medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (7. May) is the feast day of:
1) Domitian of Maastricht (d. ca. 560). The Gallo-Roman D. (also D. of Huy) was the successor of St. Eucharius in the see of Tongeren (Tongres). That town being in decline, D. moved the seat of his diocese to Maastricht. He evangelized in the Maas (Meuse) valley. D. is credited with the foundation of several churches, including one dedicated St. Servaas (Servatius) in Maastricht itself. Another may have been the predecessor of the collégiale Notre-Dame at Huy in today's Belgium, which has his relics. The latter have been radiocarbon-dated to between 535 and 640.
An illustrated, French-language page on D.'s reliquary shrine at Huy is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2s64mu
D.'s bust on this object:
http://tinyurl.com/yw2wur
http://tinyurl.com/2ukck8
An illustrated, French-language page (views expand slightly) on the fourteenth-/fifteenth-century Collégiale Notre-Dame de Huy is here:
http://socart.ibelgique.com/collegiale-huy.htm
A page of expandable views:
http://www.belgiumview.com/belgiumview/tl2/view0000364.php4
Single views:
http://tinyurl.com/2j27wu
http://tinyurl.com/36ulvy
2) Maurelius of Ferrara (d. ca. 644, supposedly). M. (also M. of Voghenza) is a very poorly attested, perhaps altogether legendary bishop of Ferrara. He has a quite legendary fifteenth-century Vita in Italian translated from a now lost Latin original of uncertain date. This makes him a Syrian of noble ancestry from Edessa who is mentored by a bishop of Smyrna who elevates him to the priesthood and sends him off to Rome to inform the pope of the activities of a nefarious heretic. While he is en route he informed by an angel that the heretic has been incinerated by a bolt of lightning. Contrary winds prevent M. from returning. He lands at Ostia and makes his way to Rome, where in short order his colleague St. George [Ferrara's patron] persuades pope John IV to name him to the vacant see of Ferrara and to consecrate him bishop.
At Ferrara M. establishes his cathedral and performs miracles. Family difficulties, including the apostasy of his brother Hippolytus, cause M. to return to Edessa, where he shortly dies on this day in an unspecified year. In 1106 the emperor Henry IV [who in a development unknown to serious historians seems to have been in Syria] is motivated by a vision of the saint to bring his body back to Ferrara, where M. is honorably reinterred in the church of St. George [i.e., Ferrara's later medieval cathedral] across the Po from what had been his own church.
M.'s cult is attested in Ferrara from 1177 onward. He appeared on the city's coinage from the late fourteenth century to the early eighteenth. Here's an example from the reign of Nicolň III d'Este (1393-1441):
http://www.deamoneta.com/artemideaste/view/3110
The duchy of Ferrara spread M.'s cult more widely, e.g. to Rovigo (RO) in the Veneto, where he has been venerated in a sequence of churches going back to the fifteenth century.
3) John of Beverley (d. 721). According to Bede, John was educated at St Hilda's monastery of Streanaeshalch (later, Whitby). In St. Theodore of Canterbury's division of Northumbria into four dioceses (687), J. received Hexham, a see he held until 706 (during which time he ordained Bede first as deacon and later as priest). In 706 he became bishop of York. He resigned because of ill health either in 718 (traditional) or ca. 714 (modern scholars) and spent his remaining years at his monastery of Inderawuda (later, Beverley). Bede related various miracle stories of J.; Alcuin promoted his cult. Today, his _dies natalis_, has been his principal feast day since at least the ninth century. In 1037 J. was canonized by the then archbishop of York, who translated his remains to a new shrine at the rebuilt Beverley Minster.
J. was known as a healing saint. Post-Conquest miracle collections indicate widespread renown. J. also gained a military reputation. At the Battle of the Standard near Northallerton in 1138, where the English forces were led by the archbishop of York, his banner was flown along with those of St. Peter, St. Wilfrid, and St. Cuthbert. It seems to have been thought particularly efficacious, for in the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries it was J.'s banner that accompanied Yorkshire levies taking the field for England. Agincourt occurred on the feast of John's translation (25. October), whereupon J. was made a patron of the royal house and both his feasts were made obligatory for all England. J.'s shrine was destroyed ca. 1541.
Later tradition made J. a native of Harpham in today's Yorkshire. Here are some views of its medieval church dedicated to him:
http://tinyurl.com/39c5q5
http://tinyurl.com/2ussbp
http://tinyurl.com/6fr9rs
J. has a nearby holy well (view expandable):
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=8243
And here are some views of his originally twelfth-century church at Salton, North Yorkshire:
http://tinyurl.com/22avd2
http://tinyurl.com/yo97d6
The present Beverley Minster (at Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire) was begun in 1220 and completed in 1425. It is now dedicated to St. John the Evangelist and to St. Martin of Tours.
Two pages of expandable views:
http://tinyurl.com/23vsp
http://www.eriding.net/media/Churches.shtml
Some single views:
http://tinyurl.com/2fsog7
http://tinyurl.com/3c58t3
http://tinyurl.com/2882lj
http://tinyurl.com/63a82j
http://www.northeastengland.talktalk.net/BevMinster.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2d76s4
http://tinyurl.com/27u4zv
http://tinyurl.com/6gkoew
4) Heilika of Niedernburg (Bl.; d. 1020). H. (also Helga) was a member of the upper nobility of Bavaria. In 1010, when she was about fifty-five years old, she became abbess of a women's monastery near Passau at a place that quickly became known as Niedernburg ('Lower Town') and that now is a section of Passau proper. Although she is often said to have entered the community then as a recent widow, what she was doing before 1010 is unknown. It is quite possible that she was already in religion, for in addition to enriching her house with important gifts from Henry II (who removed the monastery from episcopal jurisdiction) and to rebuilding structures said to have been badly damaged by the Hungarians she is said to have introduced into it the Benedictine Rule.
5) Gisela of Hungary (Bl.; d. ca. 1060). G., the widow of king St. Stephen and Hungary's first queen, reposes in the abbey church at Passau - Niedernburg (see no. 3, above). She is somewhat dubiously said to have been Bl. Heilika's niece. While in Hungary she actively promoted the spread of Christianity. After her husband's death in 1038 she was held captive by enemies until 1042, when she was freed by Henry II. G. then entered the monastery of Niedernburg, becoming its abbess in 1057. Today is her _dies natalis_. G.'s grave with its eleventh-century tombstone was further monumentalized in the early fifteenth century in response to an increase in pilgrims from Hungary. Herewith some views:
http://www.shbapa.bayern.de/images/Giselakapelle.JPG
http://hvanilla.sakura.ne.jp/passau/image/passau33.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2lmgq5
http://tinyurl.com/2l7ubl
The thirteenth-century Gisela chapel (Gizellakapolna) at Veszprém in Hungary, whose early modern entrance is shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/2m3wfz
has a fresco of the royal pair, both nimbed:
http://www.hitvallas.hu/hitv0408/veszprem.jpg
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Gisela_von_Ungarn.jpg
There's a brief, English-language description of the chapel near the bottom of this page:
http://tinyurl.com/2459w8
Best,
John Dillon
(Domitian of Maastricht, John of Beverley, Heilika of Niedernburg, and Gisela of Hungary lightly revised from last year's post)
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