medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. November) is the feast day of:
Clement I, pope (d. ca. 100). The author of an extant letter to the church of Corinth and the suppositious author of the pseudo-Clementine _Recognitions_ and _Homilies_, C. occupies either third or fourth place in early lists of the bishops of Rome. Although he seems not to have been martyred, he has a late antique Passio (BHL 1848) in which he is sent to work in the mines of Crimea and then thrown into the sea weighted down with an anchor. In response to the prayers of his disciples Cornelius and Phoebus, the waters parted and C.'s body was miraculously revealed in a chapel where the faithful could venerate him annually for a week beginning on his _dies natalis_. Here's a fourteenth-century French miniature illustrating the recovery of C.'s remains:
http://tinyurl.com/2hendw
Thanks to the presence of his supposed relics in the abbey church at Casauria (today's Castiglione a Casauria [PE]) in Abruzzo, C. was long a saint of the Regno. When the abbey was established by Louis II in 873 it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, but the power of the relics (traditionally said to have been brought here right after the founding) seems to have overcome this fairly swiftly. For most of its history the abbey was known popularly as that of San Clemente a Casauria and its property was _terra sancti Clementis_ in the same way that Montecassino's was _terra sancti Benedicti_. Today's abbey church, one of the region's "romanesque" monuments, is essentially a twelfth-century structure with later modifications. The pages devoted to it at the Italian-language "Abruzzo Romanico" and "Italia nell'Arte Medievale" sites have expandable views of major features:
http://tinyurl.com/cw2xn
http://tinyurl.com/wppyl
http://tinyurl.com/yhjeyk
Here's a view of the lunette over the principal entrance with C. in the center giving his blessing and with abbot Leonas at right offering the church (shown with an obviously oversized rose window and with four arches in the facade rather than actual three):
http://tinyurl.com/y9kc2s
In the scene just below, depicting the translation of C.'s remains, three arches are shown:
http://tinyurl.com/yk2g4t
A porch was added in the later twelfth century. After fourteenth- and fifteenth-century earthquakes, the front of the building now looks like this:
http://tinyurl.com/2opu2z
Despite the prevailing tendency to refer to the abbey as that of St. Clement, its original dedication to the Trinity persevered in official usage. This illustration from the abbey's twelfth-century cartulary chronicle by John Berard calls it the "Monasterium Sanctae Trinitatis & Sancti Clementis":
http://tinyurl.com/9hk4j
The four kings (in the order shown in this drawing: Hugh, his predecessor Lambert, Lothar II, and Berengar II) are the ones represented on the jambs of the main entrance:
http://tinyurl.com/ykjbqr
Inside, the ciborium is of the fourteenth century, replacing an earthquake-damaged predecessor:
http://tinyurl.com/93ken
Note the inscription on the base: ... TVMBA SACRA CLEMENTIS HIC PAULI DECVS ET PETRI.
When that was carved, C.'s supposed remains were presumably in that late antique sarcophagus serving as an altar.
Another attractive dedication to C. in the same region is the early twelfth-century abbey church of San Clemente al Vomano at Notaresco (TE):
http://tinyurl.com/9s3tw
http://tinyurl.com/2q7aow
http://tinyurl.com/dbx85
A brief, Italian-language description of it is here:
http://www.morronedelsannio.com/abruzzo/notaresco.htm
And, while we are still in the twelfth century, not to forget San Clemente at Rome (which has relics of C. said to have been brought from Constantinople). Herewith some brief accounts in English:
http://www.rome.info/basilicas/st-clement/
http://romanchurches.wikia.com/wiki/San_Clemente
and in Italian:
http://tinyurl.com/ynupmx
http://www.romecity.it/Sanclemente.htm
A longer, illustrated, English-language account in Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias, _Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) begins here:
http://tinyurl.com/2646qp
Exterior views (protyry):
http://www.marcantonioarchitects.com/San_Clem_Figure1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2tqsfy
http://tinyurl.com/2nov7e
Interior views of the originally early twelfth-century upper church:
http://tinyurl.com/29v3j5
http://tinyurl.com/yvcvvr
http://www.emmauscollege.nl/images/tekenen/clement2.jpg
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/frescaps.html
http://tinyurl.com/j849l
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/mosaic.html
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/sanclem1.jpg
Three pages of detail views (good for the pavement and for the early sixth-century transennae in the chancel screen) start here:
http://tinyurl.com/263c2c
This church is built over a late antique predecessor of the same dedication that did not outlast the eleventh century. Parts of that were excavated during rebuilding work on its successor in the mid-nineteenth century. One part of the Tour at this site:
http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/
has a plan of the fourth-century basilica underneath the twelfth-century church, as well as pop-up views of structures (incl. nineteenth-century piers and vaults) and frescoes here. Three better views of early medieval frescoes on this level are Frescoes no. 10-12 on this page:
http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/cr-03/cr-01/index.html
An English-language discussion, with other fresco views, is here:
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/50ct05.html
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/50ct06.html
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/50ct07.html
http://www.op.org/curia/sanclem/50ct08.html
For those not afraid of Danish, there's a detailed discussion (and a plan showing the locations of all the frescoes) here:
http://tinyurl.com/ykrvps
Two illustrated, German-language pages on the originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century St. Clemens-Romanus Kirche in Marklohe (Kr. Nienburg/Weser) in Niedersachsen:
http://tinyurl.com/399z2s
http://www.clemenskirche.de/
Here's a page on C.'s originally twelfth-century church at Ashampstead (Berks):
http://www.berkshirehistory.com/churches/ashampstead.html
And a page on that church's wall paintings:
http://tinyurl.com/2l5ubx
A page of views of C.'s church at Terrington St Clement (Norfolk), originally built in the fourteenth century for the Gonville who founded Gonville Hall at the University of Cambridge (since 1557 Gonville and Caius College):
http://tinyurl.com/yruj2m
And here are two pages on the late fourteenth-(?)/early fifteenth-century St Clement Colegate in Norwich:
http://tinyurl.com/2rsudy
http://tinyurl.com/2r3cst
A page on the thirteenth-/fifteenth-century St Clement's in West Thurrock (Essex):
http://tinyurl.com/3ao2hd
Views of that church's fifteenth-century tower:
http://tinyurl.com/2w6sxy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barryslemmings/315915867/
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/12330
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post somewhat revised)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|