAV, Chigianus C. VIII. 235)
and forms the basis for these saints' Office at Anagni.  Though in 841 there
_was_ a destructive Muslim assault on (Old) Capua (today's Santa Maria Capua
Vetere), the Bollandists (BHL Suppl. 2 [1986], p. 106) hesitantly date A. and N.
to "saec. XI (?)".  The eleventh century seems to be the time when their cult first
comes to light in our surviving records.  When Anagni's present cathedral of Santa
Maria Assunta was first built in the late eleventh and very early twelfth centuries,
relics of A. and N. were placed alongside those of St. Secundina under an altar
dedicated to her in the crypt of St. Magnus.  In these not very good views of a fresco
in that crypt, A. and N. are shown flanking the cathedral's builder, bishop St. Peter of
Salerno (Peter of Anagni or de Principibus; d. 1105):
http://www.sestoacuto.it/biblio/cavallini/img/opere/anagni1.jpg
http://www.fiab-onlus.it/staffett/im15/19.jpg

An Italian-language introduction to the Cattedrale di San Magno, with
exterior views, is here:
http://www.comune.anagni.fr.it/a-cath.html
Many more views (incl. a couple of the statue of Boniface VIII) are here:
http://www.photoroma.com/archivio.php?City=a&Search=*&Page=1
continued on p. 2 with shots of the belltower and of the redesigned
"Gothic" nave:
http://www.photoroma.com/archivio.php?City=a&Page=2&Search=*
Further views are here (expandable .jpgs):
http://www.menteantica.it/frmanagni.htm

The crypt itself is a major monument, thanks to its cosmatesque pavement
(1231, by Cosma Cosmati) and especially to its extensively preserved medieval
frescoes.  Various views of these frescoes are here:
http://web.tiscali.it/albertopulcini/cripta/pag_arca.html
and here, also including a marble throne in the upper church, (the three
little .jpgs at right are expandable):
http://www.sapere.it/tca/MainApp?srvc=vr&url=/1/306_1
and here:
http://news2000.libero.it/fotogallery/fg1250/pg1.html
http://www.santamelania.it/arte_fede/anagni/apoc_anagn.htm
http://www.30giorni.it/it/articolo.asp?id=206
http://www.teologia.it/cn18.html
and here (with two distance views of that fresco of A. and N.):
http://www.arte-argomenti.org/schede/anagni/anagni.html
Plus these older black-and-whites from the Courtauld Institute of Art
(where, shades of Dan Quayle, the singular of "frescoes" is "frescoe"):
http://tinyurl.com/243yaa

These frescoes, executed in stages during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, are the subject of at least three recent scholarly books:

Gioacchino Giammaria, ed., _Un universo di simboli.  Gli affreschi della
cripta nella cattedrale di Anagni_ (Roma: Viella, 2001).  See:
http://www.viella.it/Edizioni/LibriViellaArte/LibriViellaArte_01.htm

Lorenzo Cappelletti, _Gli affreschi della cripta anagnina.  Iconologia_,
Miscellanea historiae pontificiae; v. 65 (Roma: Editrice Pontificia
Universita' Gregoriana, 2002).  See (at bottom):
http://www.itabc.cnr.it/f_progetti_bianchi.htm

Alessandro Bianchi, ed., _Il restauro della Cripta di Anagni_ (Roma:
Istituto Centrale per il Restauro -- Artemide Edizioni, 2003; already
out of print at the publisher's).  See:
http://www.icr.beniculturali.it/Pubblicazioni/pubblicazioni6.htm

Returning to A. and N., there are good black-and-white photographs of
four depictions of them in these frescoes in Vincenzo Fenicchia's entry
"Aurelia e Neomisia, vergini, sante" in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_,
vol. 2, cols. 601-06.  A. and N.'s listing for today in the RM seems to
have been eliminated in the latter's revision of 2001.

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)

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