medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. November) is the feast day of:
1) Mercurius of Caesarea in Cappadocia (d. 250, supposedly). M. had a major late antique cult at the Caesarea that is today's Kayseri in Turkey. His legendary Greek Passio (BHG 1274) makes him a general in the Roman army martyred under Decius. By the early sixth century he was also believed to have been sent from Heaven to slay Julian the Apostate. In this legend, St. Basil the Great (not coincidentally, a bishop of Caesarea) is said to have seen in a vision both M.'s being charged with this mission and his return to announce its successful completion.
One of the great military saints of Eastern Christianity, M. became a saint of the Regno in the ninth century when in the principality of Benevento his cult superseded that of another Mercurius entered in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology under 26. August as having suffered at Aeclanum (in southern Campania). The founder of the principality, duke (as he then was) Arichis was said to have translated from the ruins of Aeclanum in 768 the relics of the Eastern martyr (supposedly deposited there by Constans II in the seventh century) and to have interred them in his newly built church of Santa Sofia at Benevento. In the principality M. was celebrated on 26. August, reinterpreted as the date of his translation by Arichis.
M. was a major star in the Beneventan sanctoral firmament. The extent of his literary monuments can be guessed at by looking at nos. 5933-39 in BHL Suppl.; especially noteworthy is M.'s _Passio aucta_ in verse by the early twelfth-century archbishop of Benevento, Landulf II (BHL 5935; a modern edition is badly needed). An only slightly later visual counterpart is the also twelfth-century representation of M. in military garb in the lunette above the main portal of Santa Sofia:
http://tinyurl.com/y8xvxw
http://tinyurl.com/vj38b
The kneeling figure next to M. is thought to be abbot John IV of Santa Sofia, to whose restoration of the church we owe this relief. Within the Beneventan cultural area, M. is the patron saint of Toro (CB) in Molise and of Serracapriola (FG) in northern Apulia. In both towns his cult appears to be medieval in origin.
In 1098 M. appeared along with Sts. George and Demetrius to lift the spirits of the Crusaders issuing from Antioch to destroy a Muslim army that had been besieging them. For a recent discussion of M. in the East, see Christopher Walter, _The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition_ (Ashgate, 2003), pp. 101-08.
Herewith some medieval representations of M. in art works of Eastern origin:
Upper left in the Harbaville Triptych (mid tenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/ych3lz
Icon of M. (ca. 1295) from church of St. Clement, Ochrid:
http://www.geocities.com/egfroth1/Merkourios.jpg
Fresco in the Protaton on Mt. Athos (ca. 1300, attributed to Manuel Panselinos; M. at left):
http://tinyurl.com/2m3qvh
Fresco in the katholikon of the Chelandari monastery, Mt. Athos (ca. 1319, atelier of Michael Astrapas and Eutychios):
http://www.sv-luka.org/Chilandar/images/StMercurius.jpg
Fressco in the church of the Theotokos, Gracanica monastery, Gracanica (Kosovo province), Serbia (ca. 1320):
http://tinyurl.com/yjr5mu
Armenian miniature (fourteenth-/fifteenth-century):
http://www.armsite.com/miniatures/mnshow.phtml?slide=51
M. is co-patron of Seminara (RC) in southern Calabria, part of the Greek-speaking West in the Middle Ages and the home of the fourteenth-cenury theologian Barlaam of Calabria. A fifteenth-century relief showing him mounted and spearing Julian the Apostate in the neck has been preserved at the Municipio of Seminara. A thumbnail view of that is here:
http://www.seminaraonline.it/images/Bd.036-Bassorilievo%20Comune.jpg
and a much better image may be found in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 9, col. 366.
For more on M., including an English-language translation of BHG 1274, see:
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/Mercurius.html
2) Maurinus of Agen (d. 5th cent., supposedly). The martyr M. is the local saint of today's Saint-Maurin (Lot-et-Garonne) in Aquitaine and was the saint of its once regionally important abbey named for him. According to his very legendary Vita (BHL 5734; preserved in a single ms. of the eleventh century), he was born at Agen but educated in Italy at Capua, whither his father, the count of Agen, had sent him to be schooled and where he stayed for seven years and was ordained deacon. His master was that holy friend of St. Benedict, St. Germanus of Capua.
Returning to his native town, M. evangelized in the Agenais. But the pagan governor of Lectoure (from at least the eleventh century an important comital seat), who had forbidden Christian preaching in the region, had M.'s father decapitated and M. arrested. M. converted the soldiers who were guarding him and fled with them to a nearby village, where they were captured by other soldiers sent by the governor. M. and his companions were executed on the spot by decapitation. In keeping with a frequent motif in the Vitae of evangelists in France, M. picked up his head and walked to a fountain, next to which, once he had healed a woman of leprosy, the local Christians buried him. Further miracles were reported at his grave, which latter began to draw crowds. A church dedicated to St. Peter was erected over his tomb.
The abbey for which this Vita was surely written first comes to light early in the eleventh century. A local lord restored it in about 1040 and in 1082 a son of that lord gave it to the abbey of Moissac. The abbey church (now a ruin) was dedicated in 1097 to the Holy Cross, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to St. M., and to all the saints. A distance view is here (the church is to the left of center):
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/fouyssac/photos/IMG_0344.jpg
A view of what's left of the choir:
http://tinyurl.com/2roakz
And here are two of the latter's capitals, one showing M.'s beheading and the other his cephalophory:
http://tinyurl.com/38l6dz
http://tinyurl.com/37hnqp
A view of the south absidiole:
http://tinyurl.com/37e2et
More views of the abbey will be found on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/35kj2k
A processional survives from the abbey (Paris, BNF, ms. lat. 2819). This has been edited, along with a study of M.'s Vita, in Jean Delvert, Monique Goullet, and Gisèle Dumas, _Que vive la mémoire ... Abbaye bénédictine de Saint-Maurin. La légende et les chants de processions_ (Saint-Maurin: Association Mise en Valeur du Patrimoine de l'Abbaye de Saint-Maurin, 1996).
Best,
John Dillon
(Mercurius lightly revised from last year's post)
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