medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. January) is the feast day of:
1) Agnes of Rome (?). Listed for today in the _Depositio Martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, A. is a martyr of the Via Nomentana, where a cemetery was named for her. Adjacent to it Constantine's daughter Constantina erected a large basilica dedicated to her, remains of which can still be seen today. When A. was martyred is unknown: the two leading candidates are the persecutions of Decius and of Valerian. Early literary notices, of which there are a number -- A. was always a popular saint --, stress her youth (twelve years old, says St. Ambrose) and, initially as an indicator of her age but quickly sexualized (as in Prudentius, _Peristephanon_, 14), her virginity.
By the time of St. Maximus of Turin (d. ca. 465), A. had a legendary Passio. This exists in numerous versions; among the highlights are extended treatments of A.'s being placed in a brothel and of the blinding of a male admirer (both already present in Prudentius' poem) and an execution in the Circus Agonalis (today's Piazza Navona). A.'s early modern church there (Sant'Agnese in Agone) is variously said to have some of her hair and/or her head. But her chief place of veneration in Rome is the church over her burial site at the aforementioned cemetery, Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura. Erected by Honorius I in the early seventh century, several times rebuilt, and containing such of her relics as are not elsewhere, this has long been the venue of today's blessing of two lambs from whose wool archiepiscopal pallia are made. Their connection with A. depends upon the similarity between her name and the Latin words _agnus_ and _agna_ ('lamb'; a frequent attribute of A.).
A text of the Ambrosian hymn _Agnes beatae virginis_ is here (starts a little more than halfway down the page):
http://tinyurl.com/28kynq
And here's a text of Prudentius, _Peristephanon_, 14 (the closing piece in this collection of triumphal poems celebrating Christian martyrs):
http://tinyurl.com/27x5gz
Brief, illustrated English-language and Italian-language accounts of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura are here:
http://tinyurl.com/2vujo6
and here:
http://www.romecity.it/Santagnese.htm
A very good, multi-page, Italian-language site on the entire complex on the Via Nomentana is here:
http://www.santagnese.org/
Images of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura:
Multiple:
http://www.santagnese.org/galleria_foto.htm
Front view:
http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/sagnese.html
Plans and section:
http://www.margaretvisser.com/part2a.html
Pope St. Damasus' epitaph for A. (_Epigrammata Damasiana_, ed. Ferrua, no. 37), inscribed in Filocalian letters:
http://www.santagnese.org/fotoHR/carme_11-01-04.jpg
Context:
http://www.santagnese.org/fonti/carme_damaso.htm
Apse mosaic:
http://www.santagnese.org/foto/mosaico.jpg
A. in the apse mosaic:
http://tinyurl.com/ywalhv
Here's the very young A. in a fourth-century _pluteus_ from the altar erected by pope Liberius (352-366) at A.'s tomb and now, like the Damasan inscription shown above, embedded in a wall alongside the basilica's entrance stairway:
http://www.santagnese.org/img/pluteo_liberio.gif
Here's A. accompanied by a lamb in the procession of the virgin martyrs (sixth-century; heavily restored) in Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare Nuovo:
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/DSCN2519.JPG
Detail:
http://tinyurl.com/3yjbth
The Royal Gold Cup in the British Museum is notable for its scenes from A.'s Passio:
http://tinyurl.com/ywqzgm
It is a bit depressing to find the British Museum misspelling the name of A.'s legendary sister, St. Emerentiana.
2) Epiphanius of Pavia (d. 496). A native of Pavia, E. was destined from childhood for an ecclesiastical career. At the age of eighteen he was made subdeacon; ordination to the diaconate followed two years later. Chaste, ascetic, studious, and eloquent, he was groomed to succeed to to the see of Pavia and did so in 466. His Vita by his student St. Ennodius (BHL 2570), our principal source for S.'s life, then focuses on his extraordinary service as a peace-seeking ambassador between rulers in Italy (emperors Anthemius and Julius Nepos; king Theodoric) and various Germanic military chiefs and foreign kings (Ricimer, Euric, Gundobad) as well as on his actions on behalf of his city under Odoacer and Theodoric. E. died of an illness he had contracted during a return journey in winter from a mission to Theodoric in Ravenna. His body lay in state for three days before being laid to rest amid universal mourning at Pavia.
Late in 962 E.'s relics were residing in a hypogeum under an extramural church in Pavia dedicated to him (presumably on the site of the later convent whose grounds now serve as the university's botanical garden) when they became the object of a transalpine _furtum sacrum_ and were translated to Hildesheim on the orders of the latter's Reichenau-educated bishop Othwin. Early in the following year E. was reinterred, not without miracles, in Hildesheim's then cathedral. Since then he has been the patron saint of the diocese of Hildesheim. Most of his relics now repose in a gilded shrine under main altar of Hildesheim's eleventh-century cathedral of St. Mariä Himmelfahrt:
http://tinyurl.com/2oat6c
Here he is at left in the tympanum of the portal to Hildesheim's earlier twelfth-century Basilika St. Godehard (image expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/yp4aaa
One of the treasures of the Hildesheim cathedral's collection of bronze work is a thirteenth-century baptismal font bearing, inter alia, an image of Epiphanius. Views of the font, including one of the scene showing E., are here:
http://tinyurl.com/3aqnlx
For a richly illustrated, German-language treatment of E. in his Hildesheimer context, see Bernhard Gallistl, _Epiphanius von Pavia. Schutzheiliger des Bistums Hildesheim_ (Hildesheim: Bernward Mediengesellschaft mbH; Gutersloh: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2000).
In 1866 a rib from E.'s relics at Hildesheim was returned to Pavia and placed in its "gothic" church of San Francesco Grande, shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2763bm
Later, a piece of this rib was also deposited in one of the city's famous "romanesque" churches, San Michele Maggiore, shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/ysldpr
http://tinyurl.com/ysu2ly
and shown and described here (Italian-language):
http://www.comune.pv.it/certosadipavia/altri3.htm
http://tinyurl.com/64unq
Four pages of views (click on "Continuazione della visita" at lower right):
http://tinyurl.com/2upq6q
3) Meinrad (d. 861). M. was a monk of Reichenau who became a hermit at a place in today's Switzerland where in the following century was founded a monastery that later became the famous Benedictine abbey of Einsiedeln. He was murdered by robbers. Venerated as a martyr, M. has a late ninth-century Passio (BHL 5878) that probably was composed at Reichenau, where in 1039 his relics received a formal _elevatio_ and where an Office was written for him that is still in use. Even before this, distribution of M.'s relics had begun. Einsiedeln has a head said to be his. A later fourteenth-century Vita by George of Gengenbach (BHL 5878b) added numerous miracles and other legendary episodes.
Here's a full-page illustration from a later fifteenth-century manuscript in the university library at Heidelberg showing M.'s martyrdom. Included in this scene are two ravens whom -- so the story goes -- M. had been feeding for some time and who had become habituated to him. They are said to have pursued M.'s murderers and by calling attention to these felons to have caused them to be brought to justice:
http://tinyurl.com/387lho
Best,
John Dillon
(Agnes and Meinrad lightly revised from last year's post)
**********************************************************************
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
|