medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (12. December) is the feast day of:
1) Spyridon the Wonderworker (4th cent.). S. was bishop of Trimithous on Cyprus. He is reported as having signed, perhaps three years after its conclusion, the acts of the Council of Serdica (342/43). Late in the same century it was already believed that he had been a shepherd and that he continued in that role even after assuming his episcopate. S. seems to have fathered a daughter before entering religion. Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410) records two miracles attributed to him (one involving sheep of the actual rather than the metaphorical kind). S. has two seventh-century Bioi, one by Theodore of Paphos (BHG 1647; completed by 665) and the other possibly by Leontios of Neapolis (BHG 1648a). Both are said to draw on a lost poem by his pupil Triphyllios. Known for his miracles, S. is a patron of shepherds and of seafarers.
By the ninth century S.'s cult had reached the West, where he is listed for 14. December in the Marble Calendar of Naples and in the martyrologies of Florus of Lyon, Ado, and Usuard.
In BHG 1647 S.'s remains are said to be still on Cyprus. But an incorrupt body believed to be his is said to have been removed to Constantinople at some point in the seventh century and to have been taken to Corfu in the later fifteenth century. Corfu's late sixteenth-century cathedral is dedicated to S., who as that island's patron saint has in the early modern period saved his people from pestilence, famine, and Turkish conquest.
In his cathedral on Corfu C. ordinarily reposes in the nineteenth-century reliquary shown here:
http://homepages.pathfinder.gr/npsailas/spiridon.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ywmlo9
But four times a year (today not being one of them) he is carried in public procession as the island's protector. On those occasions he travels in this modified sedan chair:
http://tinyurl.com/33syph
Here are views of S. being carried in procession:
http://www.greatlie.com/images/articles/AgSpyridon_sml2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ypywtl
Rear view:
http://www.travelinfo.gr/corfu/vaion.jpg
2) Corentin of Quimper (5th cent.). C. (in some places also Cury) is a Celtic saint honored in Brittany as the founding bishop of the see of Corisopitum (later, Cornouaille; now the see of Quimper-et-Léon) and in Cornwall as the patron saint of Cury on the Lizard peninsula. He has an unreliable, probably thirteenth-century Vita (different versions; BHL 1953z, 1954). Legendarily, as a hermit before becoming bishop he sustained himself on a fish from which he could cut a portion daily with no diminution of the fish's size. In 1890 a wall painting was found at the church of Breage in Cornwall (Cury's mother church) depicting C. as a bishop and with a fish beside him.
Quimper's mostly thirteenth-/fifteenth-century cathedral (the tower spires are nineteenth-century) is dedicated to C. Herewith some views:
Multiple (all expandable):
http://www.bagadoo.tm.fr/kemper/DIAPO/cathed.html
http://tinyurl.com/2zernp
http://tinyurl.com/29cp6n
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/yupqde
http://tinyurl.com/2h7np3
More views are on pp. 8 and (in two places) 7 of this blog:
http://liliflore.over-blog.com/21-archive-10-2006.html
Chapels of medieval origin dedicated to C. occur at places in Brittany adjacent to holy springs identified with locales from his Vita. Here's a page on the one at Trénivel (Finistère):
http://tinyurl.com/yr3hef
Here's a page of views on St Corentin, Cury (some images expandable):
http://www.kerrierdeanery.co.uk/CuryHist.htm
Views of wall paintings in Breage Church (C. not shown):
http://tinyurl.com/26ytbs
http://tinyurl.com/ywadd8
http://tinyurl.com/yuswnr
http://tinyurl.com/2h3kbo
Best,
John Dillon
(Spyridon lightly revised from last year's post)
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