medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (29. October) is the feast day of:
1) Felicianus of Carthage (?). F. is recorded for today in the very early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage and in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, each time with different festal companions (some or all of whom need not have been his companions in martyrdom). The (ps.-)HM also enters under 30. January and 30. October a martyr at Carthage of this name -- who in view of the latter date is probably our F. -- and unspecified companions. Apart from his association with Carthage we know nothing about F. or about when he suffered.
2) Victor I, pope (d. 198). An African by birth, V. succeeded pope St. Eleuther(i)us as bishop of Rome in 189. He is commonly said, in a phrase whose import is so ambiguous that one wonders why it continues to be used, to have been "the first Latin pope". Jerome tells us that V. was the author of some smallish writings on matters of religion. One or more of these concerned the Paschal controversy, in which V. attempted to extend to the entire Church the practice, recently adopted in Rome, of observing Easter on the Sunday immediately following 14. Nisan (Passover); when the churches of Asia Minor persisted in the Quartodeciman practice of observing Easter on 14. Nisan itself he declared them excommunicate. V. dealt sharply with the heretical priest Florinus, against whom Irenaeus of Lyon wrote two treatises, and with the wealthy adoptionist Theodotus the leather-seller.
V. is the first pope known to have had dealings with the imperial household: through his relationship with Commodus' mistress Marcia (a Christian) he is said to saved some co-religionists who had been condemned to the mines of Sardinia. His later reputation as a martyr appears to be unfounded
3) Narcissus of Jerusalem (d. ca. 216?). Our principal source for N., Eusebius' _Historia ecclesiastica_, tells us that N. was the fifteenth bishop of Jerusalem after the expulsion of the Jews under Hadrian and the thirtieth bishop of that city after the Apostles. Still according to Eusebius, he assumed his see in about 190, sided with Alexandria [and Rome] against the Quartodecimans on the day of the week for Easter, operated miracles (including a water-into-oil one on the Vigil of Easter), was falsely accused of an infamous crime, resigned his office and became an hermit in the desert, returned in about 212 when he was in advanced years, and took on as coadjutor the bishop of Cappadocia (this is the first reported instance of the translation of a bishop). Scholars tend to doubt Epiphanius' assertion that he lived into of the reign of Alexander Severus (222-235).
N. seems not to have had a cult in antiquity. St. Ado of Vienne, who had read about him in Rufinus' translation of Eusebius, entered him in his martyrology under today's date, in which he was followed by Usuard.
4) Zenobius of Sidon (d. early 4th cent.). Eusebius (_Hist. eccl._, 8. 13. 3-4) names Z., a priest of Sidon, as one of several martyrs of Phoenicia during the Great Persecution and adds that he was tortured along both flanks and that he died at Antioch (from context, A. on the Orontes). A Syriac-language sermon on the martyrs of Antioch (BHO 700) testifies to his cult in the Syrian church. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enters Z. under 24. August as a martyr of Antioch. For reasons unknown Florus of Lyon entered him in his martyrology under today; in this he was followed by Ado, who copied Florus' elogium of Z., and by Usuard, who altered it slightly. Ado and Usuard also included Z. in their commemoration on 20. February of the martyrs of Tyre.
5) Decentius and Germanus (d. 312, supposedly). D. and G. are poorly attested local saints of Pesaro. They are figured, with G. dressed as a deacon and D. dressed as a bishop, to the right of Pesaro's St. Terentius (viewer's left), in a sixth- or seventh-century fresco discovered in 1752 in the crypt of Pesaro's extraurban abbey church of San Decenzio and now in the Musei Civici di Pesaro. Found earlier in the same crypt (this is said to have occurred in 1625) was a seventh-century sarcophagus proclaimed to be that that of D. and G. When this was re-examined in 1913 it was found to contain four wooden boxes of varying dimensions, each filled with fragments of bone but with no indication of whose bones these had been in life. The sarcophagus is now in Pesaro's diocesan museum. Here's a partial view:
http://tinyurl.com/ylywrku
And here's a partial view of what seems to be a copy of that fresco, with a very little bit of D. visible at left:
http://tinyurl.com/y9u9qj2
Who D. and G. were and when they really lived is unknown. Lanzoni guessed that G. might be the homonymous bishop of Pesaro who participated in the synod of Rome in 499. But G.'s costume in the fresco is against this. The two have been celebrated jointly since since at least 1265. They have a late medieval, legendary Passio that makes them Britons who converted to Christianity in Rome in 296, who were arrested in a persecution, were jailed, and were miraculously released, and who, starting to return to Britannia, arrived at Pesaro [on the wrong side of the Appennines for such a journey] where they became the town's bishop and his deacon, converted many, and aroused the odium of pagans who clubbed them to death on the night that Constantine entered Rome after his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. D. and G. have yet to grace the pages of the RM.
6) Honoratus of Vercelli (d. ca. 418). We know about H. from St. Ambrose of Milan's letter _Ad ecclesiam vercellensem_, from Paulinus of Milan's Vita of Ambrose, and from H.'s own epitaph in verse. After an inerregnum in the see of Vercelli marked by internal dissension that was resolved through the intervention of St. Ambrose of Milan, H. was elected unanimously early in 397. Later in the same year H. was in Milan at the bedside of the dying Ambrose, to whom he administered the Viaticum. H. was buried next to his predecessors Sts. Eusebius I and Limenius. His epitaph tells us that he was Eusebius' disciple and that he had undergone exile and imprisonment along with his mentor, that he taught true doctrine, and that he was exemplary both in preaching and in the holy character of his life.
7) Stephen of Caiazzo (d. 1023?). The biographical data for today's less well known saint of the Regno come from the bull naming him bishop of today's Caiazzo's (CE) in Campania in 979 and from accounts by much later local historians that presumably reflect a mixture of outright guesswork and local tradition of undetermined accuracy. S. is said to have studied at Capua, to have entered the abbey there of San Salvatore a Corte and to have become its abbot, to have taken part in a [local] council at Capua in about 1000, and to have died on this day in 1023 at the age of eighty-eight. Locally, he is referred to as San Stefano Menecillo, though it seems hard to know whether he really belonged to that particular noble family. S. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
In 2007 routine maintenance work in the cathedral of Caiazzo led to the discovery of S.'s sarcophagus with an inscription recording an Inventio in 1512 (after which S.'s remains were translated to the cathedral's main altar, where they remain today). Here's a view of the sarcophagus (which is carved from a single block of tufa) shortly after the discovery:
http://www.vocedimegaride.it/SARCO_-2.JPG
More recent views of the sarcophagus and of its inscription:
http://tinyurl.com/o3x33l
The oldest known depiction of of S., a fresco from 1334 in the chiesa di Santa Maria a Marciano at nearby Piana di Monte Verna (CE):
http://www.caiazzocittaviva.org/files/santostefano.jpg
While we're here, here's an illustrated page on that originally earlier fourteenth-century church (re-opened to the public in 2008 after a decade of restoration) and a view of its unprepossessing exterior:
http://www.monteverna.it/Storia/smmarciano.html
http://tinyurl.com/yzh64h5
An illustrated, Italian-language page on this church's fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes:
http://tinyurl.com/yksmpv5
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/yfctp4e
Capua's much rebuilt church of San Salvatore a Corte dates originally from 980, a year after S. became bishop of Caiazzo; restored between 1934 and 1990, it now houses the Museo diocesano d'arte sacra moderna. A few views:
http://tinyurl.com/ygcvoqm
http://tinyurl.com/yhvpdhs
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/16085740.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(Victor I revised from an earlier post)
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