medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (3. January) is the feast day of:
1) Daniel of Padua (?). On 26. December 1075 in the suburban monastery of Santa Giustina at Padua an ancient marble sarcophagus was unearthed and declared to contain the remains of a hitherto unknown Daniel, deacon and martyr. On 3. January of the following year the city's bishop effected a translation of the saint in his sarcophagus to Padua's then cathedral; within a week, he compensated Santa Giustina by commissioning and donating to the monastery an oratory dedicated to D. Probably not long thereafter an account of this invention and translation was written (BHL 2090); surviving in shorter (late eleventh-century) and longer (after 1117) versions, this linked D. to Padua's legendary protobishop saint Prosdocimus and placed his martyrdom in the second century; modern scholars think it more likely that D. was a victim of the Great Persecution. A twelfth-century sequence belonging to D.'s cult is said to be Padua's oldest surviving example of religious poetry.
Padua's basilica of Santa Giustina:
http://tinyurl.com/dc4jj
was severely damaged in an earthquake in 1117 and has since been rebuilt several times. Its late antique Oratorio di San Prosdocimo contains a reconstructed pergola shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/wexj3
and in several of the views here:
http://tinyurl.com/aslw8
and discussed in Gillian Mackie, _Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function and Patronage_ (U. of Toronto Press, 2003).
The site of the oratory to D. granted in 1076 is now occupied by Padua's church of San Daniele:
http://tinyurl.com/ajz2z
In 1592 D. was translated to Padua's present cathedral. He is one of Padua's patron saints. Probably his most famous monument is his statue by Donatello executed between 1445 and 1450 as part of the decor of the high altar of Padua's basilica of Sant'Antonio. A view of the entire ensemble, with D. at upper right:
http://www.wga.hu/art/d/donatell/2_mature/padova/2altar00.jpg
There's a full-length front view of this statue in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 4, at col. 475; partial views are here:
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90275/90275.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/y4ro75
D. is at upper left in Andrea Mantegna's St. Luke Polyptych (1453-54), formerly in Padua's Santa Giustina and now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan:
http://tinyurl.com/2ko9t9
2) Genovefa of Paris (d. very early 6th cent.). G. (Geneviève) is the patron saint of Paris. According to her early Vitae (BHL 3334, etc.; first version composed ca. 520), she was born at Nanterre. Early in life she was consecrated to God by St. Germanus of Auxerre and at the age of fifteen renewed her vow of virginity before another bishop. After the death of her parents she went to Paris to live with her godmother and began to practice a strongly ascetic lifestyle. She predicted that the Huns would spare Paris, got king Childeric to spare the lives of some prisoners he intended to have executed, and saved Paris from starvation during a siege by replenishing its grain supply. She died aged more than eighty and was laid to rest on this day. A small oratory built over her tomb was replaced by king Clovis and his queen Clothild with a basilica dedicated to the Holy Apostles. Thus far the Vitae.
The monastic community that Clovis and Clothild founded to serve G.'s church (in which latter they were also buried) later took G.'s name. It became a canonry in the ninth century and erected a new church that was was largely complete in 1177 but which underwent several modifications and changes in function before being secularized for the last time in 1885 and then torn down. Here are a couple of views of the church from old engravings:
http://la-france-orthodoxe.net/fr/galer/49
http://tinyurl.com/252oza
Early modern depictions of the abbey in various maps of the city are shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/3cy7mg
G.'s relics are said to have been profaned and dispersed both in 1793 and in 1871. Her empty tomb from the church of Sainte-Geneviève now reposes in the nearby church of Saint-Etienne:
http://ndjasg.free.fr/StEtienne/StEtTomSteGen2.html
http://ancre.chez-alice.fr/clovis/chasse.jpeg
The same church also preserves a relic of G. that had already been outside of Paris at the time of the Revolution:
http://tinyurl.com/2e3twd
Here's a view of a reliquary (for a contact relic?) of G. from ca. 1370 now in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny), showing a scene from the Vitae in which G. by a simple gesture relights a torch that had gone out, leaving her in darkness:
http://tinyurl.com/36sgau
The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris has a very nice online exhibit of illuminated manuscripts illustrating aspects of G.'s iconography (e.g. G. as shepherdess, said to be a development of the fourteenth century):
http://www-bsg.univ-paris1.fr/la_reserve/expo/index.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(Daniel of Padua revised from last year's post)
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