medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. May) is the feast day of:
1) Quartus and Quintus (?). Our earliest evidence for Q. and Q. comes
from the now lost late fifth- or early sixth-century apse mosaics of the
church of St. Priscus at today's San Prisco (CE), an extramural survivor
of old Capua, where they were depicted as child saints. The
(pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enters them under today's date as
martyrs of Rome buried at a cemetery _ad Centum Aulas_ on the Via
Latina. Seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims in Rome locate their
graves in the basilica of Sts. Gordian and Epimachus (see no. 3, below;
note that in the sixth century Gordian too was considered a child
saint). Although some lists of Capua's bishops make Q. and Q. early
incumbents of that see, it is more likely that they were really Roman
saints also venerated at Capua in late antiquity.
2) Calepodius, Palmatius, Simplicius, Felix, Blanda, and companions (d.
222, supposedly). C. is the saint of the Roman cemetery of Calepodius
at the third milestone on the Via Appia. The legendary Passio of pope
St. Callistus I (BHL 1523), seemingly no older the fifth century, is our
first source both for the saint and for the cemetery's having been so
named. In earlier occurrences the latter is referred to either by its
location or as the cemetery of Callistus (i.e. the pope), who we know
from the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354 to have been
buried there. C., who is described in the Passio as a priest of
Trastevere decapitated under Severus Alexander (who is not known to have
persecuted) and laid to rest by Callistus on 10. May, is probably a
saint about whom nothing credible is known other than that he was a
martyr who prior to his inclusion in the Passio was already celebrated
in Rome on 10. May.
The historical martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard, and after
them the RM prior to its revision of 2001, featured under today an
elogium for C., for several named companions, all of whom are actors in
Callistus' Passio, and for further unnamed companions. The revised
general Roman Calendar of 1969 and the revised RM of 2001 dispensed with
the lot. Some Orthodox churches commemorate all of them today.
C. is particularly closely connected with Rome's basilica di Santa Maria
in Trastevere, where relics said to be his were translated to under the
main altar in the pontificate of Gregory IV (827-844) and where he
appears at the viewer's extreme right in the figures flanking Christ in
the late thirteenth-century apse mosaic (ca. 1290-1291) attributed to
Pietro Cavallini. It is thus possible that C. continues to be
celebrated liturgically in that church, much as the seemingly legendary
Sts. Praxedis and Prisca (also no longer on the general Roman Calendar)
are still celebrated in the Roman churches with which they are most
associated. Can anyone on the list say whether this is so?
Two views of the apse mosaic in Santa Maria in Trastevere (C. at right,
in red, above the sheep):
http://tinyurl.com/2alaebc
http://tinyurl.com/2dolqm4
3) Alphius, Philadelphius, and Cyrinus (d. 255?). A., P., and C. are
patrons of Lentini (SR) in southeastern Sicily. The earliest record of
these three martyrs is usually said to be their brief entry, thought to
go back to the eighth century, in the so-called Menologium of Basil II
(Vat. gr. 1613; late tenth- or early eleventh-century). This makes them
three youthful brothers arrested along with their tutor and many others
by the order of an emperor Licinius and brought to Rome, where most of
the companions undergo martyrdom. A., P., and C., on the other hand,
are sent to Sicily and put to death there. Probably early in the latter
half of the tenth century a Greek monk perhaps from southern Italy
composed a lengthy, fabulous, multi-charactered Passio of A., C., and P.
(BHG 57-62e; Vat. gr. 1591 and later witnesses) that is the source of
most details about these saints appearing in later hagiography.
Papebroch inferred from details of the Passio that these saints were
victims of the Decian persecution. For reasons for placing these
happenings in the reign of Valerian (254-59), see Giuseppe Morabito,
s.v. "Alfio, Filadelfio, Cirino, [etc., etc., etc.]", _Bibliotheca
Sanctorum_, vol. 1 (1961), cols. 832-34. The latest word on the
Passio appears to be Aldo Messina, "Il codice Vat. Gr. 1591 ed il
romanzo agiografico siciliano", _Byzantion_ 71 (2001), 194-211.
A., P., and C. were certainly honored at the Greek abbey of
Grottaferrata near Rome in the eleventh century (they figure in the
hymns of Bartholomew of Gottaferrata) and there are hymns to them of
Sicilian provenance, also in Greek, dating to the later eleventh century.
Most of today's better-known south Italian and Sicilian cult sites of
A., P., and C. are early modern in origin. Even Lentini seems not to
have had relics of these martyrs until 1517, when its present ones were
brought there from the Greek abbey of San Filippo di Fragalà near
Frazzanò (ME) in northeastern Sicily. A former possession of that abbey
is the originally late tenth- or early eleventh-century church of A.,
P., and C. at San Fratello (ME), built over an earlier Greek church and
containing in its crypt relics believed to be of these three saints. See
(with expandable views):
http://tinyurl.com/d9fhz
http://tinyurl.com/b9ryo
4) Gordian of Rome (d. ca. 303, supposedly). Prior to its revision of
2001, the RM had on this day a joint commemoration of Gordian and
Epimachus. G. and E. appear to have been two Roman martyrs who had
nothing to do with each other until they came to be celebrated together.
Probably they were buried near each other, though the indications of
their resting places vary and sometimes G. alone is mentioned. A
mid-sixth century inscription records the priest Vincent's restoration
of the child martyr G.'s tomb.
A legendary Passio (BHL 3612) whose basic outlines were already formed
by the time of the Carolingian martyrologies, makes G. a highly placed
subordinate of Julian the Apostate who after slaying many Christians is
himself baptized, suffers martyrdom, and is buried in a place on the Via
Latina where E. had already been laid to rest. Seventh-century
itineraries note G.'s burial in E.'s church on that site (as does G.'s
elogium in the "new" RM of 2001); in the eighth century this was
referred to as the church of G. and E.
G.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy
(1326-1350) of a French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris,
BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 231v):
http://tinyurl.com/2bkaljt
G.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348)
of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay
(Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 133r):
http://tinyurl.com/2bgkfhv
5) Cataldus (?). This less well known saint of the Regno is the
legendary protobishop of the port city of Taranto in southern Apulia.
Nothing is known of him prior to the discovery of his relics there in
the latter half of the eleventh century. Of that there are two
different accounts.
One is an early modern reworking of an account by one Berlengerius (vel
sim.; BHL 1652) that had been written soon after events of 1151
described in an Inventio et Translatio (BHL 1653), when C.'s grave under
the high altar of the cathedral was opened and C.'s remains were placed
in a silver reliquary, whereupon miracles began to occur. This is the
version given in the _Acta Sanctorum_; in it the inventio is ascribed to
the time of a bishop or archbishop Drogo and this ascription in turn has
led to the dating of the inventio to 1071. The other (BHL 1653d),
edited by Adolf Hofmeister, "Der Sermo de inventione sancti Kataldi: Zur
Geschichte Tarents am Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts," _Münchener Museum fuer
Philologie des Mittelalters und der Renaissance_ 4 (1924; reprinted:
Nendeln, 1972), pp. 101-14, implies that the inventio occurred in 1094.
It seems to have been written shortly after that date.
The two accounts differ in many important respects, not least in their
attitude towards the Normans. Though neither is entirely
confidence-inspiring, that placing the inventio in 1094 (and outside the
city rather than inside in a cathedral under reconstruction) seems more
credible than its competition, which latter has many of the earmarks of
an official version tidying things up after Norman rule had become
entrenched. But see Thomas Head, "Discontinuity and Discovery in the
Cult of Saints: Apulia from Late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages",
_Hagiographica_ 6 (1999), 171-211, esp. pp. 193-97. Head finds the
Berlengerius version to be the more plausible.
According to a very brief Inventio (BHL 1654) that formed part of a
Tarentine collection of documents bearing upon T., in the 1330s or 1340s
C.'s perfectly preserved tongue was found in an arm reliquary of that
saint when his relics at Taranto were being given a new home within that
city's cathedral. In 1492, late in the reign of the Aragonese Ferrando
(Ferdinando, Ferrante) I of mostly mainland Sicily (_vulgo_ kingdom of
Naples), a millenarian prophecy favoring the Angevin claim to the throne
and defaming Jews (whom the the Crown protected as a matter of policy)
was said (BHL 1655) to have been revealed to a Tarentine deacon by C.
himself in a vision vouchsafed in the choir of the cathedral.
C.'s cult spread widely across southern Italy and Sicily (incl. Malta,
administratively part of Sicily until 1530, when Charles V gave it to
the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St. John). The view that he was
an Irish bishop who stayed on at Taranto after a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land derives from a pectoral cross said to have been found with his
remains but not attested before the early modern period. Though
scholarship has debunked this story in many different ways, it lives on
happily in Lives of the Saints written for popular consumption.
'Cataldus' seems to be a Lombard name.
Herewith some views of C.'s church at Palermo, founded towards the
middle of the twelfth century by the admiral Maio of Bari:
http://tinyurl.com/5jmdmn
http://tinyurl.com/6hklfp
http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/22_San_Cataldo.html
Some better views of its cosmatesque pavement:
http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/visits/sicily/cataldo/
6) Solongia (d. ca. 880, perh.). S. (in modern French, Solange) is a
local saint of Berry. According to her legendary and seemingly rather
late Vita (BHL 7822), she was a piously educated shepherdess in a small
town in the vicinity of Bourges who in addition to tending sheep healed
the sick and freed the diabolically possessed. A son of the local lord
desired her carnally, she refused his advances, he abducted her by
night, she struggled and broke free as they were crossing a stream, he
became enraged, seized his sword, and decapitated her. She picked up
her head and walked with angelic guidance to a village chosen by God's
providence and her own wish to be her final resting place. There a
church named for her was built over her miracle-working remains. Thus
far the Vita. The village is today's Sainte-Solange (Cher).
S.'s church at Sainte-Solange is said to be originally of the twelfth
century. The _Acta Sanctorum_ prints a hymn in her honor in ten elegiac
distichs whose versification is certainly medieval. Two views of the
church:
http://tinyurl.com/244grp2
http://tiny.cc/4Ia8n
And here's an expandable view of a later fifteenth-century statue, now
in the Louvre, of S. as a cephalophore:
http://www.insecula.com/contact/A007420.html
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Calepodius,
Palmatius, Simplicius, Felix, Blanda, and companions)
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