medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (1. August) is the feast day of:

1) The Seven Holy Maccabees (and their Mother). One of the oldest feasts of the Roman sanctoral calendar, this celebration was once subsumed into that of St. Peter in Chains (see no. 2, below) and in the Roman church is now trumped by that of a modern saint of the Regno, Alphonso Liguori. It honors the seven brothers (and their mother) of 2 Macc. 7, gruesomely put to death in the second century BC by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and widely revered in the early church as martyrs for Judeo-Christian faith and thus as Christians before the letter. The feast appears in eastern and in western calendars from the fifth century onward. Their chief early cult center was at Antioch, the presumed venue of their martyrdom. In the sixth century remains said to be theirs were translated to Rome and placed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, which had been dedicated on their day. Their present location is in a crypt behind and below the shrine containing Peter's chains.

The feast's popularity in the West in the early Middle Ages is attested to by its listings in the Gelasian Sacramentary and in the Marble Calendar of Naples. In the latter (which does not mention Peter in Chains) it occurs as that of the Passion of the Maccabees and of St. Felicity, thus giving the mother a name (taken, it would seem, from the Felicity of 23. November, also the mother of seven sainted sons).
An English-language translation of a letter from Bernard of Clairvaux explaining why this feast should be kept is here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/letters.xlvii.html

A women's monastery dedicated to the Seven Holy Maccabees was founded at Köln in the twelfth century. See:
http://tinyurl.com/h8btc
Its relics of the Maccabees were translated in 1808 to the same city's Dominican church of Sankt Andreas, where their heads remain today in a reliquary shrine made for them in the 1520s. A detailed German-language account of this work of art is here:
http://www.sankt-andreas.de/kirche/machabaerschrein.php/1
Brief, not very well illustrated accounts in the same tongue occur here:
http://www.sankt-andreas.de/kirchenfuehrer/deutsch.php/1
http://www.sankt-andreas.de/kirche/machabaeerfenster.php/1
A brief account in English is no. 20 here (reliquary shrine not illustrated):
http://www.sankt-andreas.de/kirchenfuehrer/english.php/1
And here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/6969za


2) St. Peter (d. 1st cent.) in Chains. This feast celebrates the dedication of the Roman church of San Pietro in Vincoli, founded in the first half of the fifth century to house the chains with which St. Peter had been secured when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem (Acts 12:6-7). At first called the _titulus Eudoxiae_ (perh. after Eudoxia, the wife of Valentinian III, thought by some to have helped pay for it), it was dedicated by Sixtus III both to Peter and to Paul and for centuries was also known as the _titulus Apostolorum_. Its present designation (also late antique in origin) when expressed in Latin usually occurs as _(Ecclesia) Sancti Petri ad vincula_; hence also the customary Latin name of the feast, _Sancti Petri ad vincula_. The poet Arator gave a public reading of his _De actibus Apostolorum_ here on four consecutive days in 544.

The church was restored by Adrian I (772-95) and rebuilt under Sixtus IV (1471-84) and Julius II (1503). At some point the chains thought to have held Peter when he was imprisoned at Rome prior to his execution were brought from the so-called Mamertine Prison (not attested as an ancient designation) and were added to those said to be from Jerusalem. According to legend, these fused of their own accord. They are now on display in the confessio before the high altar:
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/749/293013.JPG
By the later Middle Ages St. Peter in Chains had become today's principal feast in the Roman church. It was removed from the general Roman Calendar in 1969 but is still permitted at churches so titled.

Rome's church of San Pietro in Vincoli houses a funerary monument well known to some on this list:
http://www.comitatinazionali.it/upload/immagini/BREGNO_02.jpg
Oh, were you perhaps expecting this one?:
http://tinyurl.com/2gbljy
The first is of the philosopher and ecclesiastical administrator Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), appointed cardinal priest of this church by Nicholas V. The second is of course the tomb intended for Julius II with its statue of Moses by Michelangelo:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/michelan/1sculptu/giulio_2/moses.jpg

There are other dedications in Italy to St. Peter in Chains. Here are some views of Pisa's originally late eleventh-/early twelfth-century church of San Pietro in Vinculis (a.k.a. San Pierino):
http://tinyurl.com/6e2dz5
http://www.stilepisano.it/immagini8/index1.htm
http://tinyurl.com/5wmblv
and of the church of San Pietro in Vincoli (1363; later modifications) at Limone Piemonte (CN) in Piedmont:
http://www.viaoccitanacatalana.org/zone/images/008_1_l.jpg
http://www.hulsen.net/images/Piemonte-Limone001.JPG
Peter in Chains is Limone Piemonte's patron saint.


3) Justa (?), virgin martyr. This less well known saint of the Regno is one of a family of saints (Justin, Florentius, Felix, and Giusta) venerated in parts of Abruzzo since at least the central Middle Ages. These have a legendary Passio (BHL 4586) making them members of a family from Siponto in northern Apulia but active in the late third and/or early fourth century in today's Abruzzo in the area of ancient Forconium (today's Forcona, though it has also been thought to be today's Furci in Chieti province). They also have a fourteenth-century Inventio and Translatio (BHL 4587) to L'Aquila, the thirteenth-century diocesan successor to Forconium, and appear as well in smaller liturgical texts of various sorts.

These sources present J. as a young woman who chastely spurns the advances of a Roman magistrate, who then survives attempted execution first in a fiery furnace and then by drowning in a river, and who is finally put to death either with arrows or by a spear. Whereas the whole group was once celebrated on 25. July, its members have had individual feasts as well. They no longer figure in the RM. J.'s feast is still observed today (the traditional date) at Tufillo (CH), whereas in and around L'Aquila, where her cult has been said to go back to at least the ninth century, her commemoration occurs on 31. March.

Architectural monuments to J.'s cult include her originally thirteenth-century church (over a twelfth-century crypt) at Bazzano (AQ), just outside of L'Aquila:
http://abruzzo2000.com/italian/chgiusta.htm
http://www.morronedelsannio.com/abruzzo/bazzano.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2ekkht
Those views were of course taken before last April's massive earthquake in the Aquilano. This page has numerous post-earthquake views showing damage to Bazzano's chiesa di Santa Giusta:
http://www.inabruzzo.it/ada/terremoto/Bazzano/index.html

Only slightly later is her church in L'Aquila itself, built (by ca. 1254) in a quarter settled from Bazzano and named accordingly:
http://tinyurl.com/yrvdff
The facade is said to date from 1439.
Those views too were of course taken before last April's earthquake. Here's a page of views showing damage to this church:
http://tinyurl.com/n3sltd

Also from the thirteenth century (1279 with later reworkings) is the parish church of Santa Giusta and the BVM at Tufillo (CH):
http://www.tufillo.com/parrocchia.html

Literary monuments to J. include two fragmentary hymns from an Office for her at L'Aquila, printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_ (Aug. tomus primus) after her Translatio mentioned above (BHL 4587).


4) Æthelwold of Winchester (d. 984). The nobly born English ecclesiastical reformer Æ., a native of Winchester, served at the court of king Æthelstan before entering the church. He was ordained at Winchester on the same day as St. Dunstan and then studied Winchester and at Glastonbury before being put in charge of a community of secular priests at Abingdon. He converted these into Benedictine monks with himself as abbot. In 963 king Edgar, whose tutor Æ. had been, made him bishop of Winchester. This gave him the opportunity to introduce reform on a large scale and he took full advantage of it. Hand in hand with his replacement of secular clergy with monks performing diocesan service went the commission of a number of new or enlarged churches suitable for the daily observance of the full Benedictine liturgy.

Æ. personally taught students at Winchester and at least some of his disciples remembered him fondly. Among them were Ælfric and Æ.'s future biographer Wulfstan (whose Vita of Æ. is BHL 2647). In 996 a miracle was credited to him; shortly thereafter he was accorded an Elevatio with a new burial in the choir of the Old Minster.


Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)

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