medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. October) is the feast day of:
1) Cornelius the Centurion (d. 1st cent.). C., a Roman soldier stationed at Cesarea in Palestine, was the first gentile to be baptized in the Christian faith (Acts 10). St. Jerome's friend St. Paula visited a church in Caesarea that was said to have once been C.'s house. C. entered the historical martyrologies with Ado and Usuard, who placed him under 2. February and who gave him an elogium derived from the fourth-century _Constituiones Apostolicae_ (7. 46) and dubiously making him a bishop of Caesarea. 2. February is also where C. was entered in the RM prior to its revision of 2001.
2) Caprasius of Agen (?). Nothing is known C. (in French, Caprais) beyond the fact that in the sixth century he had a church dedicated to him at Agen (so St. Gregory of Tours, _Historia Francorum_, 6. 12; _De gloria martyrum_, 1. 52). By the ninth century his cult had been attracted into that of St. Fides of Agen and he appears in the legendary Passio of Sts. Fides, Caprasius, Primus, and Felician (BHL 2930) as one of her companions in martyrdom. C. entered the historical martyrologies with the ninth-century Florus of Lyon; his elogium in Usuard (under this day) is derived from the aforementioned Passio. In the fourteenth century C. was considered the protobishop of Agen.
C.'s originally twelfth-century church at Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) is now that city's cathedral. An illustrated, French-language account is here:
http://tinyurl.com/58ely4
The Romanes.com page on this church is here (but the entire site appears to be temporarily offline):
http://www.romanes.com/Agen/
3) Leopardus of Osimo (?). One of the ancient saints of Osimo (AN; the city's name is a proparoxytone and its first 'o' is open) in the Marche and believed in the Middle Ages to have been its bishop, L. has a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Vita (BHL 4884) that dates him to the fifth century, confounds him with another saint of this name, and is generally quite unreliable.
In 1296 L.'s remains were discovered in the cathedral (this Inventio is recounted in detail in Osimo's fourteenth-century statutes); these were identified by a silver plaque, said to have been found on the saint's breast, bearing the inscription SCS [sanctus] LEOPARDVS. This plaque is one of the treasures of Osimo's diocesan museum. Formerly dated to the ninth century, it is now thought to be of the seventh or the eighth (when the March of Ancona was experiencing its Byzantine "Indian summer" as part of east central Italy's Pentapolis) and to have been the cover of a gospel-book. The best view I've found on the Web is here:
http://www.comune.osimo.an.it/museo/le_opere/lamina_di_s.htm
A drawing of this object's upper side is here:
http://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90484/90484.JPG
Osimo's cathedral, dedicated to L., is an eleventh- and twelfth-century structure that received noticeable alterations in the late thirteenth century and again in the fifteenth. A brief, illustrated Italian-language account of this building is here:
http://tinyurl.com/cdk9b
Another, with many expandable views, is here:
http://medioevo.org/artemedievale/Pages/Marche/Osimo.html
(That's the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page. The whole site has been offline for the past few days.)
A few further exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/6mxexb
http://ccconero.altervista.org/gite/photos/photo_25.html
http://www.comune.osimo.an.it/foto/duomo_facciata.jpg
Exterior details:
http://www.comune.osimo.an.it/foto/duomo_facciata_particolare.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/26svmo
A view of the crypt:
http://www.comune.osimo.an.it/foto/duomo_cripta.jpg
4) Sindulf of Aussonce (d. later 6th cent., supposedly). S. (in French, Sidoux, Sindulphe) is a local saint of the diocese of Reims. According to his perhaps ninth-century Vita et Translatio by one Almann of the abbey of Hautvillers (BHL 7792-7793), he was a priest and hermit who had been ordained at Reims, who died on this day under the rule of queen Brunhilde (regent, 575-584), and whose remains were translated from today's Aussonce (Ardennes) through Reims to the abbey in about the year 866. Flodoard of Reims says much the same thing in his _Historia Remensis ecclesiae_. In 1048 a procession through the diocese with S.'s holy relics resulted in a drought-ending rain.
5) Vitalis of Salzburg (d. earlier 8th cent., supposedly). We first hear of V. in a later twelfth century Benedictine chronicle from Austria and in a twelfth-century Miracle collection that was used for his canonization inquest of 1462. He is believed to have been a disciple of St. Rupert of Salzburg (d. ca. 717) who became abbot that city's monastery (now archabbey) of St. Peter and who was Rupert's second successor in the see of Salzburg. V. is also said to have evangelized in the Pinzgau to the southwest of Salzburg and to have had his headquarters there at today's Piesendorf near Zell am See. His putative grace is in St. Peter's, for whom his cult was authorized, with a Mass and Office, by Leo X. In 1627 relics believed to be V.'s were discovered in 1627; in the following year his cult was extended to the entire archdiocese of Salzburg. V. entered the RM with its revision of 2001.
6) Andrew in Crisis (d. 767). According to his closely posthumous Bios (BHG 111), the martyr A. (also A. the Calybite) was a native of Crete who lived very ascetically as a stylite until the year 767, when he travelled to Constantinople and there reproved the emperor (Constantine V) for his persecution of iconophiles. C., who is said to have been unable to match A. in theological learning, promptly consigned his opponent to the mercies of an iconoclast mob that first cut off the saint's right foot and then lynched him. A.'s body was thrown into a common grave but sympathizers coming by night were able miraculously to recognize it among all the others (was the trench chock full of fresh male corpses lacking a right foot?) and gave it honorable burial in a part of the city called Crisis. Thus far the Bios. Once the persecution ended, a women's monastery dedicated to A. arose at the site of his grave.
7) Adeline of Mortain (d. ca. 1125). A sister of St. Vitalis of Savigny, A. was the first abbess of the monastery founded in the early twelfth century at today's Mortain (Manche) by count Guillaume de Mortain (d. 1106). Her cult is first attested from a translation in 1182 along with those of her brother and of other local saints to a chapel in Savigny; another translation in 1243 brought her to the town's principal church.
An English-language account of the abbey at Mortain is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5m7kvx
Expandable views:
http://tinyurl.com/5vdbqv
Best,
John Dillon
(Leopardus of Osimo 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
|