medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (18. February) is the feast day of:
1) Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 806). T. belonged to a prominent family of Constantinople. His father had been city prefect and he himself is attested as imperial protoasecretis in 780. He was not in Holy Orders when in December 784 he was elected patriarch. The empress Irene's chief instrument in the restoration of the icons, T. secured pope Hadrian I's acceptance of his uncanonical elevation and proceeded to manage the Second Council of Niceaa (787), at which iconoclasm was condemned.
For the remainder of his pontificate T. attempted to avoid domination both by rigorists at the Stoudion monastery and by the emperor Constantine VI, whose bigamous second marriage T. declined to solemnize but nonetheless managed to countenance. His Bios by his secretary Ignatius (BHG 1698) makes him out to have been holy and much put upon. Personally ascetic, he was venerated as a saint after his death.
Medieval images certainly of this T. seem not to exist on the free Web. So, for context, here's a portrait of the empress Irene (deposed, 802):
http://tinyurl.com/2yp5hm
and a solidus with portraits of Constantine VI (deposed, 797) and Irene:
http://www.dirtyoldcoins.com/gandinga/id/c6/c6003.jpg
and a plan and a series of views of the remains of the originally fifth-century church of St. John the Forerunner in the Stoudion are at no. 15 here:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/html/Byzantine/index.htm
2) Angilbert of Centula (d. 814). A. was a Frank of noble parentage who was educated at the royal court, where his tutors included Peter of Pisa and Paulinus not-yet-of Aquileia. He was a lifelong friend of the slightly older Charlemagne. An early appointment was as _primicerius palatiae_ for Charlemagne's son Pepin, king of Italy. Later A. was head of the place school at Aachen and, along with Alcuin of York and Theodulf of Orléans, a leading court poet. He was especially close with Charlemagne's unmarried daughter Bertha, by whom he had two childen (one being the historian Nithard). In about 789 Charlemagne made A. abbot of the great monastery at Centula, later St.-Riquier and now St.-Riquier-sur-Somme (Somme) in Picardy. A. endowed this house with buildings and with books. He also continued to serve Charles as a diplomatic emissary in ecclesiastical matters, making four trips to Rome on behalf of his monarch.
A. was buried in the abbey church. In 842 he was given what appears to have been an elevatio, at which time, according to his son Nithard (who was also a monk of this house and who later became its abbot), his body was found to be incorrupt. A. has a brief Vita by the abbey's late eleventh-century chronicler, Hariulf (BHL 469) and an expanded one (BHL 470) by its abbot Anscher (r., 1096-1136). He was canonized by Paschal II in 1100.
A.'s abbey church of St. Richarius (the monastery's seventh-century founder) no longer exists. Known piecemeal from verbal descriptions, from drawings based upon a now lost eleventh-century miniature, and from excavations at the site, it occupies an important place in the history of Carolingian ecclesiastical architecture. This French-language page offers an expandable view of it as depicted in an early seventeenth-century engraving of one of the aforementioned drawings:
http://tinyurl.com/35o8or
An English-language page on the church's early sixteenth-century successor (after a couple of intermediate rebuildings):
http://tinyurl.com/36slej
Some views of that church:
http://tinyurl.com/3yml93
http://tinyurl.com/3cwyaz
http://motobalade62.free.fr/Artois/Saint_Riquier%20032.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2y98fo
http://motobalade62.free.fr/Artois/Saint_Riquier%20012.jpg
3) John of Fiesole (Bl.; d. 1455). J., whose early name in the world was Guido di Piero (a Tuscan equivalent of Guy son of Peter), was born at today's Vicchio (FI) in the Mugello. He entered the Order of Preachers at Fiesole while yet a boy and completed his novitiate at Cortona. In his early twenties G. (as he then was) made his monastic profession at Florence, taking the name John. Trained as a painter, he worked at Fiesole, Florence, and Rome. Despite his being favored with papal patronage he is said to have been personally very humble. J. died at the Dominican convent in Rome and was buried there in his Order's church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. He is known popularly as Fra Angelico or, after his beatification in 1982, as Beato Angelico.
Here are two views of J.'s sepulchral monument in Santa Maria sopra Minerva:
http://tinyurl.com/358tut
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/41575/41575E.JPG
Best,
John Dillon
(Tarasius and John of Fiesole lightly revised from last year's post)
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