medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5, May) is the feast day of:
1) Irene the Great Martyr (?). I. is a saint widely venerated on this day in Eastern-rite churches. She has a brief, legendary Passio in the so-called Menologium of Basil II (late tenth- or early eleventh-century) that makes her the noble daughter, somewhere, of a prince named Licinius, who at the age of six was so keen to hide her physical beauty from the eyes of men that she shut herself up in the top of a tower along with thirteen servants. God himself instructed her in Christianity and St. Timothy, the Pauline disciple, baptized her. When I. destroyed her household idols Licinius attempted to have her dragged to death by a horse he had enraged: she survived but L. died of a bite the horse had given him. I. then obtained both L.'s resurrection and his conversion, along with that of his wife and three thousand others, to Christianity. A Roman governor named Ampelius, failing to get I. to apostasize, had her martyred by decapitation.
Later synaxaries offer several Passiones of I. (BHG 952y - 954c) preserving her miraculous conversion of multitudes but making her an early fourth-century martyr in Persia. In some versions, including the Latin BHL 4467, she is the daughter of the pagan emperor Licinius and Ampelius becomes her preceptor and narrator Ampellianus (also Apellianus). I.'s cult branched out geographically: there is a version in which she dies peacefully at Ephesus, another in which she is a martyr of the Balkans, and yet another in which she is a martyr of today's Lecce (LE) in southern Apulia.
In that last persona I. is of course a saint of the Regno, often called Herina in Latin (literally 'Little Mistress', though the etymology may actually lie in some form of '(H)irene') and Erina or Rina in Italian and in the Italo-Romance dialects of the Salentine Peninsula. Though her present church at Lecce dates from 1589, she was the city's late medieval patron saint, overshadowed only in the seventeenth century by the plague-averting St. Orontius/Oronzo, and is still venerated there today. Not appearing in the RM, today's I. is also the patron saint of Veglie (LE), whose fifteenth-century principal church is dedicated to her and to St. John the Baptist, of San Pietro in Lama (LE), and of Altamura (BA) further north in Apulia, where as in Lecce she is the focus of a major festival.
2) Hilarius of Arles (d. 449). H. was a member of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy who at a young age was persuaded by his older relative St. Honoratus, the founder of the monastery of Lérins, to sell off his inheritance and to enter that community. When in about 426 Honoratus was named bishop of the metropolitan see of Arles he brought H. with him as secretary. In 429 Honoratus died and H., then only twenty-nine years old, succeeded him as bishop. His principled but impolitic exercise of his metropolitan powers (he sacked two bishops, both of whom were reinstated by Rome) caused pope St. Leo I to transfer that authority to Fréjus (it was restored to Arles in the year following H.'s death). H. is the author of a well-written _laudatio_ of Honoratus (BHL 3975). This provides most of our little personal information about him. He has two Vitae of his own (BHL 3882, 3882b) emphasizing his asceticism and his care for his clergy.
3) Godehard (d. 1038). G. (also Gotthard) was born in the vicinity of what at the time was the canonry of St. Moritz at today's Niederalteich (Kr. Deggendorf) in Bavaria. After schooling there he spent three years of administrative training at the archdiocesan court in Salzburg, travelled to Italy, continued his studies at the cathedral school of Passau, and returned to Niederaltaich (this older spelling is still conventional for the canonry/monastery) where he swiftly became provost. When that house was subsequently transformed into a Benedictine abbey G. stayed on as a novice. He made his monastic profession in 990, was ordained priest in 993, and in 996 was elected abbot.
As abbot, G. steered Niederaltaich in the direction of Cluniac reform and also established there a school to train scribes and illuminators. Upon the nomination of the future emperor Henry II, he reformed Tegernsee in 1001-1002 and Hersfeld from 1005 until his return to Niederaltaich in 1013, when he began work on rebuilding that abbey and its church. He was named bishop of Hildesheim in today's Lower Saxony in 1022. G. was canonized in 1131. On 4. May 1132 his body was translated from the abbey church to the cathedral and on the following day his liturgical feast was celebrated for the first time. Miracles occurring at that event laid the foundation of what became his ongoing reputation as a healing saint. St. Gotthard pass takes its name from a hospice erected to him there in the thirteenth century.
Here are a few views of the later medieval abbey church at Niederalteich:
http://tinyurl.com/27kk92
http://tinyurl.com/27xz9o
http://tinyurl.com/ysmnd5
http://www.dva.cz/vs/img/fv/01niederalteich.html
As you might suppose from that last view, something has happened to the choir. The latter is very prominent in this engraving from 1687:
http://tinyurl.com/ysj2y9
Hildesheim's abbey church of St. Michael was begun very early in the eleventh century by bishop Bernward and was completed by G. in 1033 Here's an illustrated, English-language page on it:
http://tinyurl.com/7lgyx
Further views:
http://tinyurl.com/3bte4v
http://tinyurl.com/2jms2j
http://tinyurl.com/2v65gw
There are some interesting views of the interior at this site (click on Panorama):
http://www.st-michaelis-hildesheim.de/
An illustrated, English-language page on the eleventh-century cathedral of Hildesheim (the Hildesheimer Dom) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2brefn
And a German-language one is here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildesheimer_Dom
Here's a view of G.'s twelfth-century shrine:
http://tinyurl.com/2equ6e
That's from a page of views of objects in the cathedral treasury:
http://tinyurl.com/24lc2j
And here's G., above the north portal:
http://tinyurl.com/24ufw9
Many other views here:
http://tinyurl.com/accpt
Single views:
http://www.unesco-heute.de/0805/hildesheim_dom.jpg
http://www.peterkamin.de/Reisen/hildesheim.dom.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2gscs6
Hildesheim is also the home of a church dedicated to G., the twelfth-century Basilika Sankt Godehard. Multiple views here:
http://tinyurl.com/yvnao3
More here (expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/2t94hv
Single views:
http://tinyurl.com/2err9d
http://tinyurl.com/2935zn
http://tinyurl.com/2z3dtr
Portal, with G. at right in the tympanum:
http://tinyurl.com/yp4aaa
4) Leo of Africo (d. late 12th or early 13th cent., perhaps). According to our earliest source, the sixteenth-century local historian Gabriele Barrio, this poorly documented saint of the Regno was a Greek-rite monk who was born in today's Africo Vecchio (RC) in the Aspromonte, whose relics were in Barrio's day preserved in the cathedral of relatively nearby Bova (the chief town of this mountainous district in southern Calabria), and who was celebrated on this day. Bova (RC) still has relics said to be those of L. and he is still celebrated there today. A relic said to be his, formerly preserved at the church dedicated to him at Africo Vecchio, is now kept in its modern successor at coastal Africo Nuovo (RC), whither Africo's population was moved after the disastrous floods of 1951 and 1953.
At Africo Nuovo L. is now celebrated a week from today (12. May), thus giving the faithful time to recover from their pilgrimage (in part on mountain paths) to L.'s church at Africo Vecchio, where his traditional procession and liturgical celebration are maintained today (complete with the relic, which into recent times, at least, was during the festivities used to treat persons possessed by an evil spirit). Two views of L.'s church at Africo Vecchio are here:
http://tinyurl.com/5edoow
L. has a fairly rich early modern tradition that makes him a hermit who extracted resin from the pines of the Aspromonte, who sold his product in Messina, and who distributed the proceeds to the poor. Later, it is said, he founded a monastery that was enriched by donations from Calabria's Norman and Swabian overlords. These aspects of his story have caused persons skilled at distinguishing nuggets of inherited truth from nuggets of invention to date L. to at least the Norman period (1071-1194) if not also to the beginning of the Swabian one (1194-1266). He is the probable founder of the monastery of St. Leo in the diocese of Bova that paid tithes in 1310. L. is the patron saint of Africo and of Bova and a co-patron of the archdiocese of Reggio Calabria-Bova. This is his first mention ever in this list's "saints of the day".
5) Angelus the Carmelite, venerated at Licata (d. ca. 1220). Little is known about A. (A. of Sicily, A. of Jerusalem). His late medieval Vitae (BHL 464, 466) tell us that he was born in Jerusalem, that he became a Carmelite in Palestine, that he was ordained priest at the age of twenty-five, that he was sent to Italy, where he preached successfully at St. John Lateran, and that he was sent to Sicily to preach against "cathars", one of whom stabbed him fatally at today's Licata (AG) in the southwestern part of the island. Veneration as a martyr ensued and a church was erected to house A.'s remains. The Carmelite Order is said to have adopted his cause in 1456, with confirmation of his cult by Pius II coming in 1459.
A. has a major sanctuary at Licata, whose illustrated website (for those not afraid of early modern splendors) is here:
http://www.santuariosantangelo.it/
Best,
John Dillon
(Hilarius of Arles, Godehard, and Angelus the Carmelite post lightly revised from last year's post)
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