medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (19. May) is the feast day of:
1) Pudentiana (d. 2d cent., supposedly). P. is one of the legendary daughters of Pudens, the eponymous donor of the _titulus Pudentis_ at Rome. From the fourth century onward this church was also known as the _ecclesia Pudentiana_. In time this name form spawned a saint, P., who along with her sister Praxedes is a protagonist of a legendary Vita (BHL 6988, etc.). According to this text, she lived in this building (her family's house) during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61) and died on 19. May of some undisclosed year. Later texts made her a martyr. P. and her sister Praxedes have had a checkered career in modern times. Benedict XIV (d. 1758) removed both saints from the general Roman calendar. In 1969 their cults were suppressed, with the sole exception of services at the Roman basilicas dedicated to them.
Herewith some views of Rome's basilica di Santa Pudenziana (the belltower is of the thirteenth century; major modifications were made in 1588; the facade dates from 1870 but retains an eleventh-century frieze):
http://www2.siba.fi/~kkoskim/rooma/sivut/357_007B.HTM
http://tinyurl.com/5jfwej
http://tinyurl.com/5nmj3w
Expandable view and section here:
http://tinyurl.com/2syduz
Views of the originally fifth-century apse mosaic, reduced in size during the sixteenth-century rebuilding:
http://tinyurl.com/39bohs
Probably less familiar is P.'s early eleventh-century church at Narni (TR) in Umbria. Here are three illustrated, Italian-language sites on it:
http://web.tiscali.it/pmusilli/SantaPudenziana.htm
http://www.ternionline.net/itg.narni/S.Putenziana/index.htm
http://www.santapudenziana.org/
2) Urban I, pope (d. 230). U. succeeded pope St. Callistus I in 222. His papacy, which occurred in principate of Alexander Severus (whose administration did not persecute Christians), took place during the Hippolytan Schism. We are as uninformed about how U. dealt with that situation as we are about his pontificate in general. He was laid to rest in the cemetery of Callistus on the Via Appia, where (in the cemetery, not the road) in the nineteenth century was found a fragment of a Greek-language funerary inscription identifying a bishop Urbanus in a manner paralleled for other third-century popes.
Prior to his removal from the general Roman Calendar in its revision of 1969, U. was celebrated on 25. May, the date given by the (pseudo-Hieronymian) Martyrology for the commemoration of a bishop Urban buried in the cemetery of Praetextatus (also on the Via Appia); the latter's presence there is recorded in the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome. In the "new" RM (2001) U. is instead commemorated today, the date given by the (ps.-)HM for Parthenius and Calogerus and others including an Urban, all Roman martyrs of the cemetery of Callistus.
Apart from some dubious matter in the _Liber Pontificalis_, most of what was believed about U. during the Middle Ages stems from his role in the legendary Acta of St. Cecilia of Rome, which latter, if not specifically her Passio BHL 1495, were already in existence in some form in the sixth century and in which U. too is a martyr. Based on these are a not-later-than-eleventh-century Passio of U. (variously recorded as BHL 8376 or 8379) and another printed in the _Bibliotheca Casinensis_ (112-14). Herewith a view of the opening lines of the first of those as presented in an eleventh-century French _Vitae sanctorum_ (Troyes, Bibliothèque de l’agglomération troyenne, ms. 1171, fol. 2r) with an illuminated initial depicting a seated U.:
http://tinyurl.com/6hthle
A better view of the illumination:
http://tinyurl.com/62c32f
Also thought to be from the eleventh century (quite possibly from the pontificate of Urban II) is a poorly preserved fresco cycle, at Rome's extramural chiesa di Sant'Urbano alla Caffarella, of scenes from the Passio of St. Cecilia; most of these have to do with U. as well. Greatly expandable views of some of these are here:
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery2/v/album_015/?g2_page=2
and an Italian-language page describing the cycle in some detail is here:
http://tinyurl.com/6aj82r
Also from the eleventh century is our first mention of U.'s cult at today's Bucchianico (CH) in Abruzzo, when -- according to his probably late eleventh-century Vita -- in the earlier part of that century St. Aldemar of Bucchianico founded a monastery adjacent to that town's church dedicated to U. In 1243 the then bishop of Salpi translated relics believed to be those of U. to a place of honor beneath the main altar of that church. These are said still to repose in the church's later eighteenth-century successor, Bucchianico's present chiesa di Sant'Urbano. U. is Bucchianico's patron saint.
Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally later eleventh-century but mostly twelfth- and thirteenth-century abbey church of Sant'Urbano all'Esinante (a.k.a Sant'Urbano in Domo) at Apiro (AN) in the Marche begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/66dngg
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church:
http://www.medioevo.org/artemedievale/Pages/Marche/Apiro.html
A relatively recent study of the church by an expert on "romanesque" abbatial churches in the Marche: Hildegard Sahler, "Die Abteikirche Sant'Urbano all'Esinante in den Marken", _Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz_ 47 (2003), 5-56.
U. is also Apiro's patron saint.
A probably better known dedication to U. is the église collégiale de Saint-Urbain at Troyes, begun under Urban IV in 1262 and completed only in the nineteenth century. Herewith some views:
http://fr.structurae.de/structures/data/photos.cfm?ID=s0013001
http://tinyurl.com/5usvms
http://img47.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc000033ld.jpg
http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc000067gz.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/qttaoz
http://tinyurl.com/5nbv73
In this altar frontal dated to a little after 1304 (from Florence's chiesa di Santa Cecilia and now in the Uffizi; depicts C. and various scenes from her Passio) U. is in the first panel at the upper right, baptizing C.'s brother-in-law St. Tiburtius:
http://tinyurl.com/5sw24y
4) Peter Celestine (d. 1296). The hermit Peter of the Morrone (today's saint of the Regno) founded the Benedictine congregation of the Celestines. He became pope as Celestine V in 1294 and abdicated within a year. His successor, Boniface VIII, imprisoned him in a castle in southern Lazio. P. was canonized in 1313.
Here's a view of the castle of Fumone (near Alatri and Ferentino) where after his abdication P. resided as Boniface's "guest":
http://www.castellodifumone.it/italy/borgo/rocca_file/grande.jpg
And here's the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page (views expandable) on the church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio at L'Aquila (AQ) in Abruzzo, said to have been begun at P.'s behest in 1287 and his resting place since 1327, when most of his remains were surreptitiously brought from Ferentino to L'Aquila (P.'s heart is said still to remain at Ferentino in its chiesa di Santa Chiara):
http://tinyurl.com/2csgbn
P.'s tomb in that church:
http://tinyurl.com/deja6b
P.'s effigy reliquary in the tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/qmvcb2
http://www.basilicacollemaggio.it/images/celestinoV.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67835733@N00/209949807/sizes/l/
Other detail views and a good shot of the interior the basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio are here:
http://ilcantastorie.blog.kataweb.it/2007/02/
P.'s skull exhibits a rectangular hole in the left forehead that has provoked some suspicion about the manner of P.'s end:
http://www.archelaos.com/popes/image.aspx?id=65
http://www.laquilax.com/B-teschio-bucoLayer1.jpg
NB: Those views of Santa Maria di Collemaggio were of course taken before last month's terrific earthquake, in which the church was seriously damaged. Four pages of recent views begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/d7j92n
Thanks perhaps to the power of the saint, his tomb is said to have been spared.
Here's a view of a late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century fountain, said to have been erected in P.'s honor, in Isernia (IS) in Molise (Isernia is one of the candidates for the distinction of being P.'s birthplace):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22079679@N07/2827516655/
This page offers an enlargeable view of P.'s portrait (before 1375) formerly in the abbey of Santa Maria at Casaluce (CE) in Campania and now in the cappella di Santa Barbara in the Castel Nuovo in Naples:
http://tinyurl.com/c6f9p6
5) Ivo of Kermartin (d. 1303). I. (also Yvo, Yves) was born at Kermartin near Tréguier in Brittany. An ecclesiastical lawyer famous for defending the poor, he studied at Paris and at Orléans and practiced at Rennes and at Tréguier. In his later years he was ordained priest, after which he spent the remainder of his life in two Breton parishes. I. was canonized in 1347. He is the patron saint of lawyers. Jean-Luc Deuffic's illustrated commemoration of I. is here:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pecia/yves1%20vie.htm
6) Agostino Novello (Augustine of Tarano; Bl.; d. 1308 or 1309). Today's less well known holy person from the Regno, an early luminary and prior general of the Augustinian Hermits, A. was born either in Tarano (RI) in today's Lazio near the east central Italian homeland of his order or else, though other places have also been proposed, in today's Termini Imerese (PA) on the island of Sicily. According to both of his early Vitae (which divide on the matter of his birthplace), he pursued a legal education at Bologna, becoming a doctor of both canon and civil law, and served as a high curial official in the kingdom of Sicily in the reign of Manfred (1258-66).
During Charles of Anjou's conquest of the kingdom A. fled to a place of relative safety, became seriously ill, and determined to enter religion should he recover. His health restored, he became an Augustinian lay brother with the name of Agostino (his baptismal name was Matteo), serving first in the kingdom and later in Tuscany near Siena. Sent to Rome in the 1280s on behalf of his order, A. assisted Bl. Clement of Osimo in revising its Constitutions. Ordained priest and quickly rising to prominence, he served Nicholas IV, Celestine V, and Boniface VIII as penitentiary in the Roman curia. Elected the order's prior general in 1298 against his will, he assumed this office under pressure from Boniface and resigned it two years later.
A. retired to the hermitage of San Leonardo al Lago at today's Santa Colomba di Monteriggioni (SI) in Tuscany. Upon his death he was laid to rest in Siena's church of Sant'Agostino, where a cult in his honor quickly developed. A. (whose byname Novello descends from the tribute 'novus Augustinus' accorded him in the early Vitae) was beatified in 1759. His cult was confirmed in 1770. An outstanding visual reminder of the early devotion paid to A. is Simone Martini's altarpiece in his honor (dated to 1324). A page with several expandable views of this masterpiece is here:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/simone/4altars/5agostin/
(the accompanying notes at times leave something to be desired, e.g. the bizarre characterization of Manfred as "the son of Ludwig II").
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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