medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. August) is the feast day of:
1) The Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore) in Rome (ca. 435). In 431 the Council of Ephesus in the course of its condemnation of Nestorianism asserted the BVM's role as Theotokos ('Mother of God'). Her newly enunciated position of prominence was underscored shortly thereafter by pope St. Sixtus III (432-40), who built and dedicated to Mary the Roman basilica now known as Santa Maria Maggiore. Since at least the time of Francesco Maria Fiorentini's _Vetustius occidentalis ecclesiae martyrologium_ (1668), this has been considered the first church in the West to be dedicated to Mary.
The feast is entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology with an entry that reads as follows: _Romae dedicatio basilicae sanctae Mariae_. Santa Maria Maggiore was either a replacement for or a rebuilding of an earlier basilica erected on the same spot by pope Liberius (352-66). In later legend it was claimed that Mary had appeared to Liberius and to others in a dream on the night of 4./5. August saying that she would mark out in snow the outline of a space where a church should be built in her honor. On the following day the outline was discovered on the Esquiline and here Liberius built his basilica, which in this account was then already dedicated to the BVM close to a century before Sixtus' creation of Santa Maria Maggiore.
In accordance with the legend, Santa Maria Maggiore came also to be called Santa Maria ad Nives ('Our Lady of the Snows') and in the general Roman Calendar from 1568 until its revision of 1969 the feast was called this as well. As -- in Italian, at least -- it still is at the Basilica, where the feast continues to be observed.
Modified several times over the centuries, Rome's Santa Maria Maggiore retains much of its original basilican form and indeed some of its late antique decoration. Here's the English-language version of the basilica's illustrated website:
http://www.vatican.va/various/sm_maggiore/index_en.html
A page of expandable views is here:
http://tinyurl.com/eu9kk
In this view of the interior, note the columns, capitals, and the mosaic panels above them (these are all early):
http://tinyurl.com/jtdr5
Another view, showing the triumphal arch as well (and a bit of the apse mosaic):
http://tinyurl.com/cw2w8
More views (Paradox Place):
http://tinyurl.com/5tlduo
Some expandable views of surviving sculpture from Arnolfo di Cambio's late thirteenth-century crèche for the Basilica:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/arnolfo/4/index.html
Here are two Italian-language pages, with expandable images, on the later fifteenth-century church of Santa Maria della (delle) Neve at Pisogne (BR) in Lombardy, famous for its frescoes (finished in 1534) by Girolamo Romanino:
http://www.luoghimisteriosi.it/lombardia_pisogne.html
http://tinyurl.com/56lw5l
An interior view, showing some of the mise-en-église of the frscoes:
http://tinyurl.com/6cvj4z
There are more views in the album here (starting in the fifth row from the top):
http://tinyurl.com/5po48o
2) Emigdius (d. 304, supposedly). E. (also Migdius, Emygdius, Emindius, etc.; in Italian, Emidio) is the reputed evangelist of Ascoli Piceno (AP) in the Marche. There are two versions of his legendary Passio. The briefer of these (BHL 2537), called Recensio 2 because it was the later to be discovered, is dated to the eleventh century; the longer one (Recensio 1; already printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_; BHL 2535), is generally dated to the thirteenth or perhaps early fourteenth century. These make E. a healer who in Rome overturns a cult statue of Asclepius (to use, as do both versions of the Passio, the standard form of this name in medieval Latin) and whose divinely granted healing powers supersede vain belief in the efficacy of this pagan deity. Consecrated bishop by the pope and sent to Ascoli to spread the faith, E. is in time apprehended there with several companions and suffers martyrdom by decapitation.
In both versions of the Passio E. is a cephalophore. In the earlier version he walks a fifth of a Roman mile carrying his head in his hooded cloak; in the later version this distance is increased to a third of a Roman mile.
E.'s cult is attested to from the late ninth century onward in eastern Sabina and in Picene territory. It is thought to have been diffused by the imperial abbey of Farfa, where the author of Recensio 2 may have resided; the author of the later version, Recensio 1, seems to have been a cleric of Ascoli Piceno. E. and his companions repose in an ancient sarcophagus in the crypt of his cathedral at that city; the inscription on its cover (_Cum sociis aliis Emindius hic requiescit_) has been dated to the eleventh or twelfth century.
The cathedral of Sant'Emidio at Ascoli Piceno
http://tinyurl.com/6rgr59
has been rebuilt so often that there is little medieval left to see in its fabric other than transept and the domed presbytery with its three apses (the latter said to go back to the eighth century). A nearby inscription dates its two side towers to the twelfth century. Some sections of the originally eleventh-century crypt still have their original columns and sometimes even their medieval capitals:
http://tinyurl.com/9bczx
http://tinyurl.com/5tzbrw
Here's a view of E.'s tomb (a fourth-century sarcophagus) in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/5h6pkh
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale site has several pages on medieval buildings in this city:
http://medioevo.org/artemedievale/Pages/Marche/Ascoli.html
The cathedral's cappella del Sacramento houses the altarpiece (1473) by Carlo Crivelli shown and discussed here (E. is at the Virgin's immediate left):
http://arengario.net/momenti/momenti51.html
Here's a view of Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation with Sant'Emidio (1486), in the National Gallery, London:
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/c/p-crivell2.htm
A fuzzier reproduction, but perhaps making visible more details, is here (image expandable):
http://www.bramarte.it/400/img/cri1.jpg
3) Paris of Teano (d. 4th cent., supposedly). Today's less well known saint from the Regno is the legendary first bishop of Teano (CE) in nothern Campania, once the ancient Teanum Sidicinum and an important crossroads town on the Via Latina. P.'s Vita (BHL 6466) is a melange of familiar topoi featuring an evangelist of foreign origin (Athenian), a giant serpent fed rich meals in a pagan sacred well, a bear and a lion who become tame when each in turn is set upon our intrepid saint, and pope St. Sylvester I hiding from Constantinian persecution on Mount Soracte.
P.'s cult seems to be at least early medieval in origin. His church, the recently restored San Paride ad Fontem, is an eleventh- or early twelfth-century structure that replaced a paleochristian church. Situated outside the medieval city and built over an ancient cistern (the sacred well of the legend, no doubt), this is believed to have been Teano's first cathedral. It retains an early episcopal throne. Whereas P. was said to have been buried here, his putative relics are in Teano's cathedral of San Clemente, a 17th-century replacement for an earlier cathedral built about the same time as the present San Paride in Fontem.
Always essentially a local saint, P. seems to have been venerated from at least the early modern period onward in other locales in northern Campania. At present he is co-patron of the diocese of Teano-Calvi, sharing that distinction with the equally shadowy Castus of Calvi (one of Campania's several episcopal saints of that name).
Here's a view of San Paride in Fontem dating from before the restoration of 1988-2004:
http://tinyurl.com/2fz2v2
Some more recent exterior views of the same church:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/San_Paride.htm
Other exterior views (images copyright Campania Tour):
http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/QimF_g.jpg
http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/dSYS_g.jpg
http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/UPLK_g.jpg
http://www.campaniatour.it/immagini/ml/images/NfbS_g.jpg
While we're in Teano, some views of the cathedral's cosmatesque ambo:
http://www.prolocoteano.it/Monumenti/Ambone.htm
The ambo's present parapet (a replacement for the orginal, which had been badly damaged by fire in 1608) is composed of panels taken from a fourteenth-century funerary monument decorated with images of P. and of other bishops of Teano.
4) Oswald of Northumbria (d. 642). Most of what we know about O. comes from Bede's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_. The second son of a Christian king of Northumbria who had lost his throne to pagan opponents, O. spent seventeen years in exile in Scotland and Ireland before returning and winning his kingdom in battle in 634. Memorably generous to the poor, he was instrumental in establishing the Christian religion in Northumbria. O. was killed in battle against an old enemy, the pagan king Penda of Mercia, who had the fallen king's head, arms, and hands shown publicly on stakes. These relics were later recovered by O.'s brother and successor Oswiu, who donated the head to Lindisfarne. Miracles were attributed to O. and a cult arose. One of O.'s hands was said to be undecayed; in the late eighth century it was still displayed in a silver reliquary in the palace church at Bamburgh.
O.'s relics later were dispersed still further. In the early tenth century some wound up at St. Peter's Priory in Gloucester, which soon became St.Oswald's Priory instead. A page on that site is here:
http://tinyurl.com/55o9uh
Both Durham Cathedral and that of Hildesheim have heads said to be those of O. (O. the Polycephalous, perhaps?). Here's a view of his late twelfth-century head reliquary at Hildesheim:
http://tinyurl.com/6a5bqw
For more on O.'s posthumous journeys, see:
http://britannia.com/church/shrines/oswald.html
Best,
John Dillon
(The Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, Emigdius, and Paris of Teano revised from older posts)
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