medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

3 mars: fête de saint Guénolé, fondateur du monastère de Landévennec:
http://abbaye-landevennec.cef.fr/
http://www.infobretagne.com/abbaye_de_landevennec.htm
sur saint Guénolé:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A9nol%C3%A9_de_Land%C3%A9vennec (french)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Winwaloe (english)
culte de saint Guénolé en Bretagne:
http://pays.carnac.free.fr/culte_saint-guenole.php?cont=st
Sur les Evangéliaires de Landévennec:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pecia/Evang%E9liaires%20bretons%20carolingiens.htm

jean luc deuffic
http://blog.pecia;fr



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 2:17 AM
Subject: [M-R] saints of the day 3. March


medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (3. March) is the feast day of:

1)  Arthellais (Artellais; also forms with single 'l'; d. ca. 560, 
supposedly).  Today's less well known saint from the Regno has an 
incident-laden, highly fictional Vita that survives in at least three 
versions of differing length (BHL 718-720).  A high-born, youthful virgin 
forced to flee her native Constantinople for the safety of her uncle Narses'
Italy, she and her retinue of eunuch attendants have a series of adventures 
en route.  After crossing the Adriatic and visiting the sanctuary of St. 
Michael on Monte Gargano where she makes a generous donation, A. arrives in 
Benevento, makes a major donation to its central church of the BVM, performs 
miracles, and in short order dies of an illness.

By the late eleventh century Benevento had a church of St. A.  This still 
existed in 1370.   At some point after that A.'s relics were moved to 
Benevento's medieval cathedral (a later version of the church of the BVM 
mentioned in the Vita), where in the eighteenth century they were said to 
repose below the main altar.  With any luck they will have survived the 
terrible bombing of the cathedral by American warplanes on 12. September 
1943.  Today's saint of the day in the Diocese of Benevento is Kunigunde 
(no. 3, below).  The Diocese's website
http://tinyurl.com/7p8xh
omits A. from its section on the diocesan _santi_.


2)  Anselm of Nonantola (d. 803).  Duke of Friuli and brother-in-law of the 
Lombard king Aistulf, A. became a cleric and with Aistulf's support founded, 
a couple of years after the Lombard conquest of Ravenna in ca. 750, a 
monastery in southern Emilia near Bologna along the main road from the 
Lombard capitals in the north.  This later became the great abbey of (pope) 
St. Sylvester at Nonantola, whose reconstruction of its early history 
included an imagined papal donation of S.'s remains to abbot A.

A.'s abbatial tenure saw the creation of several dependencies.  It was 
interrupted for the entirety of the reign of king Desiderius, when another 
abbot was appointed and A. lived in exile at Montecassino.  A. was restored 
after Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774.  He assisted in 
reconciling the count and the bishop of Brescia (both nephews of Desiderius) 
with their new overlord, the king of the Franks.

This panel from the famous sculptures of the main portal at the abbey church 
of Nonantola (MO) seems to show Aistulf endowing A. with the possession of 
the land on which his monastery would be built:
http://tinyurl.com/yummdg
And this one shows the completed monastery with a founder's portrait of the 
now tonsured and beardless A. (looking a great deal like a more recent 
_duce_):
http://tinyurl.com/2zfc2n
These images are from the Italia nell'Arte Medievale site on the abbey 
church:
http://tinyurl.com/yzz8pu


3)  Kunigunde of Luxemburg (d. 1033 or 1039).  Daughter of count Siegfried I 
of Lützelburg (Luxemburg), K. (Cunegunda, Cunegundis, etc.) was married in 
about the year 1000 to duke Henry III of Bavaria (the future emperor St. 
Henry II).  In June 1002, six months after the death of his cousin Otto III, 
Henry had himself crowned king of the Germans at Mainz.  A separate 
coronation of K. as queen took place in early August in the cathedral of 
Paderborn.  The upper illumination on this page from the Pericopes of Henry 
II (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4452; no later than 1012) shows 
them both being crowned by Christ:
http://tinyurl.com/2nuggg
Most of K.'s official acts have to do with support for churches and 
monasteries.  In 1007 the royal couple used her dowry to found the diocese 
of Bamberg.  In 1014 Henry and K. were jointly crowned as emperor and 
empress by Benedict VIII.  After Henry's death in 1024 K. exercised a brief 
regency.  In 1025, after the accession of Konrad II, she retired to the 
monastery of Kaufungen near Kassel and lived there until her death as a 
simple nun.

Here's a black-and-white view of a charter of Henry II from 1019 granting 
properties to the monastery at Kaufungen:
http://tinyurl.com/2c4avd
The monastery is gone but its church remains.  Here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/2kyq8f
And an illustrated, German-language page on the monastery is here:
http://www.akademie-im-stiftshof.de/kloster.htm

K.'s cult seems to have begun after Henry's canonization in 1146.  She was 
canonized in 1200 by Innocent III and in 1201 her remains were translated to 
the cathedral of Bamberg, the Bamberger Dom.  Her canonization Vita (BHL 
2001) was subsequently modified several times, as was also her Office.  In 
1513 the pair was translated to their present resting place, the great tomb 
in the Bamberger Dom sculpted by Tilman Riemenschneider (K. at left):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Kunigunde-Grab.jpg
Herewith two illustrated, German-language pages on the cathedral:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamberger_Dom
http://tinyurl.com/2szkw4
K. and Henry may be seen, in recent replacement copies (mounted, 2002), on 
the cathedral's Adamspforte (Adam's Portal; variously dated to ca. 1225 or 
to ca. 1237).  The original statues are now in the diocesan museum.
http://tinyurl.com/3a3z5w
They are shown as founders in this representation of them on the 
fourteenth-century tomb (1340) of bishop St. Otto of Bamberg (d. 1139) in 
the crypt of Bamberg's St. Michelskirche:
http://tinyurl.com/2hsceu
Here, from the website of the Diocese of Bamberg, are expandable views of 
panel carvings of them, each holding half of the Bamberger Dom:
http://tinyurl.com/2whxrq
They, and that building, are united in this representation of them in the 
Beloit College copy of the _Nuremburg Chronicle_:
http://tinyurl.com/yt7dwl

The Antependium of Basel, a piece of early eleventh-century gold repoussé 
work now in the Musée National du Moyen Age (Musée Cluny) in Paris, shows 
Henry and K. at the feet of its central figure of Christ (for a better view 
of them, click on the thumbnail over "Altar Face of"):
http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/pages/page_id18362_u1l2.htm
A better view of the piece as a whole is here (but treat with caution the 
accompanying statement of when and under what circumstances this antependium 
came to Basel):
http://tinyurl.com/2yje6t
Here are K. and Henry in statues from ca. 1290 on Basel's ex-cathedral, the 
Basler Münster, whose rebuilding Henry initiated and which later medieval 
tradition in Basel held had been consecrated in the couple's presence in 
1019:
http://www.altbasel.ch/pic/doss_heinrich1.jpg
Here they are again, flanking the BVM in a sculpture of ca. 1511 on the 
facade of Basel's city hall:
http://www.altbasel.ch/pic/doss_heinrich3.jpg
And here they are in a window from 1520 in the same building's Saal des 
Regierungsrates:
http://www.bs.ch/heinrich-gross.jpg


4)  Peter Geremia (Bl.; d. 1452).  The Palermo-born P. belonged to one of 
the numerous originally knightly families ennobled under Frederick III (the 
prevalent numeration for Sicily's second monarch of this name) who formed 
the core of the Sicilian capital's nobility in the fourteenth century. 
While studying law at Bologna he is said to have been visited one night by 
the spirit of a deceased relative, also a lawyer, who lamented that his own 
worldly success had led to sins that cost him entry into Heaven.  Thus 
prompted by an early fifteenth-century predecessor of Marley's Ghost, P. 
chose a life of religion.  In 1424, without informing his father, he entered 
the Order of Preachers.  After a period of training at Fiesole under St. 
Antoninus of Florence, P. was ordained priest and began a brilliant career 
of preaching and teaching at the papal court and at various places in the 
north of Italy.

Sent to Sicily as his Order's vicar, P. led a program of Observant reform 
and encouraged the founding of schools and hospitals by Dominican houses. 
In 1444 he was in Catania to reorganize the convent of Santa Maria La Grande 
when lava flowing from Mt. Etna threatened the city.  Carrying St. Agatha's 
famous funerary veil in the traditional apotropaic procession, P. assisted 
her in halting the flow at today's Sant'Agata Li Battiati (CT).  On 18. 
October 1445 P. delivered the inaugural address, _De laude scientiarum_, at 
the opening of Catania's university, the Siculorum Gymnasium.  The island's 
first university, this had been authorized in 1434 by king Alfonso but only 
began operation now, on the basis of a papal bull issued in 1444 by Eugenius 
IV and entrusted to Peter for execution.

P. died in Palermo at his Order's convent of Santa Cita (Zita) several years 
before its completion of a new church of that name that was replaced by yet 
another in the 1580s.  The latter, now bearing a late eighteenth-century 
facade and rebuilt after suffering severe damage in World War II, houses a 
spectacular collection of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century 
religious art, including several pieces by Antonello Gagini and the Pietà by 
Giorgio da Milano shown here:
http://www.entasis.it/grandtour/Pasantacita1.htm
This page, which has a not awfully good expandable view of Gagini's funerary 
sculpture for Santa Cita's cappella Platamone, is better than some others 
for the convent's early history:
http://www.campodivolo.it/canale.asp?id=2165
P.'s cult was maintained by the Dominicans of his province and was confirmed 
papally in 1784.  P. is a civic patron of the city of Palermo.

Best,
John Dillon
(older posts revised)

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