medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. August) is the feast day of:
1) Pontianus of Rome and Hippolytus of Rome (d. ca. 236). Little is known about P. other than that when he became pope there was an ongoing schism in the church at Rome. The leader of the opposing faction was the well-known theologian H. The emperor Maximinus Thrax exiled both of them to Sardinia, where, according to the _Liber Pontificalis_, P. at least was put to work in the mines and where, apparently, they both soon died. The _Depositio Martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 tells us that pope St. Fabian gave them honorable burial at Rome on 13. August of some year in his pontificate (236-50).
The author of the _Passio sancti Polychronii_ (first version, late fifth-century?) used this date for the _dies natalis_ of the martyr H. drawn to death by wild horses in the legends of St. Lawrence (d. 258). From at least this point onward, confusion between that H. (already memorably celebrated by Prudentius in _Peristephanon_, 11) and the H. now celebrated today was rampant. Further complicating the picture were traditions of other Roman martyrs named Hippolytus, particularly one who had a memorial basilica at Portus Romanus (later Porto, near today's Fiumicino airport). Prior to 2001 the RM used 13. August for the legendary H. of Prudentius and of the _Passio s. Polychronii_ and 22. August for our H., characterized as a bishop of Porto. Pontianus used to be celebrated separately on 19. November.
Sorting out the various martyrs named H. is not a task for the faint-hearted. There is a good overview of the problem in Part I, "Hippolytus in Christian Tradition" of J. A. Cerrato's _Hippolytus between East and West. The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus_ (Oxford Univ. Pr., 2002). A .pdf of that discussion is available at:
http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-924696-3.pdf
Cerrato's chief aim, though, is to distinguish among the authors of the various third-century theological writings attributed to an Hippolytus, all or almost all of which at one time or another have been attributed to our H. On that aspect, see this summary by Eugene V. Afonasin in the _Bryn Mawr Classical Review_:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2003/2003-10-02.html
Some of the "western" H.'s writings are listed, and his paschal formula is inscribed, on an ancient statue of a seated figure discovered in 1551 near San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (and thus near our H.'s recorded burial location on the Via Tiburtina). When found, this sculpture had lost its head and the upper part of its torso. These were then restored to produce the figure shown here, long identified as St. Hippolytus bishop of Portus:
http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/hippolytus.jpg
The statue has recently been shown to have been originally a female figure. Its discoverer was Pirro Ligorio, famous for his forgeries of inscriptions said to have been found at Porto.
An illustrated account, in several languages, of H.'s basilica at Portus and of its transformation into a medieval church by Callistus II (1119-24) is here:
http://www.fiumicino-online.it/aabasilicasantippolito.htm
Futher views:
http://www.wap-rome2000.com/aabasilicasantippolito.htm
http://www.romeartlover.it/Porto5.jpg
2) Cassian of Imola (?). Our first testimony to this martyr's existence is Prudentius' _Peristephanon_, 9, in which the late fourth- and early fifth-century poet recounts his visit to C.'s shrine at Forum Cornelii (today's Imola in the Romagna) and describes the picture there of the saint's martyrdom. According to P.'s account, C. was a teacher who endured a slow and painful martyrdom at the hands of his non-Christian students who stabbed him repeatedly with their styluses. Later legend made C. the apostle of Sabiona in the Tirol, subsequently exiled to his place of martyrdom. C.'s cult spread widely in north central Italy. St. Peter Chrysologus, Ravenna's first bishop (d. 450), had a special devotion to this regional martyr. Imola's first cathedral is said to have been built over C.'s tomb; it and its successors have always been dedicated to him.
Perhaps the best known of the many other medieval dedications to C. is the originally eleventh-century church of San Cassiano in Pennino at Predappio (FC) in the Romagna:
http://www.appenninoromagnolo.it/foto/predappio/foto/sancassiano.jpg
http://weecheng.com/europe/bologna/pred9.jpg
This church's fame, such as it is, derives from Benito Mussolini's reposing here in his family's tomb in the adjacent burial ground.
Also worth a look are A) the thirteenth-century former Benedictine priory church of San Cassiano in Valbagnola in an outlying section of Fabriano (AN) in the Marche:
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/abbazie/sancassiano.htm
http://www.guanciarossa.it/leviedellafede/scassian.htm
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/epigrafi/sancassiano.htm
http://tinyurl.com/g3ht2
B) the originally eleventh(?)-century abbey church of San Cassiano at Narni (TR) in Umbria, radically rebuilt in the early fourteenth century shortly before the construction of the present fortification wall:
http://tinyurl.com/2txxx7
http://tinyurl.com/2p4bdf
http://tinyurl.com/2k7vfr
http://tinyurl.com/3ax9ks
http://www.ternionline.net/itg.narni/S.Cassiano/disegni.htm
C) the twelfth-century Pieve dei Santi Cassiano e Giovanni at Settimo (PI) in Tuscany, also known as a church of Santi Ippolito e Cassiano or simply San Cassiano (many views towards the foot of the page):
http://www.stilepisano.it/immagini/Pisa_Pieve_di_San_Cassiano.htm
and D) -- just for fun -- the recently restored remnant of the church of San Cassiano at Trescore Balneario (BG) in Lombardy, first documented from 1105:
Before restoration:
http://tinyurl.com/2xt5ao
After renovation:
http://tinyurl.com/yvtgru
http://tinyurl.com/yu452s
http://tinyurl.com/2x795f
3) Cassian of Todi (d. 304, supposedly). C. has a relatively late, highly legendary Passio (BHL 1637) that makes him an early bishop of today's Todi (PG) in Umbria who, imprisoned during the Great Persecution, refused to apostasize and was finally martyred. His medieval cult, centered upon the diocese of Todi, is first documented from the twelfth century. Both the coincidence of his feast day with that of the much better known Cassian of Imola and the reappearance in his Passio of details drawn from Prudentius' account of that saint have led to the supposition (paralleled in the case of the recently noticed Cassian of Benevento) that this C. is in origin C. of Imola re-imagined at Todi as a local bishop.
In 1198 altars to C. and to Todi's St. Fortunatus were consecrated in an oratory dedicated to them in a former Roman-period cistern near the predecessor of today's Tempio di San Fortunato at Todi. In 1301 their putative relics were translated to the latter church, then newly built, and deposited under its main altar. In the later Middle Ages Todi also had a separate chapel dedicated to C. This was _not_ the oratory in the former cistern, in which other altars were dedicated in 1242 and 1263, and which at some point came to be thought of as the prison in which C. had been immured after his arrest. Here's a view of the entrance to the oratory (the so-called _carcere di San Cassiano_):
http://www.comune.todi.pg.it/images/g57.jpg
Since 1596 C. has resided in the crypt of San Fortunato. Links to views of that church were recently in the notice of Digna of Todi (11. August). Here are a few other views showing San Fortunato's location near the highest point on the hill of Todi:
http://www.medioevoinumbria.it/images/citta/todi_ok.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/64glh6
http://www.casaleulivi.com/files/images/Todi-panoramica.jpg
4) Maximus the Confessor (d. 662). After service with Sophronius of Jerusalem the theologian M. became secretary to the emperor Heraclius. A prolific writer and an opponent of the imperially imposed doctrine of Monotheletism, M. supported pope St. Martin I in 649 and was exiled by Constans II first to Thrace and then to Lazica (part of today's Georgia), where he died. Today, his day of commemoration in the RM, is in Orthodox churches the feast of the translation of his relics to Constantinople. M.'s principal feast in Orthodox churches falls on 21. January.
5) Wigbert of Fritzlar (d. 738). The Englishman W. (in German, also Wipert) was from about 735 onward one of St. Boniface's missionary coadjutors in what is now central Germany. He was abbot at Fritzlar in today's Schwalm-Eder Kreis in Hessen, where one of his disciples was St. Sturmius (17. December), the future abbot of Fulda. Boniface later made W. abbot at Ohrdruf in Thüringen. When W. was ill and close to death Boniface allowed him to return to Fritzlar, where he died, where his sanctity was later said to have been confirmed by miracles at his tomb, and where his cult will have been immediate.
In 774 W.'ss remains were moved for safety to nearby Buraburg and a few years after that to Hersfeld (now Bad Hersfeld; W. is its patron saint). During the year 836 Servatus Lupus (a.k.a. Lupus of Ferrières), then a monk of Fulda, wrote at the behest of the abbot of Hersfeld a Vita of W. (BHL 8879) that unfortunately tells us very little about the him (at the time of S.'s writing W. had been dead for almost a century).
W. is one of the dedicatees of Quedlinburg's twelfth-century church (with a seemingly early eleventh-century crypt) of Sts. Wipert and James, a rebuilding of a church founded in the ninth century from Hersfeld. Views of the crypt:
http://www.deutsches-fachwerkzentrum.de/wipert.htm
http://www.pretzien.de/romanik/romanikbilder/quedlinburg3_gross.jpg
The church's own website, with downloadable German-language .pdfs on the church's history and that of the building, is here:
http://www.wiperti.de/
Also dedicated to W. is the Wigbertikirche in Erfurt (consecrated, 1473). Some views:
http://tinyurl.com/6l2vuc
http://tinyurl.com/66ctyg
http://tinyurl.com/5na6m4
http://tinyurl.com/2l7xey
6) Stephen of Rossano Calabro (Bl.; d. 1001). We know about this less well known holy person of the Regno chiefly from the Bios of St. Nilus of Rossano (BHG 1370). One of Nilus' earliest disciples, he learned obedience and self-discipline at N.'s lavra in the Mercurion and then was a leading member of the community first at the monastery of St. Adrian at today's San Demetrio Corone (CS) in Calabria and then in its successive homes in the Latin West at Capua, at Valleluce in southern Lazio, and at Serperi in the duchy of Gaeta. When he died at Serperi N. had him buried in double tomb, whose empty space N. intended to have filled with his own body after his death.
It is not known whether S.'s remains were later brought to the community's new foundation at Grottaferrata, where N. died a few years later and is buried. S. is the subject of eleventh-century liturgical hymns from Grottaferrata. That abbey's hagiographical calendar records him jointly with Nilus on the latter's feast (26. September).
Best,
John Dillon
(Pontianus of Rome and Hippolytus of Rome, Cassian of Imola, and Cassian of Todi lightly revised from older posts)
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