medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. March) is the feast day of:
1) Martin of Braga (d. ca. 579). Like his namesake St. Martin of Tours, this M. was a Pannonian who went west. But first he travelled east to Palestine, where he made a lengthy pilgrimage, learned Greek, studied theology, and became a monk. Having thus prepared himself, he went into the uttermost west, ending up in what is now northern Portugal. M. founded a monastery, of which he was head, at Dumio near Bracara Augusta (modern Braga), the capital of Gallaecia, a former Roman province that early in the preceding century had become the kingdom of the Sueves.
In 569 M. became archbishop of Bracara. He succeeded in converting the Suevian kings from Arianism to Catholicism and was zealous in suppressing rural "pagan" cults and in converting their adherents to Christianity. Venantius Fortunatus, in a poem addressed to M. (5. 2), twice calls him in effect the apostle of Gallaecia. M.'s surviving work includes a translation, from the Greek, of a collection of the sayings of the (Egyptian) Desert Fathers, a number of moral treatises drawing on Seneca or on John Cassian or on both, a treatise on baptism, and the pastoral _De correctione rusticorum_, rich in mentions of non-Christian rural cults and practices.
Here's M. as depicted in the later tenth-century (976) Codex Albeldensis (El Escorial, Ms. d I 2):
http://tinyurl.com/3azowy
Much later than M., but certainly worth a look while we're here, is Braga's cathedral:
Illustrated, English-language page:
http://www.answers.com/topic/braga-cathedral
Portuguese-language page with other views:
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9_de_Braga
2) Cuthbert (d. 687). C., seems to have sprung from Anglo-Saxon nobility living in the more northerly parts of the kingdom of Northumbria; as he trained at Melrose Abbey, quite possibly his family was of Lothian. After serving as guest master at Melrose's newly founded daughter house at Ripon he returned to Melrose as prior, then moved on to Lindisfarne where he was also prior, and then became an hermit on Inner Farne. In 685 he was consecrated bishop of Lindisfarne (for which he exchanged Hexham, to which he had just been elected). At the very end of 686 or early in 687 C. returned to Inner Farne and died there, probably in his early fifties. His body was taken back to Lindisfarne and interred next to the altar of St. Peter's church. Eleven years later, C. was accorded a formal elevation, at which time his body was declared to be incorrupt.
The focus of what became a more than regionally significant cult, C. has an anonymous early Vita (BHL 2019) from a monk of Lindisfarne and two Vitae by St. Bede, the first in verse and the second an expanded one in prose (BHL 2020, 2021). When Northmen sacked Lindisfarne in 793 the monks began a lengthy peregrination with C.'s body and other treasures (not least the head of St. Oswald), settling in 883 or 885 at Chester-le-Street in today's County Durham. By this time Northumbrian missionaries had carried C.'s veneration to the Continent and C. was entered in the major Carolingian martyrologies. Grotefend lists feasts for him not only in continental dioceses either founded by Englishmen (e.g. Utrecht, Freising, Bremen) or influenced from England (e.g. Rouen, Trondheim) but in others as well (e.g. Cracow, Toledo). In 995 C.'s remains were brought from Chester-le-Street to Durham, where they repose in the cathedral.
A view of C.'s shrine in Durham Cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/ybzntts
and a view of a twelfth-century wall painting, thought to be of C., in the cathedral's Galilee Chapel:
http://tinyurl.com/2llog4
Other views of Durham Cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/2mvjnn
http://tinyurl.com/36w95y
In 1104, when C.'s tomb was opened prior to his translation to his present shrine it was found to contain a small copy of the Gospel of John that had been made at Monkwearmouth or at Jarrow during the abbacy of St. Ceolfrith. Later known from a former place of safekeeping as the Stonyhurst Gospel and now referred to as the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, it is on permanent loan to the British Library. Views of its goatskin binding (said to be the oldest western binding now in Europe) are here:
http://faculty.luther.edu/~martinka/art43/daily/2nd/ston.jpg
and a view of one page (fol. 27r):
http://tinyurl.com/2995rg
Herewith some views, etc. of other medieval dedications to C. With the likely exception of the church at Wells, these are all either at places said in one or another source to have been one of C.'s resting places before he reached Durham or else thought to have been a stopping point between two of them. Again with the seeming exception of the church at Wells, they are known or probable former possessions of the see of Durham (extralimital except for Chester-le-Street) and thus once part of the latter's Patrimony of St. Cuthbert.
The originally twelfth-century Church of St Cuthbert, Corsenside (Northumberland):
http://tinyurl.com/cqrcdw
http://ww2.durham.gov.uk/nd/nsmr/m/N7969.jpg
The originally twelfth-century St Cuthbert's Church, Aldingham (Lancashire):
http://www.explorelowfurness.co.uk/stcuthbert.htm
http://www.lancashirechurches.co.uk/aldingham.htm
The originally thirteenth-century Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert, Chester-le-Street (Durham):
Exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/2sacdn
http://tinyurl.com/ykw2758
http://greensitt.com/graphics/chesterchurch.jpg
http://greensitt.com/graphics/chesterchurchdoor.jpg
History, with plans:
http://tinyurl.com/yjsmbl5
The originally late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century St Cuthbert's Church at Elsdon (Northumberland):
Exterior views:
http://www.northumberland-cam.com/churches/elsdon.htm
Narrow aisle (this church has very thick exterior walls):
http://tinyurl.com/yry8pq
The mostly thirteenth-/ fifteenth-century St Cuthbert's Church, Wells (Somerset):
http://www.stcuthbertswells.co.uk/our_church.html
http://www.pbase.com/billie_mercer/image/44157279
The mostly fifteenth-century St Cuthbert's Church, Crayke (North Yorkshire):
Description:
http://www.crayke.org.uk/cuthbert.cfm
Views:
http://tinyurl.com/yc4tut2
http://tinyurl.com/23aaml
3) Wulfram (d. ca. 701?). We know about the historical W. (in Latin, Vulframnus, Vulfrannus, etc.; in French, Wulfran; also W. of Sens, W. of Fontenelle) chiefly from his early eighth-century Vita by Jonas of Fontenelle (BHL 8738). A native of today's Milly-la-Forêt (Seine-et-Oise), he was educated for the priesthood and served as a member of the court clergy under Chlotar III and Theuderic III of Neustria. The latter named him bishop of Sens in or after 683 (the last year in which his predecessor Lambert is attested). W. is documented in that see in March 693 and again in March 695/96. A successor is recorded from the year 696/97.
According to Jonas, while bishop W. become a monk at Fontenelle, spent five years as a missionary in Frisia where he operated several miracles, and returned to Fontenelle where he died on this day with a great reputation for sanctity and where he was later translated to the abbey church of St. Peter, after which miracles continued to occur at his tomb. A later eleventh-century account, also from Fontenelle, relates an Inventio of his relics there in 1027 and subsequent miracles (BHL 8740). Some of W.'s relics were translated to Abbeville in Picardy in 1058; another Miracula, also of the eleventh century, tells of wonders credited to him there (BHL 8741). Other relics went to Blandigny near Gand/G(h)ent.
At some point after the translation to Abbeville a relic of W. reached Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire. A survival of W.'s cult in those parts is his originally early fourteenth-century church at Grantham (Lincs):
http://www.stwulframs.org.uk/home/building.php
http://tinyurl.com/d9ckgk
http://tinyurl.com/cejaw3
http://tinyurl.com/c3crx4
http://tinyurl.com/ck3xda
http://tinyurl.com/caa7zy
The successor to W.'s eleventh-century chapel at Abbeville (Somme) is that town's late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century église Saint-Vulfran. A French-language Wikipedia page on it is here:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Vulfran_d%27Abbeville
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/dm99ra
http://tinyurl.com/dcwujg
The choir (still "gothic" in style) is from the early 1660s:
http://tinyurl.com/cxvltt
4) Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba (d. 797). These saints were monks killed by raiding Muslims at the Palestinian lavra of Mar Saba. We know about them from from their Acta by the monk Stephen (BHG 1200; lacunas in the Greek repaired thanks to a translation into Georgian), from matter in the Bios of St. Stephen the Sabaite (BHG 1670), and from a notice in the Synaxary of Constantinople (BHG 1200b). Eighteen of them are said to have been herded by the raiders into the rear portion of the monastery's cave church and there to have died of smoke inhalation from a great fire set by the raiders in an unsuccessful attempt to force them, suffering as they were from the heat and the fumes, to reveal the hiding places of the church vessels and other valuable objects.
A Wikipedia page with several expandable views of Mar Saba is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Saba
5) John of Nepomuk (d. 1393). J. (also John Nepomucene; in Czech, Jan Nepomucký), a Bohemian from Pomuk (later renamed Nepomuk), was a priest, notary, and canon lawyer educated at the universities of Prague and Padua. In 1390 he became vicar general of the Archdiocese of Prague. His defense of diocesan immunities made him an obstacle to king Wenceslas (Václav) IV. W. removed this impediment by having J. thrown to his death into the Vltava from the Charles Bridge in Prague. The archbishop pronounced J. a martyr. Sensationalism soon made J. the confessor of the queen of Bohemia, murdered for refusing to violate the seal of the confessional. Bohemia's principal patron saint, he was canonized in 1729. It was once customary to place J.'s statue on bridges. He is invoked against death by drowning and other water-related perils.
J.'s remains repose in a baroque tomb in Prague's cathedral of St. Vitus:
http://tinyurl.com/yjjqjsr
Where he occurs on local calendars J. is usually celebrated on 16. May. Today is his _dies natalis_ and his day of commemoration in the RM.
6) Battista Spagnolo (Bl.; d. 1515). B. (usually known by some form of his humanist name, Baptista Mantuanus) was a native of Mantua whose Spanish father, captured by the Genoese at the battle of Ponza along with Alfonso V of Aragon and I of Sicily, had after his release settled in the Gonzaga capital. After study there under the humanists Giorgio Merula and Gregorio Tifernate B. went on to Padua but left the university there without taking a degree and entered the Carmelite Order in 1463 at Ferrara. He completed his studies there and was ordained priest, seemingly by 1470. B. had a distinguished career as a Carmelite administrator and diplomat, rising late in life to the generalship of his order. He was beatified in 1885. Today is B.'s _dies natalis_ and his day of commemoration in the RM.
B. was a prolific author in both prose and verse. Some of his poems, most notably the eclogue collection _Adulescentia_ and some of his _Parthenicae_ (brief epics on female saints), were widely used as school texts in the sixteenth century. Most of B.'s writings lack modern critical editions. Here (at right) are the opening verses of his _De contemnenda morte_ in a manuscript copy of ca. 1500 (Stanford University Libraries, Misc 119) with annotations showing student use:
http://tinyurl.com/35hh7u
And here's a page from a 1513 Deventer printing of B.'s _Parthenice secunda de passione virginis Catharinae_:
http://tinyurl.com/2ogaha
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba)
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