medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (9. January) is the feast day of:
1) Marcellinus of Ancona (d. 5th or 6th cent.). M. is the traditional third bishop of Ancona and one of its patron saints. According to pope St. Gregory I (_Dialogues_, 1. 6), when a fire had broken out in that city and could not be put out by ordinary means bishop M., who suffered from gout, instructed that he be brought in his litter to a point next to the flames and be set down there; this was done and right away the fire recoiled from him and ceased its advance, this sparing the remaining buildings. According to St. Bede the Venerable (prose _Life of St. Cuthbert_, ch. 13), Cuthbert imitated M. when he prevented a fire in a village from assailing a house into which he had entered. M.'s own seemingly very late Vita (BHL 5225; all witnesses early modern) is based on Gregory's narration.
Remains believed to be those of M. were brought in the eleventh century from Ancona's palaeochristian cathedral of St. Stephen into its new one that later (thirteenth or fourteenth century) came to be known as that of St. Cyriac (San Ciriaco). They still repose in the crypt of that later much damaged and rebuilt structure, whose exterior is shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/36p74m
A fragmentary sixth-century Gospels (after 550; _Codices Latini Antiquiores_, III, no. 278) preserved in Ancona's Museo Diocesano has long been associated with M. and in pious legend is said to have been held by him when he operated the miracle of the fire.
2) Hadrian of Canterbury (d. 709). H. (or A., if you prefer to call him 'Adrian') was of North African origin. Because he is said to have been equally versed in Greek and in Latin, many have supposed an origin in one of the Greek-speaking provinces of the African litoral. In the early to mid-660s this saint of the Regno was twice an imperial ambassador in Francia. When in 667 pope St. Vitalian offered him the vacant archbishopric of Canterbury, H. was abbot of a monastery near Naples usually thought to have been located on the islet unoriginally named Nisida (Greek for 'islet'). H. declined the offer but suggested someone else from Naples who in turn declined for reasons of health. When Vitalian then chose Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek monk living in Rome whom H. had also suggested, he also appointed H. to go with him.
In 668 both set out for Britain, with Theodore arriving in 669 and H. (who had been detained in Gaul on suspicion of being an imperial agent) arriving in the year following. In accordance with a command from Vitalian, Theodore made H. abbot of the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul at Canterbury. After a tour of the archdiocese the two settled down in Canterbury, where H. became famous for the instruction he gave at the monastery. According to Bede (who until this point in H.'s life is our only early source for him), H. taught not only Holy Scripture but also versification, astronomy, and the computus. Probably his best known student today was St. Aldhelm.
Citations of H. in later biblical commentaries and glosses show him to have been engaged in literal exposition. Pre-Conquest liturgical documents of various sorts reveal early English observance of feasts associated particularly with Naples and its environs; the usual explanation for this is that H. brought with him (or gave to Theodore) a sacramentary of Campanian origin.
No remains of a monastery even roughly contemporary with H. have been found on Nisida. In ancient Roman times the Caesarian tyrannicide Q. Caepio Brutus had a villa on the island; Cicero had a long conversation with him there shortly after the assassination. During the War of the Sicilian Vespers a planned insular Sicilian landing on the island as the initial phase of a lightning campaign to seize Naples was foiled by Angevin naval resistance. After the fall of Rhodes in 1522 the Grand Master and his fleet were quarantined at Nisida for several weeks before being allowed to enter Naples. The island was used as a quarantine station into the twentieth century; from at least the eighteenth century until the twentieth it also housed a prison of very ill repute. Today it is probably best known as the site of a penal institution for minors. Herewith some views:
Looking SSE from Pozzuoli, with Posillipo (at left) and Nisida in the middle distance and the Sorrentine Peninsula and Capri in the far distance:
http://www.ulixes.it/archivio_foto/arch_foto_pag64.htm
Same, detail:
http://www.ulixes.it/archivio_foto/arch_foto_pag63.htm
Looking south across the industrial desert of Coroglio:
http://www.ulixes.it/archivio_foto/arch_foto_pag61.htm
A closer view of the island, same perspective (more or less):
http://www.sfonditalia.it/images/RitaChiliberti/Nisida_800.jpg
The approach by land (causeway):
http://www.ulixes.it/archivio_foto/arch_foto_pag62.htm
Aerial views from the south, revealing Nisida as a sunken volcanic cone:
http://www.cimimontubi.it/PAGES/AREE/BAGNOLI/01pop.htm
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/nisidacrater.jpg
Satellite view (rather grainy):
http://www.guidemediterranee.com/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=358
Best,
John Dillon
(Hadrian very lightly revised from last year's post)
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