medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (28. January) is the feast day of:
1) Aemilianus of Trevi (d. ca. 305, supposedly). A. (also Milianus) has a Passio (BHL 107) that makes him an Armenian who late in the third century arrived at Spoleto, where he impressed Christians with his piety, asceticism, and preaching ability. With papal approval he was made bishop of nearby Trebia(e), today's Trevi (PG) in Umbria. Arrested during the Diocletianic persecution, he was subjected to various tortures, exposed unsuccessfully to wild beasts, and finally decapitated at nearby Bovara while bound to a young olive tree. When the Passio was written an olive tree was being pointed out as the very one to which he had been tied. A. is the patron saint of Trevi, whose former cathedral (the diocese is now united with that of Spoleto) is named after him. At some point his remains were removed to Spoleto, where in 1660 they were discovered in that city's cathedral; today they are back in Trevi.
What is thought to be the oldest olive tree in Umbria is located in Bovara; it owes its preservation to the local belief that it is the tree that witnessed A.'s martyrdom. A couple of expandable black-and-white views of it are here:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/olivoSe1.asp
Trevi itself is an attractive hill town. For a panoramic view, see:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/images/Trevi,pan01.jpg
Exterior views of Trevi's originally twelfth- or early thirteenth-century church of Sant'Emiliano (rebuilt in the nineteenth century and expanded in the early twentieth):
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/semil.asp
http://tinyurl.com/7ozkm
Tympanum (fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/a6nkw
http://tinyurl.com/cxtzw
Commentary on the tympanum (by Bill Thayer, a classical archeologist much travelled in Umbria):
http://tinyurl.com/7n6g7
The interior is mostly neoclassical (neo-Albertian, actually). But not the interior of this apse:
http://www.protrevi.com/protrevi/semil35.asp
Views of other medieval churches in and near Trevi (PG) may be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/8oyj7
There is a text of the _Passio sancti Miliani_ in Carlo Zenobi, _Trevi antica, dal neolitico fino al 1214_ (Foligno: Maria Raffaella Trabalza editore, 1995).
2) Charlemagne (Bl.; 814). "Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes" (the opening words of the _Chanson de Roland_) was canonized by the pro-imperial antipope Paschal III in 1165 and enjoyed a later medieval cult especially in the empire and in France. One reads in some potted notices that his cult was confirmed by Benedict XIV (1740-58) but C.'s notice at the "Santi Beati" site
http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/91756
is careful to point out that Benedict was not yet pope when he observed in his _De servorum Dei beatificatione_ that C.'s traditional cult constituted the equivalent of beatification. C. (who does not appear in the RM) is celebrated liturgically today in the cathedral of Aachen, where the celebration is a locally permitted feast, and at the abbeys of Metten (Landkr. Deggendorf) in Bavaria and Müstair (Münster; founded by C.) in Graubünden, where it is "tolerated" by the Sacred Congregation of Rites.
Some views of C.'s shrine (1215) in the cathedral of Aachen:
http://tinyurl.com/2ao9pd
http://tinyurl.com/yvmohk
Here C.'s designation _SANCTVS_ appears very clearly (left to right in lower register: St. Leo III; C.; archbishop Turpin of Reims, thought to have been the author of the _Historia Karoli Magni_):
http://tinyurl.com/22cujz
Some views of C.'s reliquary bust (ca. 1349) in the cathedral treasury at Aachen:
http://entoen.nu/media.aspx?id=4
http://www.bonnensia.de/geschichte/karl034.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2kyj36
http://tinyurl.com/2bfu6j
Nimbed C. (ca. 1388), in a pontifical and missal for the Use of Luçon (Paris, BnF, Ms. Latin 8886, fol. 400v):
http://expositions.bnf.fr/fouquet/grand/f628.htm
3) Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). Today's well known saint of the Regno was a nephew of one of the kingdom's great nobles, Tommaso d'Aquino, count of Acerra and Grand Justiciar of the realm. His father, Landolfo d'Aquino (the count's younger brother), was the lord of Roccasecca, the castle where T. was born. Educated first at Montecassino and then at the University of Naples, T. shocked his family by becoming a Dominican novice. Unhappy at this turn of events, T.'s father had him kidnapped and held at another castle until he (T.) should come to his senses. After almost two years T. managed to escape with the aid of his sister Theodora and then entered upon the life's work that would make him famous. For that, one may read Ralph McInerny's account of T. in the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
A couple of views of what's left of the castle at Roccasecca (FR) in southern Lazio are here:
http://tinyurl.com/28dpo8
Here's T. from Andrea da Firenze's Triumph of St. Thomas and Allegory of the Sciences (1365-68; Santa Maria Novella, Florence):
http://tinyurl.com/lcfae
A view of the entire composition:
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/a/andrea/firenze/thomas.jpg
T. died at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova at today's Priverno (LT), also in southern Lazio. A touristy, English-language account of the abbey's architectural highlights is here:
http://www.initaly.com/regions/church/church4.htm
Various views of the abbey church (begun, 1187; consecrated, 1208) and other of its monuments (cloister, chapter house, etc.) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/mrbyb
and here (use menu at left):
http://www.geocities.com/cpaglia/Fossanova/Fossanova.html
and here (individual frames open up):
http://www.fossanova.ofmconv.pl/galleria.html
Best,
John Dillon
(Aemilianus of Trevi and Thomas Aquinas lightly revised from last year's post)
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