medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. May) is the feast day of:
1) Joseph the Worker (d. 1st cent.). Yes, this is J., the foster-father of Jesus, whose principal feast is on 19. March. Today's feast is a creation of 1955, replacing that of Philip and James (now on 3. May). Since Joseph has had a Saints-of-the-Day moment not too long ago and since Philip and James are soon to have one, herewith a brief consideration of a saint of the Regno once celebrated on this day.
2) Maurus, "of Libya" (d. 284, supposedly). A saint of this name was venerated in Greek-speaking communities in and near Gallipoli on Apulia's Salentine Peninsula (the heel of the Italian boot) from at least 1149 until well into the eighteenth century. His Greek Acta were translated into Latin in 1603 and on that basis were summarized by Henschenius in the _Acta Sanctorum_ (under 1. May) as follows:
M. was a well-born Libyan Christian who was orphaned while still young, travelled to Rome, and was there martyred under an official named Celerinus. Comrades of his from Libya placed his body in a container and attempted to sail home with it. Celerinus pursued them to a place in what the Acta imply was later the East Roman theme of Langobardia. There he caught up with the fugitives and slew them but was unsuccessful in his attempt to burn M.'s remains. Starting out on an intended return to Rome, he and all his minions were drowned off Gallipoli (at this point, the Acta note the parallel with Pharoah's pursuit of the Israelites). Well-born citizens of Gallipoli buried the bodies of M. and of his companions and celebrated his feast on 1. May.
A Greek-rite monastery dedicated to M. at the locality of San Mauro alla Serra in today's Sannicola (LE), near Gallipoli, is documented from 1149 to 1331. There were also cave churches honoring M. at Oria (BR) and at Presicce (LE). The church of the monastery, which at one time had considerable holdings on the Salentine Peninsula, remained in use in the early modern period; richly frescoed, it has recently been restored without and within. Two external views and several views of its frescoes will be found here:
http://www.anticasannicola.it/santi.html
A pre-restoration view of the interior will be found on this page:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/tscigliu/New%20Pages/storia.html
A guide to the frescoes, with hotlinks to views of several of these, is here:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/tscigliu/New%20Pages/archi.html
Today is also the feast day of:
3) Andeolus (d. 208, supposedly). A. (in French: Andéol) is the legendary evangelist of the Vivarais. According to his legendary Passio (BHL 423; earliest witnesses are of the tenth century) he was a subdeacon sent to Gaul by St. Polycarp of Smyrna in a mission headed by St. Benignus of Dijon. A. was on his way to Carpentras when in the persecution of Septimius Severus he was arrested at a place called Bergoiata, was tried before the emperor himself, then on his way to Valence, and was found guilty. After various torments he was dispatched on this day in the presence of the emperor, who ordered that A. be killed by having his head sliced and re-shaped in the form of a cross. A.'s corpse was thrown into the Rhone, whence it was recovered by a pagan matron who, instructed as to A.'s holiness by a miracle, became Christian and gave him a decent burial. Thus far the Passio.
Bergoiata is now Bourg-Saint-Andéol (Ardèche) in Rhône-Alpes. Its skyline is dominated by the originally eleventh-/twelfth-century église abbatiale Saint-Andéol:
http://tinyurl.com/cezdug
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9146000.jpg
Some interior views of the church are here:
http://pmarecha.free.fr/roman/tricastin.htm#standeol
The Structurae page of views for the church:
http://fr.structurae.de/structures/data/photos.cfm?ID=s0014993
The ancient sarcophagus seen in two of the Structurae views was reworked in the early twelfth century to house A.'s putative remains. All four sides may be seen here:
http://bourgsaintandeol.free.fr/sarcophage%20st%20andeol.htm
Here's a view of the re-carved side with its identifying inscription flanked by representations of St. Benignus of Dijon at left and of Polycarpd of Smyrna at right:
http://mmfloga.skyrock.com/photo.html?id_article=130975958
A.'s cult is attested by numerous toponyms and dedications of existing churches across southern France as well as by Sant Aniol d'Aguja (Girona) in Catalunya, whose ex-abbey church dedicated to him is shown here (the monastery is said to be late ninth-century; the church may not be quite that old):
http://tinyurl.com/cfbamy
More views here (scroll down to SANT ANIOL D'AGUJA):
http://tinyurl.com/cc5ucx
and here:
http://monestirs.cat/monst/garrot/cgt07aguj.htm
4) Hypolistus (d. ca. 303, supposedly). This saint of the Regno is the titular of the originally twelfth-century church of Sant' (also San) Ippolisto at Atripalda (AV) in Campania. That structure was built over a late antique Christian hypogeum known medievally as the _specus martyrum_ ('cave of the martyrs'), where saints are first known to have been venerated from 357, when the site was part of a necropolis for ancient Abellinum (in the early Middle Ages Abellinum's population moved to the site of today's Avellino; Atripalda, first attested from 1086, is the community that took its place). H. was one of the saints venerated there. He has a legendary Passio (BHL 4054-4055; 4055f is by the eleventh-century Cassinese prose stylist John of Gaeta, later pope Gelasius II) that makes him a priest of Antioch who preached the gospel wondrously at Abellinum and who was martyred under Diocletian. H. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Atripalda's chiesa di Sant'Ippolisto was rebuilt in Renaissance neoclassical style during the years 1585 and following. The crypt was radically altered in 1629, at which time most of its medieval decor (about which we know something from an early thirteenth-century description) was lost. The collapse of the crypt's vaulting a few years later may have been an unrecognized comment from on high on the merits of this stylistic "renovation". Some medieval frescoing and sculptural fragments survive in the crypt. The latter's most recent restoration is the subject of Giuseppe Mollo, _Specus Martyrum. Arte e Restauri_ (Viterbo: BetaGamma, 1998), whose cover is shown here:
http://www.betagamma.it/collane/cmc/descrizioni/31cmc.htm
Here's a view of the entrance to the crypt's eighteenth-century Cappella del Tesoro showing surviving tortile columns:
http://www.prolocoatripalda.it/apv/specus1.jpg
In the collage shown here, the crypt's cappella di Sant'Ippolisto is shown at left:
http://www.prolocoatripalda.it/apv/APVHOME00241.jpg
A view of H.'s display reliquary case above his tomb:
http://www.prolocoatripalda.it/apv/specus5.jpg
To give you an idea of what may have been lost in 1629, here's an illustrated, Italian-language page on the originally eighth(?)-century basilica antica beneath the early modern basilica della Santissima Annunziata at relatively nearby Prata di Principato Ultra (AV), similarly built into an ancient Christian cemetery:
http://www.irpinia.info/sito/towns/pratapu/basilicaantica.htm
The bishop depicted in the final painting shown _might_ be H. (a very iffy conjecture).
5) Orientius of Auch (d. earlier 5th cent.). O. has a not altogether credible Vita prima (BHL 6344) that has been variously dated from the early sixth century to sometime in the Carolingian period and upon which his later Vitae depend. This makes him a bishop of today's Auch (Gers) in southwestern France, in O.'s lifetime Auscis in Novempopulonia. A. was learned in theology, converted pagans at Auch, and destroyed a pagan temple that was a haunt of of devils. Auch at this time belonged to the Visigothic kingdom and the O. is said to have served as an envoy from the Gothic king of Toulouse to Aetius, who received him respectfully while his subordinate, Litorius, refused to meet with A. When the Goths later capture the Roman force Litorius pays with his life while O. is able to secure the release of the others.
O. is customarily identified with the late antique Christian poet Orientius, the author of a moral-didactic poem called _Commonitorium_ whose 518 elegiac distichs include an often cited passage on the woes of Gaul under barbarian rule.
6) Pellegrino Laziosi (d. ca. 1345). The Servite friar P. (sometimes called St. Peregrine) was a penitent and a healing thaumaturge in his native Forlì in the Romagna who came to be considered a saint in his lifetime. His cult was immediate after death and was spread by members of his Order. P. has a Vita from 1484 written by the humanist Nicolò Borghese (BHL 6629) that is thought to derive from a now lost earlier account then preserved at the Servite convent in Forlì and that seems to have given at least as much attention to P.'s spirituality as to his miracles. He was canonized in 1726. Along with the BVM, P. is a principal patron of the city of Forlì and of the diocese of Forlì-Bertinoro. The greater recognition given to P. in modern times probably has a lot to do with the diocese's celebration of yesterday's St. Mercurialis now falling in October rather than immediately before P.'s day.
P. was laid to rest in a loculus in Forlì's originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Maria dei Servi, the church where his remains still reside. The building was almost completely transformed early in the seventeenth century but retains a later medieval portal:
http://tinyurl.com/5b3ut2
http://www.queen.it/CITTA/FORLI/MONI/PELLEGR1.GIF
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Andeolus)
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