medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today is also the feast of Corpus Christi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_(feast)
or
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fronleichnam
Sometimes in the 20th century the processions had also a political
character ...
yours
k
Am 22.05.2008 um 14:57 schrieb John Dillon:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Today (22. May) is the feast day of:
>
> 1) Castus of Calvi (d. 66, supposedly). Today's less well known
> saint of the Regno is the legendary martyred protobishop of today's
> Calvi Risorta (CE) in northern Campania, the successor to ancient
> Cales and medievally called simply Calvi. He and his homonym of
> Sinuessa (CE) and of Sessa Aurunca (CE) in the same Campanian
> province, a fellow martyr celebrated locally on this day (but
> entered in the RM for 1. July as the C. of Sts. Castus and
> Secundinus), are probably in origin the same saint whose cults
> differentiated in the early or central Middle Ages. A widely held
> scholarly view is that C. is the third-century African martyr of the
> this name whose cult spread early to Campania and there generated
> new identities for C. at different locales. In addition to the
> places already mentioned, a C. has been venerated at Benevento,
> Capua, Gaeta, and Sora at the very least.
>
> Our C. (he of Calvi) has a legendary Passio (BHL 1649) linking him
> with a fellow martyr Cassius (also thought to be a transplant from
> Africa but said to have been the protobishop of Sinuessa).
> Surviving in the form of lections for their feast at Capua, this is
> thought to be derived from the now lost Passio of these saints said
> (by the not entirely reliable Peter the Deacon) to have been written
> by the young Gregory of Terracina while he was still a monk at
> Montecassino. That would put his text on C. and C. towards the end
> of the eleventh century and make it closely contemporary with the
> initial building Calvi's originally late eleventh-century cathedral
> of San Casto. An Italian-language fact sheet on that structure is
> here:
> http://tinyurl.com/2v64e9
>
> Recent views of Calvi's cathedral:
> http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/cop.jpg
> http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/WlTQ_g.jpg
> http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/qWiq_g.jpg
> http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/BWtI_g.jpg
> Early twentieth-century views:
> http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/comera.htm
> Capitals in the crypt:
> http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/imgCript.htm
>
> The sixteenth-century historian of the archdiocese of Capua, Michele
> Monaco, reports having seen an altar to C. and Cassius at Sora
> (where both were celebrated today) with the two saints depicted as
> bishops on the arch above it. Monaco also briefly recounts a legend
> whereby enemies preparing to attack Sora were dissuaded by a dream
> vision of the two saints holding up torches atop a mountain and
> displaying a huge army arrayed in the form of a cross.
>
>
> 2) Julia of Corsica (d. 5th cent., supposedly). J. is listed for
> today by the (pseudo- )Hieronymian Martyrology as a martyr on
> Corsica. She has a legendary Passio (two closely related versions,
> BHL 4516 and 4517) that make her one of the many saints from Italian
> coastal areas to have fled persecution in distant Africa. In her
> case, the legend appears to originate not in Corsica but at Gorgona,
> an island in the Tuscan Archipelago approximately 37 km. distant
> from Livorno: monks of Gorgona, apprised by mournful angels that
> J.'s crucifixion had just taken place, sailed to the Corsican shore,
> took J.'s corpse down from her crucifix, brought her to Gorgona with
> miraculous speed in the face of a strong contrary wind, and there
> embalmed her and placed her in a tomb. In one version, the legend
> itself is ascribed to angelic authorship.
>
> According to medieval tradition, in the early 760s Ansa, wife of the
> Lombard king Desiderius, had Julia's relics translated to Brescia,
> where they were interred in the abbey church of San Salvatore at the
> time of the latter's consecration by pope Paul I. This translation
> in turn has recently been pronounced fictional, with the start of
> J.'s major cult at Brescia being effectively re-dated to the ninth
> or tenth century (in the Renaissance the abbey was greatly expanded
> and became known as Santa Giulia). The hymns from her office there
> are monuments of medieval liturgical poetry from Italy.
>
> J. is the principal patron of Corsica and is also patron of
> Livorno. Like the Corsican martyrs Paragorius, Parthaeus, and
> Parthenopaeus (7. September; discussed briefly in connection with
> yesterday's St. Restituta of Corsica), J. seems also to have been
> venerated medievally at Noli in western Liguria. For her cult, see
> Giancarlo Andenna, ed., _Culto e storia in Santa Giulia_ (Brescia:
> Grafo, 2001), esp. the articles by Gabriel Silagi on the Passio and
> hymns and by Gian Pietro Brogiolo on the history of J.'s cult at
> Brescia).
>
> Views of San Salvatore at Brescia:
> http://www.brescia.lombardiainrete.it/brescia/santagiulia.asp
> http://tinyurl.com/59a6z8
> http://tinyurl.com/3cdrr3
>
> And now for something completely different: a ruined church (or
> perhaps two churches) on Cape Noli, a structure that _may_ once have
> been the church dedicated to J. mentioned in 1191 as having been in
> that vicinity:
> http://www.archaeoastronomy.it/santa%20giulia3.JPG
>
>
> 3) Atto of Pistoia (d. 1153?). The probably Tuscan A. (there is
> also a view that he was of Iberian origin) is thought to have
> entered the abbey of Vallombrosa around 1100. He wrote a now lost
> commentary on the Epistles and Vitae of St. Barnabas and of
> Vallombrosa's founder, St. John Gualbert. A. became abbot of
> Vallombrosa around 1120 and bishop of Pistoia in 1134. As bishop he
> continued to observe the rules of his Order, served as a papal
> mediator in ecclesiastical disputes in Tuscany, and founded three
> hospitals (one of which was enriched with a part of the skull of St.
> James, donated by the archbishop and chapter of Compostella to the
> bishop and chapter of Pistoia).
>
> A. was buried in a church near the cathedral and enjoyed a cult both
> at Pistoia and in his Order. In 1337 his remains were accorded a
> formal recognition, were pronounced incorrupt, and were translated
> to an altar in Pistoia's cathedral. A.'s cult was confirmed in
> 1605. In this detail of Neri di Bicci's late fourteenth- or early
> fifteenth-century painting of St. John Gualbert and other
> Vallombrosan saints and blesseds in Florence's Santa Trinita, A. is
> the mitred figure to the founder's left:
> http://tinyurl.com/56u348
>
>
> 4) Humility of Faenza (d. 1310). The monastic founder and mystic
> H. is perhaps unique in medieval Italy as a known woman author of a
> substantial body of Latin texts unlikely to have been ghostwritten
> or significantly redacted by a male secretary or confessor. These
> are her fifteen so-called _Sermons_, of which some are sermons in
> the general medieval and modern sense and the remainder, for which
> H. accurately uses the term _oratio_ (‘prayer’), are formally
> addresses of devotion to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and others.
>
> Apart from the testimony of the _Sermons_ themselves, almost all
> that we know of H. comes from two early fourteenth-century lives,
> one in Latin and one in Italian. A talented and determined
> individual with little if any formal education, she was born into a
> noble family at Faenza. There Humility (her name in religion;
> previously it had been
> Rosanese) moved from married life to that of a conventual, then
> became an ascetic solitary, and subsequently founded a community of
> Vallombrosan nuns. In 1282 together with a few companions she
> traveled to Florence and established in that city the Vallombrosan
> convent of St. John the Evangelist, where she spent the remaining
> years of her life. Recognized as a living saint both in Faenza and
> in Florence, H. was shortly after her death the subject of a statue
> by Andrea Orcagna and of a polyptych altarpiece whose paintings have
> often been attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti.
>
> H.'s cult was papally authorized in 1720 for the Vallombrosans and
> in 1721 for the dioceses of Florence and Faenza. She was canonized
> in 1948. Julia Bolton Holloway has an excellent website on H.,
> complete with color images from the now disassembled polyptych
> illustrating H.'s life and miracles often ascribed to Pietro
> Lorenzetti:
> http://www.umilta.net/umilta.html
>
>
> 5) Rita of Cascia (d. 1447). The pious daughter of elderly parents
> in or near Cascia in Umbria, R. had an arranged marriage to a
> brutish man who beat her badly but whom she is said to have
> eventually converted from his savage ways. After the husband had
> been assassinated and the two sons she had borne him had also died,
> R. entered the Augustinian convent at Cascia (supposedly on her
> third try and only through the intervention of Sts. John the
> Baptist, Augustine of Hippo, and Nicholas of Tolentino), where she
> lived ascetically as a lay sister, operated miracles, and was
> miraculously wounded in the forehead by a thorn from Christ's
> crown. R., who was canonized in 1627, was venerated as a saint from
> the moment of her death. Her body is said to have been incorrupt,
> though according to this page from today's Basilica di Santa Rita
> that is not now so:
> http://tinyurl.com/6rewnz
> And here she is:
> http://tinyurl.com/6lqorg
>
> Best,
> John Dillon
> (Castus of Calvi, Julia of Corsica, and Humility of Faenza lightly
> revised from older posts)
>
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