medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. May) is the feast day of:
1) Anthimus and companions (d. ca. 304, supposedly). According to his legendary Acta (BHL 561-65), A. was a priest who during the Diocletianic persecution was thrown into the Tiber with a heavy stone tied to his neck and who was rescued from drowning by an angel. A proconsul named Priscus then had him decapitated. A. was buried at an oratory that he had frequented. All this happened in the vicinity of the twenty-second milestone from Rome along the Via Salaria. The Acta in question (BHL 561, etc.) provide mini-Passiones for a number of saints of the Sabina, the hilly rural district east of the Roman campagna perhaps best known in the context of this list for its being the home of the great abbey of Farfa.
Opinion is divided as to whether A. is one of these local saints or instead the bishop of Nicomedia (24. April) attracted to the story by virtue of a local cult celebrating the translation of his relics and/or the erection of a church dedicated to him at the Roman market town of Cures (two syllables; near today's Passo Corese in Lazio's Rieti province).
Dedicated to A. is the formerly Benedictine abbey of Sant'Antimo near Montalcino in southern Tuscany. Already in existence in 814, it was greatly enriched early in the twelfth century, entering upon a fairly brief "golden age" in which a huge abbey church was built right next to its much smaller Carolingian predecessor. An English-language account
of its history is here:
http://www.montalcino.net/sant_antimo.htm
and collections of views are are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6azznt
and here (click on 'maxifoto'):
http://www.antimo.it/pagine/08_FOTOGRAFIE.html
and here (not expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/q35db
For those who wish to spend more time learning about the place (now operated by Premonstratensian canons), illustrated, English-language historical and artistic tours of the abbey begin here:
http://www.antimo.it/pagine_en/00FRAME.html
2) Mamertus (d. ca. 477). The brother of the Gallo-Roman philosopher and rhetor Claudianus Mamertus and a friend of St. Sidonius Apollinaris, M. became bishop of Vienne in about 461. He has no Vita. Much of what we hear of him has to do with his extra-canonical consecration of a bishop of Die in 463 and the steps that were taken by pope St. Hilarus to rectify that situation. In 473 M. oversaw the translation into a newly built suburban basilica of relics believed to be those of St. Ferreolus of Vienne, then recently rediscovered. In the following year he organized in his diocese the first Rogation processions to be institutionalized as annual events.
M. was buried in the predecessor of Vienne's church of St-Pierre. In the seventh century M.'s remains were translated to a predecessor of Orléans' cathedral of Ste-Croix, where a chapel was dedicated to him and where he became one of the local saints. M. entered the historical martyrologies with an entry for this day by Florus of Lyon. Here he is, at left and wearing the violet of Rogationtide, with pope St. Gregory I in a fifteenth-century illumination from Jean de Vignay's French-language translation of the _Legenda Aurea_ (Paris, BN, ms. Français 241, fol. 122v):
http://tinyurl.com/yrjqyz
The images are versions of the illustrator's generic bishop and generic sainted pope, as can be seen from this illumination (ibid., fol. 70r) of St. Peter:
http://tinyurl.com/2tmqb2
3) Gengulf (d. later 8th cent.). According to his perhaps tenth-century Passio (BHL 3328), G. (also Gangulf, Gengoul, Gengoult, Gengon, etc.) was a count of Langres in the time of Pepin the Short. He was assassinated at one of his estates by a cleric who was his wife's lover. Venerated as a martyr, this patron saint of unhappily married men has a verse Passio (BHL 3329) by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. His cult was widely diffused in medieval western Europe. G. is said to have been buried at Varennes and to have been translated later to Langres. Many places claim relics of him.
Herewith a few views of the thirteenth-/sixteenth-century collégiale St-Gengoult at Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle):
http://tinyurl.com/ywrbj2
http://tinyurl.com/2g8t4y
http://tinyurl.com/2nxc2l
Interior (from ca. 1900):
http://tinyurl.com/22s98b
Cloister (from 1905):
http://www.stjoan-center.com/Album/toul01.jpg
And here are a few views of the originally fourteenth-century Reformed church of Eelde-Paterswolde in Tynaarlo in the Dutch province of Drenthe (Groningen's airport is at Eelde), dedicated medievally to the BVM and to G.:
http://www.historischekerken.nl/Drenthe/Eelde.html
http://tinyurl.com/2vc69w
Many expandable views here:
http://tinyurl.com/2mon7e
4) Walter of L'Esterp (d. 1070). According to his Vita by Marbod of Rennes (BHL 8802), W. (Gautier, Gauthier) was the son of respected parents in Aquitaine and was of noble descent through his mother, the chaste and pious Walburga, whom he while yet in the womb miraculously saved from drowning when she was traveling to a place where she would give birth to him. After a good education he became a canon at what appears to have been the church of Le Dorat in the Limousin. Discord there caused him to return home but after a few years he was made abbot of Saint-Pierre de L'Esterp at today's Lesterps (Charente), a post he held for thirty-eight years.
Personally ascetic and generous in giving alms, W. gained a reputation as a man of particular holiness. Pope Victor II is said to have given him the right both to excommunicate and to release repentant sinners from that penalty. Blind for the last seven years of his life, W. bore this affliction with characteristic patience. Today is his _dies natalis_. He was famous for miracles, especially those of the healing kind.
Herewith a page of views of the eleventh- and twelfth-century abbatiale Saint-Pierre at Lesterps:
http://www.romanes.com/Lesterps/
Herewith some views of the twelfth-century collégiale Saint-Pierre at Le Dorat (Haute-Vienne):
http://tinyurl.com/3pwnlw
http://apiic.nexenservices.com/chantier/site2/visite.php
Best,
John Dillon
(Anthimus and companions, Mamertus, and Gengulf lightly revised from last year's post)
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