medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. October) is the feast day of:
1) Eulampius and Eulampia (d. 303, supposedly). According to their legendary, perhaps sixth-century Passio (BHG 616), E. and E., brother and sister, were martyrs under Maximian at Nicomedia (today's İzmit in Turkey) during the Great Persecution. Eulampius is said to have survived various horrific tortures and then to have been beheaded, while his sister is said to have died of her mistreatment before a sentence of decapitation could be carried out upon her. They have an expanded, tenth-century Passio by Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 617) and are fixtures under this day in Byzantine synaxaries.
In this fourteenth-century fresco in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo, Eulampia has been decapitated and the same fate is about to befall Eulampius:
http://tinyurl.com/yz2kx6y
2a) Gereon and companions, martyrs of Köln;
2b) Cassius and Florentius, martyrs of Bonn;
2c) Victor and Mallosus, martyrs of Xanten (all d. ca. 304, supposedly). These are saints of Germania Inferior with cults that were already well attested in the sixth century and with churches originating in the central Middle Ages that (at least at Köln and at Xanten) replaced late antique martyria located in or next to early Christian cemeteries. The tale grew up that they were all members of the Theban Legion, leading to their customary representation as soldier-saints. Though the three towns did indeed house Roman garrisons, civilians of course lived there as well. Whether these saints' later memory as soldiers is factually correct is unknown.
Gereon has a wonderful church in Köln not far from the cathedral. An aerial view:
http://www.stgereon.de/Basilika/allgemein/13kl.jpg
The Sacred Destinations page:
http://tinyurl.com/3kvb5v
A virtual tour:
http://www.stgereon.de/Basilika/allgemein/Ueberblick_Rundgang.html
(NB: the individual sections are more than one page deep. Clicking at lower right -- also sometimes on the images themselves -- will bring up more.)
According to the late-eleventh or very early twelfth-century _Vita sancti Annonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis_, St. Helena had founded this church. Here's a view of the mural painting in the Confessio with G. at left and H. at right (holding a representation of the church's Dekagon, completed in 1227):
http://tinyurl.com/4zozbq
G. and companions, panel painting (ca. 1440) by Stefan Lochner on his Dreikönigsaltar in the cathedral of Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/3jlxqx
G., detail of a painting (ca. 1480) of Sts. Anne, Christopher, G., and Peter by the Master of the Assumption, now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/459ghz
An illustrated, German-language account of the Münster at Bonn (dedicated to Cassius and Florentius):
http://tinyurl.com/3x8npm
A virtual tour:
http://www.bonner-muenster.de/basilika/rundgang.html
(Click on "Virtuellen Rundgang starten").
Xanten's present cathedral of St. Victor was begun in 1190. Most of it is of the later thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries. A couple of illustrated sites on it are here:
http://tinyurl.com/9b92v
http://tinyurl.com/yhctwe7
A German-language timeline of stages in the cathedral's construction:
http://tinyurl.com/yj9h5bz
Exterior views:
http://reunion-2000.de/2008/Programm/Xanten__1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yfdjjdx
http://tinyurl.com/yf7gwjm
http://www.xanten.de/img/bigimg/domstviktorkirmes.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ylcfokj
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407481366075068468gytexD
http://tinyurl.com/ygoyymf
Cloister:
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407481194075068468wuQoeO
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407480749075068468ZWcGVa
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/348104881_e0ac829ea7_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yh7uac3
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/yhvvjlo
http://tinyurl.com/yh74prv
Clerestory sculptures:
http://www.xanten-web.de/StreifObergadenOK.html
A view of V.'s shrine (said to date from 1128 or 1129):
http://tinyurl.com/yjrfyhx
Views of the earlier sixteenth-century main altar in which the shrine is housed:
http://tinyurl.com/2rzlnm
http://tinyurl.com/2vlky6
http://tinyurl.com/2zu8z5
http://tinyurl.com/yzhtrum
In 1933 a grave with two skeletons was discovered beneath the cathedral in a context that indicated late antique veneration. If, as is thought, these are the remains of of V. and M., then whose remains are in V.'s shrine? A view of the two skeletons shortly after their discovery is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ygkx3tb
A statue of V. inside the cathedral:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ana_sudani/3246551265/sizes/l/
A statue of V. (1468, by Meister Blankenbyl) behind the cathedral, depicting him both as a soldier and as a pilgrim:
http://tinyurl.com/yj7mota
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3758673453/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/yghuhq5
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Viktor_von_Xanten.jpg
3) Cerbonius (d. ca. 575). We know about C. from St. Gregory the Great's _Dialogi_, 3. 11. According to Greg, C. was a bishop of Populonia -- now part of today's Piombino (LI) in Tuscany -- who during Justinian's war of reconquest in Italy harbored East Roman troops in an area controlled by the Gothic king Totila. The latter worthy condemned C. to execution by wild beasts and when that failed in the way in which it often does in these stories (in this case, a ravenous bear humbled itself before the man of God and no other animal dared approach) he exiled C. to the nearby island of Elba. C. died on Elba; when his body was being returned to Populonia for burial, a squall raged on both sides of the boat but not on it (few will fail to observe the parallel with the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea as they returned from exile to the Promised Land).
Employing a familiar form of a trope common in Italian hagiography ("the saint who has come to us from afar"), the legendary eleventh-century Vitae of St. Regulus venerated at Lucca (BHL 7102) and of C. himself (BHL 728, 1729) make C. an exile from the Vandal kingdom in Africa.
Populonia's medieval successor as the bishop's seat, Massa Marittima, was a thriving town in the central Middle Ages and a backwater for centuries thereafter. This turn of Fortune's wheel (together with the fact that the town was sufficiently far away from population centers to discourage large-scale looting and reclaiming) preserved the cathedral of San Cerbone and some of its more striking appointments intact into the modern period, when the town began to grow again. Today San Cerbone is a co-cathedral of the diocese of Massa Marittima - Piombino. Its Arca di San Cerbone/Cerbonio (Tomb of Saint Cerbonius) of 1324 is a sculptural highlight. Herewith some illustrated accounts (English-language; German-language) of this church:
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomouk.htm
http://tinyurl.com/4bkobv
Exterior views, etc.:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7070962.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24683106.jpg
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo_esterni.htm
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo_esterni2.htm
Interior views:
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo.htm
Interior, baptistery:
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/battistero.htm
Interior, Arca di San Cerbone (di San Cerbonio):
http://tinyurl.com/3uhnfd
http://www.massamarittima.info/storia/san_cerbone2.htm
http://www.thais.it/scultura/masdu.htm
http://www.massamarittima.info/images/duomo_arte/san_cerbone_dona_oche_al_pa.jpg
4) Paulinus of York (d. 644). P. was one of the Roman monks sent in 601 to support St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission in what now is England. The principal source for him is St. Bede the Venerable's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ (2. 9–20; 3. 14). P.'s activities are unknown before before 625 (following Bede's reckoning), when he was consecrated bishop by archbishop St. Justus of Canterbury and traveled to Northumbria in the company of Æthelburh, the Christian royal from Kent who was betrothed to the then still pagan Northumbrian king Eadwine. In less than two years P. converted E.'s pagan high priest and then E. himself, whom he baptized at York on Easter day, 627 (the early ninth-century _Historia Brittonum_ has a Briton named Rhun do this).
P. established his seat at York, erecting there a stone church dedicated to St. Peter whose remains, if any, have thus far eluded archaeological discovery. He evangelized throughout the kingdom (one of his converts was St. Hild) and in its southern dependency of Lindsey, where at Lincoln he erected a stone church at what is thought to have been the site of the now demolished church of St Paul in the Bail. P. also consecrated St. Justus' replacement as archbishop, St. Honorius of Canterbury. Eadwine's death in battle in 633 was followed by a pagan reaction and the end of P.'s northern mission. P. and Æthelburh returned to Kent, where P. was given the vacant see of Rochester. He received the pallium from pope Honorius I but never returned to the North.
5) John of Bridlington (d. 1379). The Oxford-educated Yorkshireman J. (also John Thwing or Thwenge, after the village of his birth) was a canon regular at Bridlington Priory in the coastal section of his native Yorkshire Wolds, where he rose to be cellarer and then prior. He was recognized locally for his holiness and after his death miracles were reported at his tomb. His first Vita (BHL 4355) was written before his canonization in 1401. There is also an early account in Middle English, the _Verse Life of John of Bridlington_. A rhymed Latin poem of perhaps contemporary political import, the _Vaticinium Roberti Bridlington_, circulated under J.'s name and could conceivably be his (George Rigg thought so in _Speculum_ 63 [1988]; Michael Curley in the _ODNB_ seems less willing to entertain the possibility).
The figure at left (holding a fish) in these two panels of the fourteenth-century rood screen at St Andrew, Hempstead (Norfolk) is labeled as J.:
http://tinyurl.com/52hc8p
A few views of the mostly fifteenth-century priory church of St Mary, Bridlington (East Riding of Yorkshire), a.k.a. Bridlington Priory (of whose buildings it is a survivor), restored in the nineteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/4o9v6r
http://flickr.com/photos/67611923@N00/1810697506
http://tinyurl.com/3ko53e
http://tinyurl.com/45zo6c
The priory's originally twelfth-century former gatehouse, the Bayle Gate:
http://tinyurl.com/4tuyfm
http://tinyurl.com/3j8c9z
http://tinyurl.com/3zr44d
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised with the addition of Eulampius and Eulampia and with added visuals for Victor and Mallosus of Xanten)
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