medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. July) is the feast day of:
1) Joachim and Anne (d. 1st cent.). J. and A., the fictional parents of Mary the mother of Jesus, are first attested in the later second-century infancy gospel generally known as the _Protevangelium Jacobi_. One may read about them in English-language translation here:
http://www.gospels.net/translations/infancyjamestranslation.html
In late antiquity and for much of the Middle Ages they had largely separate cults, attested e.g. by Justinian's mid-sixth-century church in Constantinople dedicated to A. In the East each was celebrated liturgically, whereas in the West it was usually A. alone who was so honored and there her cult did not become really widespread until the fourteenth century. The earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples is exceptional in recording a joint feast of J. and A. on 9. September, the day following that of the Nativity of the BVM. In art, on the other hand, they were often represented together: a fairly early example is the vestment bearing their portraits (and an Annunciation scene) reportedly presented by pope St. Leo III (795-813) to Santa Maria Maggiore.
Sherry Reames' introduction to her TEAMS edition of _Legends of St. Anne, Mother of the Virgin Mary_ is here:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/44sr.htm
An expandable, black-and-white image of A.'s seventh(?)-century portrait in Rome's Santa Maria Antiqua is here:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=1893
An expandable image of an eighth-century portrait of A. from Faras in Lower Nubia, now in the National Museum in Warsaw, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5kl6d9
Expandable views of scenes by Giotto from the life of J. and A. (1305-1306), Cappella dei Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua, may be reached from the menu at left here:
http://www.wga.hu/tours/giotto/padova/index21.html
Here's a view of A. and J. in the fourteenth-century frescoes of the monastery of Sv. Ioan Bogoslov (St. John the Theologian) at Zemen in western Bulgaria:
http://tinyurl.com/6ghcnw
While we're here, a page on the monastery itself:
http://www.bulgarianmonastery.com/zemen_monastery.html
and one, with English-language text commencing a little more than halfway down the page, on its frescoes:
http://www.pravoslavieto.com/manastiri/zemenski/index.htm
Two fourteenth-century wall paintings of A. teaching Mary to read, both in English churches:
http://www.paintedchurch.org/corbysan.htm
http://www.paintedchurch.org/chalfsv.htm
Another version of the same scene, this time from a fourteenth-century English altar frontal now in Paris at the Musée National du Moyen Age (Cluny Museum):
http://tinyurl.com/5fc6s8
Here's an expandable view of J. and A. embracing (ca. 1470), by the Master of Joachim and Anne, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam:
http://tinyurl.com/5k29w6
Here, with A. at left and J. behind her, is an expandable view of a painting (ca. 1490) by Geertgen tot Sint Jans of the Holy Kinship (the extended Marian family), also in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam:
http://tinyurl.com/589vf6
A subtype of Holy Kinship portraiture is the representation either of A. holding Mary holding Jesus or else of A. holding both of them (in German, Anna selbdritt; in Italian, Anna metterza). Some examples:
Statue (first attested from 1307; the oblong cavities are thought to have once held reliquaries) in the Nikolaikirche at Stralsund in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern:
http://tinyurl.com/5pmpfe
http://tinyurl.com/6kw2ew
Wall painting (fourteenth-century) in the parish church at Velemér in Hungary:
http://tinyurl.com/mxfoa
Panel painting (1424 or 1425) by Masaccio (perh. with Masolino da Panicale) in the Uffizi in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/63ftg5
Fresco (ca. 1450), oratorio di San Lorenzo all’Alpe Seccio at Boccioleto (VC) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/5vpt6a
Manuscript illumination (3d quarter of the fifteenth century) by Willem Vrelant, Horae BVM (Free Library of Philadelphia, ms. Widener 5, fol. 13v):
http://tinyurl.com/5ma2el
Fresco (ca. 1485), cappella della Madonna delle Grazie, chiesa di San Pietro Vecchio at Favria (TO) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/5kktww
The artist responsible for that last example also produced, a little below it and subsequently painted over, this portrait of A. alone:
http://tinyurl.com/56bgfl
Sculpture (ca. 1490-95) by Tilman Riemenschneider in the Mainfränkisches Museum in Würzburg:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/tilman/saint_anne.L.htm
Further images of A. will be found here:
http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/anne.html
2) Simeon of Polirone (d. 1016). According to his Vita et Miracula (BHL 7952-7953) by a monk of the abbey of St. Benedict at Polirone near Mantua, seemingly written in the pontificate of Benedict IX (1032-45), S. (in Latin, Simeon Padolironensis) was an Armenian by birth who had lived in the East in a Greek-rite monastery and subsequently in the wilderness as a hermit before going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome (where his unusual devotional practices, compounded by language difficulties, got him into trouble), Aquitaine (where he visited St. Martin at Tours), Galicia (where he visited St. James at Compostela), and other places before entering the aforementioned abbey where he died and where numerous miracles were reported at his grave.
The abbey had been founded fairly recently (1007) by the comital family of Canossa who continued to be its major patrons throughout the eleventh century. S.'s canonization is said to have been authorized by Benedict VIII (1017-1024) on condition that the reports of miracles were true; Leo XI (1048-1054) permitted the abbey an Elevation of S.'s remains and the dedication of a church to him.
The abbey complex of Polirone, at today's San Benedetto Po (MN) in Lombardy, is extensive. A website devoted to it is here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/fgazzoli/sbenedettopo/sbenedettopo.htm
A view of its Cloister of St. Symeon is here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/fgazzoli/sbenedettopo/chiostross.htm
The abbey's Oratory of Saint Mary has a partially preserved and recently restored mid-twelfth-century (1151) mosaic floor shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/p7pm9
Detail (Temperantia):
http://www.webalice.it/allietarti/San%20Benedetto%20Po.htm
3) Ugo degli Atti (Bl.; d. ca. 1270). U. (in Latin, Ugo de Actis) is also known from his place of birth as Ugo of Serra San Quirico. A scion of the leading comital family from the part of the pre-Appennine uplands of today's Ancona province of the Marche that includes both Serra San Quirico and Sassoferrato, he was the brother of Bl. Giuseppe degli Atti (de Actis; of Serra San Quirico; 25. August). After some study at Bologna, U. entered the nascent Silvestrine Benedictine congregation at its monastery of San Giovanni at Sassoferrato, where he was welcomed by the congregation's founder, St. Silvestro Guzzolini (26. November).
According to his late medieval Vita (BHL 4033b, 4033c), U. was known in his lifetime both for his preaching and for works of charity. He died on this day at Serra San Quirico but his remains were returned to Sassoferrato for burial in his monastery's church of San Giovanni Battista. U. was beatified in 1756. He is co-patron of Serra San Quirico (where, as also among the Silvestrines as a whole, he is celebrated tomorrow, 27. July) and patron "saint" of Sassoferrato, where he now reposes in the originally fifteenth-century church of Santa Maria del Ponte del Piano, whose Early Modern facade and belltower may be seen here just past Sassoferrato's bridge over the Sentino:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10471154@N02/893775069/
Best,
John Dillon
(Simeon of Polirone and Ugo degli Atti revised from earlier posts)
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