medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (31. May) is the feast day of:
1) The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (ca. 4 BCE). The pregnant Mary's visit with her kinswoman Elizabeth, then pregnant with St. John the Forerunner (Lk 1:39-56) is commemorated in this feast, whose earliest secure attestation is said to be its adoption by the Order of Friars Minor in 1263. In 1369 pope Urban VI, in a decreee published by his successor, Boniface IX and fixing its date on 2. July, extended the feast to the entire Roman church. In the later Middle Ages it appears on calendars at a number of different dates. The day fixed by Urban remained the feast's day in the general Roman Calendar until the latter's revision promulgated in 1969, when it was moved to today.
Herewith a few Visitations:
a) Evreux, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. lat. 4 (models for the illumination of psalters; ca. 1230), fol. 151v:
http://tinyurl.com/lyxx9l
b) Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 54 (Cistercian psalter; ca. 1260), fol. 7v:
http://tinyurl.com/mocqez
context:
http://tinyurl.com/lyc6ok
c) Carpentras, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 77 (\1) (psalter for the Use of Reims; later 13th cent.), fol. 44v:
http://tinyurl.com/m2okfy
d) Marseille, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 111 (Hours for the Use of Thérouanne; ca. 1280-1290):
http://tinyurl.com/nvkkwm
context:
http://tinyurl.com/nglpgf
http://tinyurl.com/nxvh3a
e) Giotto, fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua (ca. 1302-1306):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/giotto/padova/2virgin/mary10.jpg
f) Dallas, TX, Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Ms. 13 (Hours for the Use of Sarum; ca. 1330), fol. 29r:
http://tinyurl.com/ngyfwt
g) Avignon, Ms. 121 (psalter and Hours; ca. 1330-1340), fol. 16v:
http://tinyurl.com/mrdpys
h) Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms. 65 (Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry; early 15th cent.):
http://tinyurl.com/ngyxvd
i) Beato Angelico, Cortona, Museo Diocesano, panel painting (Annunciation Altarpiece, predella panel; 1433-1434):
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/angelico/04/3predel2.jpg
j) Workshop of the Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece, Prague, St. Agnes of Bohemia Convent, panel painting (St. James Altarpiece; ca. 1430-1440):
http://tinyurl.com/ko6ts9
2) Petronilla (?). P. (also Petronella) is a Roman martyr of the cemetery of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina. Not mentioned in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 364, she had a burial place behind the apse of the the underground basilica erected by pope St. Siricius (384-99) in honor of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus. A wall painting in that part of the church, discovered by De Rossi in the early 1870s, shows P., identified as a martyr, holding the hand of the matron Veneranda:
http://www.umilta.net/veneranda1.jpg
http://membres.lycos.fr/siteimageedl/paleo/photos/49.jpg
http://muvtor.btk.ppke.hu/etalon/316.jpg
If the _Liber Pontificalis_ may be trusted on this point, by the time of pope Paul I (757-67), P.'s remains were kept in that church in a sarcophagus identifying her as Aur[elia] Petronilla, She may have been related to the Flavians, some of whom, having become Christian, founded the cemetery and some of whose males bore the cognomen Petro. The age of the cemetery (late first- or very early second-century) and the similarity of P.'s name to that of St. Peter gave rise to the belief that she had been his daughter. P., no longer a martyr, appears in this role in the originally late antique Passio of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus (BHL 6058, 6060, 6063, perhaps others), whence she entered the historical martyrologies and ultimately the RM.
The martyr P.'s resting place is in all the seventh-century itineraries for Rome pilgrims; one even refers to the church there as dedicated to her. In the eighth century Paul I moved her sarcophagus at the behest of king Pepin to the Vatican, where it was placed in the circular building near Old St Peter's that became known as the Chapel of St. Petronilla and that was especially significant to rulers of France. When the present St. Peter's was built, that chapel was demolished and a chapel dedicated to P. was established in the new building. A very different dedication to P. is her church at Whepstead (Suffolk), shown and discussed here:
http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/whepstead.htm
Another view:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/21924
Petronell in today's Petronell-Carnuntum (Niederösterreich) owes its name to its church dedicated to P. Here's a view of the present Pfarrkirche Sankt Petronilla (originally ca. 1200):
http://tinyurl.com/6g8t27
Here's the page for May, with an entry for P. at bottom as a virgin martyr, in the painted liturgical calendar in the presbytery of the thirteenth-century oratory of San Pellegrino at Bominaco, a locality of Caporciano (AQ) in Abruzzo (the so-called Calendario Valvense):
http://tinyurl.com/m2p5m8
P. had several aspects during the later Middle Ages. Here she is, healing the sick (or at least receiving supplications from them), in a fourteenth-century illumination (Paris, BN, Ms. Français 185, f. 218):
http://tinyurl.com/2aqv4p
P. (with St. Juliana "of Nicomedia" at left) with a very large key in the reconstructed early fifteenth-century rood screen at St Mary, North Elmham (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/2gc23o
P. as Peter's daughter serving at table (fifteenth-century panel painting by Sano di Pietro):
http://www.godecookery.com/afeast/dining/din011.html
P.'s martyrdom, from the Elsässische Legenda Aurea:
http://tinyurl.com/chgpz
P. shown as a martyr in a panel of the Mary Magdalen retable (ca. 1550) in the Musée de Contes at Contes (Alpes-Maritimes):
http://www.musee-contes.fr/admin/uploads/objet83.jpg
3) Hermias (d. 2d or early 3d cent.). The RM, following the so-called Menologion of Sirlet, commemorates H. as a soldier martyred Comana in Pontus under an emperor Antoninus (generally assumed to be either Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, though there were persecutions under Septimius Severus and Caracalla, both of whom used Antonine nomenclature). H. is said to have borne his torments with such fortitude that an executioner was converted by his example and shared his fate.
A brief Greek Passio printed by Papebroch in the _Acta Sanctorum_'s treatment of H. makes him an _old_ soldier, locates his martyrdom in Comana in Cappadocia, gives him a set of horrific tortures (including three days in a hot oven from which he emerges unscathed), omits the converted executioner, and has a pagan priest convert after H. is unharmed by poison the priest had given him. Orthodox churches follow the latter story, of which that used for the RM seems to be a slightly altered summary.
4) Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla (d. ca. 304). According to their legend, preserved in a sermon by St. Maximus of Turin and in several versions of their Acta (BHL 1543, etc.), C., C., and C. were two brothers and a sister of a Roman aristocratic family martyred along with their tutor St. Protus at a place called Aquae Gradatae_ near Aquileia. Known collectively as the Cantiani, they are in all the historical martyrologies. Their cult, attested to for Aquileia by Venantius Fortunatus, spread widely in today's northern Italy and Slovenia as well as down the Adriatic to Chieti province in Abruzzo, where the much rebuilt church dedicated to them at Paglieta is originally of the twelfth century. Putative relics of C., C., and C. traveled much farther. This page on their cult at Étampes (Essonne) includes several brief medieval texts pertaining to them as well as a reproduction of their depiction in a manuscript illumination of ca. 1470 (Mâcon, BM, ms. 3, fol. 176v):
http://www.corpusetampois.com/che-17-fleureau-c08.html
And here they are in an illumination of ca. 1414 in a breviary according to the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, BM, ms. 2, fol. 184v.):
http://tinyurl.com/5rs96p
Remains of a fourth-century memorial structure belonging to this cult have been excavated at the reputed site of of these saints' suffering, today's San Canzian d'Isonzo (GO) in Friuli - Venezia Giulia. These included sarcophagi inscribed with the names of the Cantiani's two companions Protus and Chrysogonus. Human remains found under an altar there have been said to be those of two males and a female, all closely related.
Herewith an illustrated, English-language page on the fifteenth-century church of St. Cantianus (sv. Kancijan) at Kranj in Slovenia:
http://www.ntz-nta.si/en/default.asp?id=5844
Another English-language account:
http://www.slovenia.info/?cerkev=790
A view of the (?fifteenth- and) early sixteenth-century church of St. Cantianus at the locality of Britof in Kanal ob Soči (in Italian: Canale d'Isonzo) in Slovenia:
http://tinyurl.com/5bgpqh
There's an English-language account of that church here (scroll down to: Saint Kancijan Church in Britof):
http://www.tic-kanal.si/cultural_heritage/2006091809584567/
One of the thumbnail views on this page:
http://www.aquileia.net/basilica_3.htm
is of the fourteenth-century "sarcophagus" (thought to be probably an altar frontal) in the Patriarchal Basilica at Aquileia depicting the Cantiani and Protus.
5) Silvius of Toulouse (d. later 4th cent.). We know about S. (also Sylvius, Salvius) from the late antique Passio of St. Saturninus of Toulouse (BHL 7495-96). This makes him an early bishop of Toulouse, who begins construction of the basilica that would house Saturninus' remains but who dies leaving the task to be completed by his successor St. Exuperius. In the medieval catalogues of Toulouse's bishops (of which the earliest was compiled in 1296), S. always occupies the third position. In 1265 a tomb presumed to be his was discovered in the basilique Saint-Sernin along with those of S. and of three other saints. The first chapel on the right-hand side of the ambulatory is dedicated to S.; in the plan shown here it's no. 15:
http://tinyurl.com/54pfvk
Here's an exterior view of the chevet with the chapelle Saint-Sylve visible behind some ornamental tree:
http://www.zigurrat.nl/fotos/sernin.jpg
An interior view of that chapel, showing S.'s former châsse:
http://pmaude.free.fr/Sernin/pages%20images/sylve.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post very lightly revised and with the addition of the Visitation of the BVM)
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