medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (29. December) was the feast day of:
1) Trophimus (d. 3d cent.). T. (in French, Trophime) is the protobishop of Arles. According to the recently celebrated pope St. Zosimus (27. December), he had been sent to Gaul as a missionary and was the first to spread the faith at Arles. St. Gregory of Tours calls him Arles' first bishop and says that he was one of the missionary companions of St. Dionysius of Paris in middle of the third century. That date, at least, is likely to be reasonably correct.
Herewith some views of Arles' originally late eleventh-century primatiale Saint-Trophime (a cathedral until 1822):
http://tinyurl.com/9gnu6c
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/saint_trophime_arles.htm
http://tinyurl.com/8tnsqe
http://romanes.com/Arles/StTrophime/Eglise/
http://www.archart.it/archart/europa/France/Arles-cattedrale/
Views of T. as he appears on this church's later twelfth-century facade:
http://tinyurl.com/982kpw
http://tinyurl.com/8nox9x
2) Ebrulf (d. later 6th cent., supposedly). According to his Vitae (BHL 2374, etc.), which begin in the earlier twelfth century, E. (in French, Evroul, Evroult, Evrols) was a pious courtier under Childebert I who separated from his wife and became a monk of Bayeux. He is said later to have retreated as a hermit to the woods of Normandy's Pays d'Ouche and to have created at today's Saint-Evroul-de-Montfort (Orne) a hermitage that the originally eleventh-century abbey of Saint-Evroul-sur-Ouche at today's Saint-Evroult Notre-Dame-du-Bois (Orne) claimed was its royally founded predecessor (with E. as its first abbot). The foundation of many other houses was ascribed to E. was well. The Norman Conquest brought his cult to England.
Some views of what's left of the abbey of Saint-Evroul-sur-Ouche (the monastic home of Orderic Vitalis, who in the earlier twelfth century wrote a history of this house):
http://tinyurl.com/7k5pw7
http://tinyurl.com/7ttolz
http://tinyurl.com/8nsmfw
http://tinyurl.com/924n6k
3) Thomas of Canterbury (Thomas Becket; d. 1170). A Londoner, T. was successively archdeacon of Canterbury, chancellor of England under Henry II, and (from 1162) archbishop of Canterbury. In the latter post, his defence of ecclesiastical rights soon led to a falling out with Henry and to T.'s withdrawal to France, where he remained until 1170. His return to Canterbury in that year had papal backing but only grudging acceptance from the king. The two were still quite unreconciled when T. was assassinated in his cathedral on 29. December 1170 by knights who thought that they were doing Henry a favor. T.'s life of penitence and self-mortification while archbishop contributed to his image as a saintly martyr. He was canonized in 1173 and Vitae (with miracle accounts) soon followed.
Herewith some visuals, starting in England but moving quickly to the Continent.
a) Christ Church cathedral, Canterbury, Kent:
Site of T.'s murder:
http://www.rozspringer.com/images/CanterburyCathedral.jpg
b) The originally late twelfth-century église Saint-Thomas de Cantorbéry at Mont-Saint-Aignan (Seine-Maritime) in Normandy, commissioned by Henry II in 1173. English-language and French-language accounts are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ycw8c3
http://tinyurl.com/ydsevd
and some expandable views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ylcfe5
c) Reliefs on the late twelfth-century (1190-1200) baptismal font in the church at Lyngsjö (Skåne län) showing Henry, the murderers, and the murder:
http://tinyurl.com/9scjdf
http://tinyurl.com/73a7qb
More views of this font are here (scroll down to Døbefont):
http://tinyurl.com/93aqa6
d) Some of the numerous Becket reliquary châsses made at Limoges in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries:
Ornamental reliquary (1180), with scenes of the martyrdom, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/8eeb5c
Another (ca. 1200), now at Limoges, musée municipal de l'Evêché:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/emolimo/thomas1.htm
Another (ca. 1200-1210), now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco:
http://search2.famsf.org:8080/mygallery/view.shtml?record=152504
Another (ca. 1205-1215), now at Guéret (Creuse), musée des Beaux-Arts:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/emolimo/thomas2.htm
Other Becket reliquary châsses are shown here (images begin about a third of the way down the page):
http://tinyurl.com/9jz8ll
e) T.'s late originally twelfth-/early thirteenth-century church (an Augustinian foundation; portal dated 1202) at Caramanico Terme (PE) in Abruzzo:
Italian-language accounts with multiple views:
http://www.abruzzovacanze.net/vr.php/it/24
http://www.abruzzoverdeblu.it/?id=36
Single views:
http://tinyurl.com/928sxh
http://tecweb.unich.it/prog2004-11/particolare_san_tommaso.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2ondr4
f) T.'s originally late twelfth-/thirteenth-century church at Cabriolo di Fidenza (PR) in Emilia, once a Templar chapel and now in private ownership:
http://www.templarioggi.it/Templari_oggi_le_commanderie_21.htm
http://tinyurl.com/yd3j9n
g) This recent issue of _Vidimus_ offers an English-language discussion and some expandable views of earlier thirteenth-century Beckett windows at Sens and elsewhere:
http://tinyurl.com/9trmlk
And here's the murder scene as depicted in glass in the cathedral of Sens:
http://tinyurl.com/9fhcya
h) The Becket Leaves (a thirteenth-century illustrated rhymed Passio of T. in French):
http://www.angelfire.com/pa4/becketleaves/
i) Two scenes from Meister Francke's Altarpiece of St. Thomas Becket (mid-1430s; Hamburg, Kunsthalle):
T.'s entry into Canterbury:
http://tinyurl.com/yb3q3o
The assassination:
http://tinyurl.com/yarm7y
j) Only tangentially medieval: the parish church of Avrieux (Savoie) in the Maurienne dedicated to T. This dedication is somewhat dubiously reported to have occurred in 1214 at the behest of a lord of Avrieux named Anthelme and of his sons who were said to be "of England". The present church took shape in the seventeenth century. According to this website from the local commune, it is an expansion of its medieval predecessor, not a completely new building:
http://www.avrieux.com/patrimoine/eglise01.htm
(Perhaps more obviously medieval: Avrieux is one of two places -- the other being Brides-les-Bains -- where Charles the Bald is said to have died on his way back from Italy in 877.)
Some views of the church:
http://www.avrieux.com/phototheque/eglise3.jpg
http://www.avrieux.com/phototheque/eglise2.jpg
And views of a piece of its seventeenth-century decor, a retable with scenes from T.'s Life (details linked to below are of the assassination and of the flight of the assassins):
http://www.avrieux.com/images/dyptique.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y3th7b
http://tinyurl.com/y9a7sd
Best,
John Dillon
(Thomas of Canterbury revised from last year's post)
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