medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. January) is or, in one case, once was the feast day of:
1) The Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. This celebration is said to appear first in the so-called _Missale Gothicum_ (Cittŕ del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. reg. lat. 317), a Gallican liturgical book from the eighth century. Saul/Paul being too well known to require an introduction on this list, herewith some visuals:
Mosaic of Paul from the Vatican collections:
http://tinyurl.com/2kevkp
(This is at:
http://www.evergreenexhibitions.com/exhibits/st_peter/images.asp
Does anyone know the mosaic's present location?)
Later thirteenth-century fresco of Paul (Vatican, Fabbrica di San Pietro):
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/vaticano/Fb-Paul.jpg
Beato Angelico, illumination of the Conversion (ca. 1430), Florence, Museo nazionale di San Marco, Missale 558, f. 21:
http://tinyurl.com/2hfuvh
http://tinyurl.com/28a2o2
Illumination of the Conversion, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. ser. nov. 2702 (the "Admont Bible"; earlier twelfth-century), f. 199v:
http://tinyurl.com/2hldgb
Expandable view of illumination of the Conversion in London British Library, Ms. Yates Thompson 49 (ca. 1470), vol. 1, f. 44:
http://tinyurl.com/25zv5j
There's a selection of expandable views of illuminations of the Conversion on the first two pages here:
http://tinyurl.com/yrzbpu
2) Ananias of Damascus (d. 1st cent.). The Christian who healed St. Paul of his physical blindness and who baptized him (Acts 9:10-18). Here's A. baptizing Paul in a panel of the Retable of St. Paul (late fourteenth-/very early fifteenth-century) at the cathedral museum, Mdina, Malta:
http://www.joannalace.org.uk/pics/fig5.png
And a view of the retable as a whole:
http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images4/st_171-15.jpg
In today's Damascus one may visit a chapel located in a structure alleged to have been A.'s house:
http://tinyurl.com/2lmkql
3) Artemas of Pozzuoli (?). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is a child martyr of ancient Puteoli, today's Pozzuoli (NA) in Campania. He was figured in the now lost cupola mosaics of the late fifth-/early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at today's San Prisco (CE) in Campania, an extramural survivor of (Old) Capua. The cathedral at Pozzuoli has a display reliquary of A.'s ashes.
In the tenth century the talented Neapolitan hagiographer Peter the Subdeacon produced at the request of bishop Stephen of Pozzuoli (956-62) a Passio of A. (BHL 0717) that makes him an adept older pupil of a pagan schoolmaster who put him in charge of teaching letters to other students. The young A. used this opportunity to inculcate as well basic mysteries of the Christian faith so effectively that his pagan charges eagerly told other students -- also pagan -- what they had been learning. These in turn went to the schoolmaster and threatened to report him to the provincial magistrate unless he put a stop to A.'s teaching. The schoolmaster then had some of these students stab A. to death with their styluses.
Peter, who tells a nice story, also gives today as A.'s _dies natalis_. He refers to the schoolmaster at times by the latinized Greek word 'cathigeta' ('head of a school'), which latter some have printed with a majuscule 'C' and which others incautiously have taken to be the schoolmaster's actual name. For his _Passio s. Artemae_ see Edoardo D'Angelo, ed., Pietro Suddiacono napoletano, _L'opera agiografica_ (Tavarnuzze: SISMEL; Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002), pp. LXXXI-LXXXII and 42-49).
4) Proiectus of Cavour (d. 5th or 6th cent.). The now extinct cult of P. (in Italian, Proietto) at today's Cavour (TO) in Piedmont is attested for several centuries starting in the eleventh, when he was celebrated on this day -- probably because this is the feast day of the similarly named saint in 5), below. In the early nineteenth century his tombstone was found along the road leading from Cavour to Campiglione; this confirmed local tradition that P. had been a bishop but gave his _dies natalis_ as 19. October. Excavations in 1905 in the former abbey of Santa Maria at Cavour produced a small leaden reliquary containing relics of a saint of this name who may well have been this local one rather than one of his better known homonyms.
5) Praeiectus of Clermont and Amarinus of Doroangus (d. 676). A native of Auvergne, P. (also Proiectus; in French, Project, Prix, Pry, Priest, etc.) is said in his late seventh-century Vita (BHL 6916) to have been educated at the abbey of St. Austremonius at Issoire and to have been a confidant of St. Genesius whom, after a few briefly serving others, he succeeded as bishop of today's Clermont-Ferrand in 666. He founded numerous monasteries, one of which used land that the count of Marseille had expected to inherit. When the count slandered P., the latter defended himself successfully before Childeric II, who then had the count arrested and executed. On a later journey to the court P. was the victim of a revenge slaying at today's Volvic (Puy-de-Dôme). A. (in French, Amarin or Marin), the abbot of a monastery at a place called Doroangus (today's Saint-Amarin [Haut-Rhin]), was traveling with P. and shared his fate.
P.'s cult was immediate. Relics of him were distributed to various places in today's France at different times from 675 onward. Here's a page on the partly twelfth-century abbey church dedicated to him at Volvic:
http://tinyurl.com/34rs3z
Another view of the chevet:
http://tinyurl.com/2qe55v
A view of the originally twelfth(?)-century église St-Projet at Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire):
http://tourisme-gourdon.com/img/mo_projet_big.jpg
A view of the originally thirteenth-century église St-Prix at Saint-Prix (Val-d'Oise):
http://tinyurl.com/33qlo6
A view of the originally fifteenth-century église St-Projet at Saint Projet (Tarn-et-Garonne):
http://tinyurl.com/389rbp
Best,
John Dillon
(Paul, Ananias, and Artemas lightly revised from last year's post)
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