medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. March 2008) is Easter Sunday. Ordinarily, 23. March is the feast day of:
1) Victorianus, Frumentius, and companions (d. ca. 484). We have Florus of Lyon to thank for this grouping, which consists of five martyrs put to death for the most part separately during king Huneric's persecution of Catholics in Vandal Africa and for whom the sole source is Victor of Vita's _Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae_. V. was a prominent and extremely wealthy citizen of Hadrumetum (now Sousse) and. at the time of his martyrdom, proconsul of Carthage. Huneric, who trusted V. and respected his abilities, promised to place him above all others (in government service, presumably) if only he would convert to the Arian persuasion. Victor (3. 27) provides a stirring though surely imaginary expression of V.'s refusal but claims that V.'s torture was so long and so varied that it was beyond human capacity to relate.
Frumentius is presumably the first of a pair of merchants of this name, both of the same town. Victor tells us (3. 41) that their martyrdom was glorious. The companions are the other Frumentius and two unnamed brothers from Aqua Regia (said to have been in Africa Byzacena, the province south of Africa Proconsularis), whose martyrdom by various means in the city of Tambeae Victor describes (3. 28) in order to highlight the miracle that their corpses showed no signs of abuse.
Florus placed the commemoration of these martyrs on 26. July; Ado moved them to today. V. has a modern cult (originating with the arrival of relics in 1753) at Canneto in today's Adelfia (BA) in Apulia.
2) Walter of Pontoise (d. 1095 or 1099). W. was a well educated, ascetically inclined Picard who gave up being regent master of a school (with aristocratic patrons) to enter religion at Rebais-en-Brie. While he was there he fed a famished prisoner in the abbot's jail and then released the man upon his undertaking to do no further injury to the church and not to seek revenge for his ill treatment. W. then informed the abbot of what he had done, expecting both a tongue-lashing and a physical beating, both of which he did receive in ample measure. We are not told with what feelings the abbot later greeted the news that his distinguished and troublesome monk had just been named by the young king Philip I to head an abbey being founded at Pontoise, on the opposite side of Paris from Brie.
According to at least his first two Vitae (BHL 8798 and its expansion, BHL 8796), W. was in almost every respect a model abbot. But the stresses of the position caused him twice to flee his burden, the first time becoming a monk at Cluny and the second time a hermit on an island in the Loire near Tours. On both occasions he was quickly discovered and made to return. A subsequent petition to pope St. Gregory VII for permission to resign was denied. From G.'s point of view, presumably, W. could do more good as a reforming abbot in the Ile de France, where he opposed simony and nicolaism and was given to speaking forthrightly to king and to bishops.
W. was laid to rest in the abbey church of St-Martin, at that time still under construction. Miracles were reported at his tomb and a collection of these (BHL 8797) seems to have been drawn up after 1114 but before his canonization in 1153. The latter was performed by the archbishop of Rouen in the presence of the bishops of Paris and of Senlis as well as of emissaries from the archbishop of Reims. Both the abbey of St-Martin and its church have disappeared. W., said to be still resting in his twelfth-/thirteenth-century tomb, now reposes in the église Notre-Dame at Pontoise, a late sixteenth-century successor to a thirteenth-century church located in what originally was a faubourg. Here's a view of the tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/2shgtj
At his canonization W.'s feast was fixed for the day following that of the Discovery of the Holy Cross (thus 15. September). Today, on the reckoning followed by the "new" RM, is W.'s _dies natalis_. Another candidate is 8. April.
3) Merbod of Bregenz (Bl.; d. 1120). According to legend (not documented medievally), M. (also Merboth) was a brother of the hermit saints Diedo and Ilga who became a Benedictine monk at Mehrerau in today's Austrian province of Vorarlberg and later curate of the church at Alberschwende, generally thought to be today's Andelsbuch (Vorarlberg). He was murdered by some of his parishioners, seemingly unhappy that he had just cured a child by the laying on of hands. His cult, said to be attested since the thirteenth century but never officially confirmed, is believed to have been immediate. M.'s death was recorded for this day in his monastery's necrology. The early modern chapel of St. Wendelin at Andelsbuch's locality of Bersbuch is reported to have replaced a medieval chapel erected on the site of his murder and to house a statue of him. Here's an exterior view:
http://tinyurl.com/2whzeh
4) Otto, venerated at Ariano Irpino (d. ca. 1127, supposedly). Today's less well known saint of the Regno has a sketchy and unreliable later medieval Vita (BHL 6391) consisting of lections for his Office at Ariano. This says he was a soldier of Roman origin who, taken prisoner and put in chains, was released through the intercession of St. Leonard (of Noblac) and became a hermit at what's now Ariano Irpino (AV) in Campania, dying on this day. O.'s dates and his frequent ascription to the Roman family of Frangipane are guesswork. In 1452, when king Alfonso I requested their return, his relics were at Benevento, whither they were said to have been removed for safekeeping during a period of Saracen raids (so probably in the late ninth century, well before the time that O. is now thought to have existed). Later in that century Ariano's cathedral of the BVM was rebuilt and O.'s relics were placed in a chapel at the end of the right aisle. That is where they are today.
O. is the principal patron of Ariano Irpino and a patron of the diocese of Ariano Irpino - Lacedonia. There are enough émigré Arianesi in two towns in Piedmont, Alpignano and Pienezza (both in Torino Province), that for the past two years he has been celebrated up there on the previous weekend with a mass at which the bishop of Ariano Irpino - Lacedonia officiated.
Most of the present facade of Ariano's cathedral dates from 1500 and the years immediately following, still within the chronological parameters of this list. The statue over the entrance on the right, set up in 1502, is of O. A few views of the facade:
http://tinyurl.com/37bw7j
http://tinyurl.com/2spuh9
http://tinyurl.com/29qqv6
A happy Easter to all,
John Dillon
(matter from older posts lightly revised)
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