medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (22. December) is the feast day of:
1) Chaeremon and many other martyrs (d. 250). This entry in the RM collectively honors Egyptian victims of the Decian persecution. Chaeremon was bishop of Nilopolis who at a great old age fled with his wife into Arabia and was not seen again by members of the church in Egypt. We know about him and others from an account by St. Dionysius of Alexandria quoted by Eusebius. They entered Western cult tradition through Ado and Usuard, who had read about them in Rufinus' translation of Eusebius into Latin.
2) Ischyrion (d. 250). Another Egyptian whose cult comes through the same set of sources, I. was a subordinate official in some Egyptian city (traditionally, Alexandria) whose refusal to sacrifice to pagan divinities led to his death by impalement.
3) Thirty Martyrs of Rome (?). Victims of an unspecified persecution, they are said to have been executed together. According to the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, they were buried in the cemetery _Ad duas lauros_, whose underground portion later became known by its now standard designation as that of Marcellinus and Peter.
4) Jutta of Sponheim (Bl.; d. 1136). J. was a well-connected noblewoman who became an anchorite at the Benedictine abbey of the Disibodenberg (Mount Disibod, named after the monastery's reputed founder, St. Disibod). Here she had charge of a few female child oblates, one of whom was her famous pupil St. Hildegard of Bingen. At the time of J'.s death these oblates had become a small community who elected Hildegard to succeed her as their leader. Postmortem miracles were reported and a cult -- not limited to inhabitants of the Disibodenberg -- quickly developed. The distraction of dealing with noisy visitors to J.'s shrine is said to have been part of Hildegard's motivation in moving her community to the Rupertsberg then near Bingen (now it's _in_ Bingen, which latter has grown somewhat).
Everything we know about J. comes through the writings of Hildegard and her associates. J.'s Vita (BHL 4613b) is thought to have been written by Hildegard's longtime confidant and amanuensis, prior Volmar. For an introduction to their affective portrait of her, see Anna Silvas, tr., _ Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources_ (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999).
Remains of the monastery on the Disibodenberg can still be viewed near Odernheim (Kreis Bad Kreuznach) in Rheinland-Pfalz. Herewith some views (the piano in the first was set up for a concert this past August):
http://www.bingen.de/upload/konzert_verwunschener_ort_3371.jpg
http://www.bad-sobernheim.de/tourismus/disibodenberg
http://tinyurl.com/2h8zr5
http://tinyurl.com/24eg27
http://tinyurl.com/22x84t
There's a nice fifteenth-century painting in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum at Bonn showing a fully nimbate J. presenting two oblates (Hiltrud and Hildegard) to St. Bernard. But I couldn't quickly find a view of that on the free Web. So here are two portraits of the creators of J.'s memory, Hildegard and Volmar:
http://tinyurl.com/2h4fdq
(_Liber Scivias_; Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden, Hs. 2 [the so-called Riesencodex], c. 1180).
http://faculty.luther.edu/~martinka/art43/daily/2nd/hil4.jpg
(_Liber divinorum operum_; Lucca, Biblioteca statale, cod. lat. 1942; early thirteenth century).
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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