medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. October) is the feast day of:
1) Longinus the soldier (d. 1st cent.). Today's commemoration in the RM honors the soldier who at John 19:34 pierces the crucified Jesus with a lance and who in the apocryphal _Acta Pilati_ (?fifth-century) and in later texts is called Longinus. Latin traditions identify him with the centurion at the Cross who confesses (if perhaps not always in the voice of John Wayne) Jesus' divinity (Matthew 27:64, Mark 15:39, Luje 23:47). L. had a rich and varied apocyrphal career which included evangelizing Cappadocia and being martyred at the Caesarea there. He has Passiones in Greek (BHG 988) and in Latin (BHL 4965). L. is entered under 15. March in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology , which is also where he was in the RM until its revision of 2001. In the Greek and other eastern churches, and in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, his feast has ordinarily been kept today.
L. (at right, piercing Jesus) in an ivory panel originally from an early fifth-century casket, now in the British Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/29z2bl
L. with the Holy Lance (ca. 1437-1446) as depicted by Beato Angelico in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/6oddl8
2) Lullus (d. 786). The Anglo-Saxon L., also known by the English-language forms of his name 'Lul' and 'Lull', was a friend and missionary collaborator of St. Boniface, whom he succeeded as bishop of Mainz and whose accomplishments he subsequently did much to preserve. Hence he is often referred to Lullus of Mainz. His formation as a monk of Malmesbury, together with William of Malmesbury's early twelfth-century interest in his abbey's connection with the Bonifatian project, have also led to his being called Lullus of Malmesbury. It seems a particularly German thing to call him Lullus of Hersfeld, though hardly an inappropriate one considering that he founded this once important abbey and that he remained its abbot throughout his episcopate (later, archiepiscopate) at Mainz.
L. was buried in the abbey church and it was there that his canonization occurred in 852 when his remains were moved to the abbey's then new basilica. The abbey's town, today's Bad Hersfeld in northeastern Hessen near the latter's border with Thüringen, celebrates him as its founder and patron saint. Its Lullusfest, which takes its origin in the events of 852, proclaims itself Germany's oldest civic celebration.
For a recent account of L., of his role in promoting the memory of St. Boniface, and of his own later memory, see James Palmer, "The 'vigorous rule' of Bishop Lull: between Bonifatian mission and Carolingian church control", _Early Medieval Europe_ 13 (2005), 249-27. The text of the same scholar's sympathetic evocation of L. in a recent BBC "Legacies" programme is available here:
http://tinyurl.com/ylhjx6
The twelfth-century abbey church at Hersfeld (which latter officially became Bad Hersfeld only in 1949) survived the dissolution of the monastery but not the Seven Years War, when (in 1751) the French first used it as a powder magazine and then set it afire. A plan of the structure:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dehio_I_42_Hersfeld.jpg
Views of the ruin:
http://tinyurl.com/ych8qx
http://www.konradlipphardt.homepage.t-online.de/hefruine.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ybdq67
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stiftsruine_Hersfeld.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yed8tv
On the grounds of the former abbey is a belltower known as the Katherinenturm. This houses the Lullusglocke, said to have been cast in 1038 and to be Germany's oldest dated church bell. Various views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/t9qez
http://tinyurl.com/y42889
http://www.konradlipphardt.homepage.t-online.de/hefkatha.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lullusglocke.jpg
3) Bertrand of Comminges (d. 1123). After a military education the Gascon nobleman B. became in the early 1070s a cathedral canon and archdeacon of Toulouse and then in about 1079 bishop of the then semi-abandoned Comminges, today's Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute-Garonne). He built a cathedral that was visited by pilgrims on their way to Compostela, established a chapter of canons regular, and acted as a reform bishop for over forty years. Miracles were reported at his tomb and a cult soon arose. In about 1168 B.'s Vita (BHL 1304) was written at the behest of a younger relative, the archbishop of Auch. Honorius III instituted a canonization inquest in 1220 and from 1222 Comminges was being called Saint-Bertrand. In 1309 B.'s namesake and former episcopal successor Bertrand de Goth, now pope Clement V, accorded him an Elevatio in the cathedral, where B.'s relics are said to remain.
Two illustrated, French-language pages on the cathedral of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminge:
http://tinyurl.com/6fdpwq
http://architecture.relig.free.fr/comminges.htm
Both of those have expandable views of B.'s representation on the tympanum of the cathedral's main entrance. Other representations of B. are shown here:
http://www.cathedrale-saint-bertrand.org/saint-bertrand.html
Best,
John Dillon
(Lullus lightly revised from last year's post)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|