medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (19. August) is also the feast day of:
1) Oswin of Deira (d. 651). O. (also Oswine) was the last king of independent Deira. We know about him chiefly from Bede (_Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_, 3. 14 and 24) with regnal dates furnished by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He became king in 643 or 644. Bede tells a story in which O. humbly accepts a reproof from St. Aidan. O. was killed in 651 by men in the service of the Northumbrian king Oswiu, whose seizure of Deira the militarily outnumbered O. chose not to contest. Oswiu's wife Eanflĉd, a member of the Deiran royal house, is said to have persuaded him to show penitence by founding a monastery at the place of O.'s murder, Ingetlingum (generally said to be Gilling in Richmond [West Yorks]). O.'s entry for today in the early eighth-century Calendar of Saint Willbrord attests to his early cult in the North.
In about 1111 a monk of St. Albans wrote a Vita, Inventio, and Miracula of O. (BHL 6382-85) asserting that O.'s body had been discovered in 1065 at the monastery of Tynemouth (since 1090 a dependency of St Albans). Symeon of Durham (which latter also claimed the monastery at Tynemouth) retails a slightly different story asserting Durham's claim to the relics through a gift to the monks of Jarrow who later formed the initial community of St Cuthbert's monastery in Durham. On 20. August (O.'s traditional _dies natalis_) 1110 his putative remains at Tynemouth were translated to that town's newly finished church of St. Mary. O.'s shrine there was dismantled in 1539.
In at least post-Conquest England O.'s feast day was celebrated on 20. August. He's not in the RM, whose entries furnish the ordinary calendar for these "saints of the day" notices. In such cases, I try to find a day on which the saint currently _is_ celebrated. For O. that's today in the Roman Catholic church dedicated to him at Tynemouth (in Roman Catholic contexts a preference for tomorrow's date would would be trumped by tomorrow's St. Bernard of Clairvaux).
An English Heritage page on (the remains of) Tynemouth Priory and Castle:
http://tinyurl.com/yx7bmb
A view of the east end and the attached chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/y62lou
Other views:
http://www.tynemouthcatholic.org/slideshow.html
An aerial view of the site:
http://tinyurl.com/y3q9kp
(The modern buildings just below the east end of the priory are those of the Tynemouth Coast Guard Station.)
2) Sebaldus (d. before 1072). S. (in German, also Sebald) was legendarily a hermit at Nürnberg. His cult there is attested in liturgical texts from the later eleventh century onward. He had a reputation as a healing saint and many miracles were reported at his tomb. Herewith some views of Nürnberg's Sebalduskirche, begun in the 1230s as a "romanesque" structure but already showing "gothic" elements (e.g., the west choir) prior to its consecration in 1273; continued in that syle from 1309 (towers, expanded side aisles) into the later fourteenth century (east choir, 1379) and beyond (late gothic decor into the sixteenth century):
EXTERIOR:
West facade:
http://tinyurl.com/dw7mx
http://tinyurl.com/ceoea
Last Judgment portal (detail):
http://www.baukunst-nuernberg.de/sebald_weltgericht.jpg
North side:
http://tinyurl.com/5p6v6d
http://tinyurl.com/82ems
http://tinyurl.com/6ctu9w
East choir:
http://tinyurl.com/cwonf
INTERIOR:
Various views:
http://tinyurl.com/bvzb3
http://tinyurl.com/bu66l
Sebaldus shrine:
http://tinyurl.com/6yyomw
Devotional image from 1449:
http://www.enid.uib.no/pictures/starck.htm
Some expandable views of later medieval stained glass in this church will be found on this page of _Vidimus_, no. 12 (Nov. 2007):
http://tinyurl.com/6y33re
This church was heavily damaged in the bombing of 1945 that devastated the Old City of Nürnberg. Here's a view of it among the ruins:
http://tinyurl.com/5utpo5
There's another view on the aforementioned page of _Vidimus_. Much of what one sees now is restoration work, completed in the 1950s.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post very lightly revised)
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