medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. March) is the feast day of:
1) Victorianus, Frumentius, and companions (d. ca. 484). We have Florus of Lyon to thank for this grouping, which consists of five martyrs put to death for the most part separately during king Huneric's persecution of Catholics in Vandal Africa and for whom the sole source is Victor of Vita's _Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae_. V. was a prominent and extremely wealthy citizen of Hadrumetum (now Sousse) and, at the time of his martyrdom, proconsul of Carthage. Huneric, who trusted V. and respected his abilities, promised to place him above all others (in government service, presumably) if only he would convert to the Arian persuasion. Victor (3. 27), who provides a stirring though surely imaginary expression of V.'s refusal, claims that V.'s torture was so long and so varied that it was beyond human capacity to relate.
Frumentius is presumably the first of a pair of merchants of this name, both of the same town. Victor says (3. 41) that their martyrdom was glorious. The companions are the other Frumentius and two unnamed brothers from Aqua Regia (said to have been in Africa Byzacena, the province south of Africa Proconsularis), whose martyrdom by various means in the city of Tambeae Victor describes (3. 28) in order to highlight the miracle that their corpses showed no signs of abuse.
Florus placed the commemoration of these martyrs on 26. July; St. Ado moved them to today. V. has a modern cult (originating with the arrival of relics in 1753) at Canneto in today's Adelfia (BA) in Apulia.
2) Gwinear (d. later 5th cent., supposedly). G. (also Fingar, Guigner, Guiner, Winier, Wynier, Winnear, etc.) is the saint of the homonymous parish in Hayle near St Ives in Cornwall, where a church dedicated to him is first recorded from 1258. His legendary Passio from ca. 1300 by one Anselm (BHL 2988) makes him an Irish king's son who was converted to Christianity by St. Patrick (lately come from Cornwall) and who for this was disinherited and exiled by his pagan father, who found a refuge in Brittany where he established an oratory and lived as an hermit, who instructed by an angel returned to Ireland where he found his father dead and the country now Christian, who declining his temporal inheritance gathered a large group of missionaries and crossed the sea to Cornwall by ship (except for the holy virgin Hya -- the saint of St Ives -- who came late and who then crossed on a little leaf).
G. and his associates evangelized in various places before being martyred by soldiers of a hateful, pagan Cornish king. G.'s death occured after and apart from that of the others and was accompanied by prodigies. A church was built over G.'s grave; various miracles occurred there afterward. Thus far the Passio. Though Anselm's story focuses on Cornwall, the interlude in Brittany suggests that readers are to identify G. with a saint venerated there, probably Guigner of today's Pluvigner (Morbihan).
Some views, etc. of the originally fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century church of St Gwinear at Gwinear:
http://www.caerkief.co.uk/Churches/Gwinear.html
http://www.cornwall-opc.org/Par_new/e_g/photos/gwinear.jpg
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/chn2/churchphotos/Gwinear.JPG
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/972186
3) Walter of Pontoise (d. 1095 or 1099). W. was a well educated, ascetically inclined Picard who gave up being regent master of a school with aristocratic patrons to enter religion at the abbey of Rebais-en-Brie in Champagne. While he was there he fed a famished prisoner in the abbot's jail and then released the man upon his undertaking to do no further injury to the church and not to seek revenge for his ill treatment. W. then informed the abbot of what he had done, expecting a tongue-lashing followed by a physical beating and receiving both in ample measure. We are not told with what feelings the abbot later greeted the news that his distinguished and troublesome monk had just been named by the young king Philip I to head an abbey being founded at today's Pontoise (Val-d'Oise), on the opposite side of Paris from Brie.
According to at least his first two Vitae (BHL 8798; its expansion, BHL 8796), W. was in almost every respect a model abbot. But the stresses of the position caused him twice to flee his burden, the first time becoming a monk at Cluny and the second time an hermit on an island in the Loire near Tours. On both occasions W. was quickly discovered and made to return. A subsequent petition to pope St. Gregory VII for permission to resign was denied. From G.'s point of view, presumably, W. could do more good as a reforming abbot in the Île de France, where he opposed simony and nicolaism and was given to speaking forthrightly to king and to bishops.
W. was laid to rest in the abbey church of Saint-Martin, at that time still under construction. Miracles were reported at his tomb and a collection of these (BHL 8797) seems to have been drawn up after 1114 but before his canonization in 1153. The latter was performed by the archbishop of Rouen in the presence of the bishops of Paris and of Senlis as well as of emissaries from the archbishop of Reims. Both the abbey of Saint-Martin and its church have disappeared. W., said to be still resting in his twelfth-/thirteenth-century tomb, now reposes in the église Notre-Dame at Pontoise, a late sixteenth-century successor to a thirteenth-century church located in what originally was a faubourg. Here's a view of the tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/2shgtj
At his canonization W.'s feast was fixed for the day following that of the Discovery of the Holy Cross (thus 15. September). Today, on the reckoning followed by the "new" RM, is W.'s _dies natalis_. Another candidate for that is 8. April.
4) Merbod of Bregenz (Bl.; d. 1120). According to a legend not documented medievally, M. (also Merboth) was a brother of the hermit saints Diedo and Ilga who became a Benedictine monk at Mehrerau in today's Austrian province of Vorarlberg and later was curate of the church at Alberschwende, generally thought to be today's Andelsbuch (Vorarlberg). There, one reads, he was murdered by some of his parishioners who seem to have resented his having just cured a child by the laying on of hands. His cult, said to be attested since the thirteenth century but never officially confirmed, is believed to have been immediate. M.'s death was recorded for this day in his monastery's necrology.
The early modern chapel of Sts. Martin and Wendelin at Andelsbuch's locality of Bersbuch is reported to have replaced a medieval chapel erected on the site of M.'s murder and to house a statue of him. Two exterior views (in the first, the chapel in question is the one at lower left):
http://pfarre.andelsbuch.at/images/Kapellenkarte.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24314251.jpg
5) Otto, venerated at Ariano Irpino (d. ca. 1127, supposedly). Today's less well known saint of the Regno has a sketchy and unreliable later medieval Vita (BHL 6391) consisting of lections for his Office at what before Italian unification was Ariano (as it still is in ordinary speech) but is now officially Ariano Irpino (AV) in Campania. This says that O. (in Italian, Ottone) was a soldier of Roman origin who, taken prisoner and put in chains, was released through the intercession of St. Leonard (of Noblac) and became an hermit at Ariano, dying on this day.
O.'s dates and his frequently encountered ascription to the Roman family of Frangipane are guesswork. In 1452, when king Alfonso I requested their return, his relics were at Benevento, whither they were said to have been removed for safekeeping during a period of Saracen raids (if so, then probably in the late ninth century, well before the time that O. is now thought to have existed). Later in the fifteenth century Ariano's cathedral of the BVM was rebuilt and O.'s relics were placed in a chapel at the end of the right aisle. That is where they are today. O. is the principal patron of Ariano Irpino and a patron of the diocese of Ariano Irpino - Lacedonia.
Most of the present facade of Ariano's cathedral dates from 1500 and the years immediately following, still within the chronological parameters of this list. The statue over the entrance on the right, set up in 1502, is of O. A few views of the facade:
http://tinyurl.com/deeznk
http://tinyurl.com/dffdqk
http://tinyurl.com/y9mzcp4
http://tinyurl.com/29qqv6
Inside, the cathedral houses a font for immersion baptisms from 1070 that had belonged to its predecessor:
http://tinyurl.com/yc58db9
An illustrated, Italian-language site on the cathedral:
ttp://tinyurl.com/y9dg2nr
The cathedral sits near the top of one of Ariano Irpino's three very high hills. Down below, where the old main road between Naples and Apulia traverses the territory of this once strategically important Appennine town, is the former church of Santa Maria dei Martiri, restored in 2000. Its basic form is that of a rebuilding in 1548 of an earlier church of uncertain age (perhaps as recent as 1487, the date said to be provided by two of its lintel stones in combination, but probably a rather earlier replacement for what must initially have been a roadside chapel):
http://rete.comuni-italiani.it/foto/2008/27431/view
The same church in an earlier state:
http://www.culturaariano.it/Portals/0/Martiri.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)
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