medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. May) is the feast day of:
1) Joseph the Worker (d. 1st cent.). Yes, this is J., the foster-father of Jesus, whose principal feast is on 19. March. Today's feast is a creation of 1955, replacing that of Philip and James (now on 3. May). Since Joseph has had a Saints-of-the-Day moment not too long ago and since Philip and James are soon to have one, herewith a brief consideration of a saint of the Regno once celebrated on this day.
Maurus, "of Libya" (d. 284, supposedly). A saint of this name was venerated in Greek-speaking communities in and near Gallipoli on Apulia's Salentine Peninsula (the heel of the Italian boot) from at least 1149 until well into the eighteenth century. His Greek Acta were translated into Latin in 1603 and on that basis were summarized by Henschenius in the _Acta Sanctorum_ (under 1. May) as follows:
M. was a well-born Libyan Christian who was orphaned while still young, travelled to Rome, and was there marytred under an official named Celerinus. Comrades of his from Libya placed his body in a container and attempted to sail home with it. Celerinus pursued them to a place in what the Acta imply was later the theme of Langobardia. Here he caught up with them and slew them but was unsuccessful in his attempt to burn M.'s remains. Starting out on an intended return to Rome, he and all his minions were drowned off Gallipoli (at this point, the Acta note the parallel with Pharoah's pursuit of the Israelites). Well-born citizens of Gallipoli buried the bodies of M. and of his companions and celebrated his feast on 1. May.
A Greek-rite monastery dedicated to M. at the locality of San Mauro alla Serra in today's Sannicola (LE), near Gallipoli, is documented from 1149 to 1331. There were also cave churches honoring M. at Oria (BR) and at Presicce (LE). The church of the monastery, which at one time had considerable holdings on the Salentine Peninsula, remained in use in the early modern period; richly frescoed, it has recently been restored without and within. Two external views and several views of its frescoes will be found here:
http://www.anticasannicola.it/santi.html
A pre-restoration view of the interior will be found on this page:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/tscigliu/New%20Pages/storia.html
A guide to the frescoes, with hotlinks to views of several of these, is here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/tscigliu/New%20Pages/archi.html
2) Hypolistus (d. ca. 303, supposedly). This saint of the Regno is the dedicatee of the originally twelfth-century church of Sant'Ippolisto at Atripalda (AV) in Campania. That structure was built over a late antique Christian hypogeum known medievally as the _specus martyrum_ ('cave of the martyrs'), where saints are first known to have been venerated from 357, when the site was part of a necropolis for ancient Abellinum (in the early Middle Ages Abellinum's population moved to the site of today's Avellino; Atripalda, first attested from 1086, is the community that took its place). H. was one of the saints venerated there. He has a legendary Passio (BHL 4054-4055; 4055f is by the eleventh-century Cassinese prose stylist John of Gaeta, later pope Gelasius II) that makes him a priest of Antioch who preached the gospel wondrously at Abellinum and who was martyred under Diocletian.
Atripalda's chiesa di Sant'Ippolisto was massively rebuilt in Renaissance neoclassical style during the years 1585 and following. The crypt was radically altered in 1629, at which time most of its medieval decor (about which we know something from an early thirteenth-century description) was lost. The collapse of the crypt's vaulting a few years later may have been an unrecognized comment from on high on the merits of this stylistic "renovation". Some medieval frescoing and sculptural fragments survive in the crypt. The latter's most recent restoration is the subject of Giuseppe Mollo, _Specus Martyrum. Arte e Restauri_ (Viterbo: BetaGamma, 1998), whose cover is shown here:
http://www.betagamma.it/collane/cmc/descrizioni/31cmc.htm
Bits of medieval sculpture survive elsewhere in the church. Two column fragments can be seen in the chapel shown here (the Cappella del Tesoro):
http://tinyurl.com/daocr
If the three reliquaries shown are arranged in chronological order, then that of H. will be on the left and the other two will be those of Sts. Sabinus and Romulus (an early sixth-century bishop of Abellinum and his deacon who outlived him, both confessors).
3) Orientius of Auch (d. earlier 5th cent.). O. has a not altogether credible Vita prima (BHL 6344) that has been variously dated from the early sixth century to sometime in the Carolingian period and upon which his later Vitae depend. This makes him a bishop of today's Auch (Gers) in southeastern France, in O.'s lifetime Auscis in Novempopulonia. A. was learned in theology, converted pagans at Auch, and destroyed a pagan temple that was a haunt of of devils. Auch at this time belonged to the Visigothic kingdom and the O. is said to have served as an envoy from the Gothic king of Toulouse to Aetius, who received him respectfully while his subordinate, Litorius, refused to meet with A. When the Goths later capture the Roman force Litorius pays with his life while O. is able to secure the release of the others.
O, is customarily identified with the late antique Christian poet Orientius, the author of a moral-didactic poem called _Commonitorium_ whose 518 elegiac distichs include an often cited passage on the woes of Gaul under barbarian rule.
4) Pellegrino Laziosi (d. ca. 1345). The Servite friar P. (sometimes called St. Peregrine) was a penitent and a healing thaumaturge in his native Forlì in the Romagna who came to be considered a saint in his lifetime. His cult was immediate after death and was spread by members of his Order. P. has a Vita from 1484 written by the humanist Nicolò Borghese (BHL 6629) that is thought to derive from a now lost earlier account then preserved at the Servite convent in Forlì and that seems to have given at least as much attention to P.'s spirituality as to his miracles. He was canonized in 1726. Along with the BVM, P. is a principal patron of the city of Forlì and of the diocese of Forlì-Bertinoro. The greater recognition given to P. in modern times probably has a lot to do with the diocese's celebration of yesterday's St. Mercurialis now falling in October (rather than immediately before P.'s day).
P. was laid to rest in a loculus in Forlì's originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Maria dei Servi, the church where his remains still reside. The building was almost completely transformed early in the seventeenth century but retains a later medieval portal:
http://tinyurl.com/5b3ut2
http://www.queen.it/CITTA/FORLI/MONI/PELLEGR1.GIF
Best,
John Dillon
(Maurus and Hypolistus lightly revised from last year's post)
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