medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (15. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Liberator (?).  This saint of the Regno has left no known Acta.  Once widely venerated in the Beneventan cultural area and beyond, he has left his name in toponyms from Umbria and the Marche to southern Campania.  Some not totally bereft of Greek identify him with the St. Eleutherius of 18. April.  It will surprise few on this list to learn that L. was said to have been a martyr and that he was sometimes also thought of as having been a bishop.

L.'s principal monument is his monastery church of San Liberatore a Maiella (also "alla Maiella") at Serramonacesca (PE) in Abruzzo, in its present form a later eleventh- to thirteenth-century structure restored from 1967 to 1971 and once serving a monastery that for much of its active existence was a major dependency of Montecassino.  A brief, illustrated, English-language account is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Liberatore_a_Maiella
and the Italian-language page from which that was taken is here (same three views; bibliography not present in the English-language version):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Liberatore_a_Maiella
More views here (incl. two good ones of the reconstructed ambo):
http://tinyurl.com/4xnuhu
Giovanni Lattanzi's views on inabuzzo.it include several of carvings on the ambo:
http://tinyurl.com/2dbsh63

Another noteworthy place of L.'s medieval veneration is today's Monte San Liberatore between Cava de' Tirreni and Vietri sul Mare in the vicinity of Salerno.  A women's monastery with an _ecclesia sancti Liberatoris_, recorded on this elevation as early as 979, became in the following century a dependency of the abbey of the Most Holy Trinity at Cava de' Tirreni.  We have the names of some of its abbesses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  By 2. July 1338 the sisters, still keeping their identity as a community of St. L., had moved to Salerno and were residing there in the monastery of St. Sophia.  In the seventeenth century the monastery on the mountain had become a male hermitage.  Abandoned in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, the site was reoccupied in 1948 and a new church, dedicated to Christ Liberator of the Universe, was built over what had been one of its later medieval predecessor's two aisles.

A few views of Monte San Liberatore and of the present hermitage on it:
http://tinyurl.com/5qfgck
http://tinyurl.com/6c4t74
http://tinyurl.com/qeule7
http://tinyurl.com/5fa4xs
http://tinyurl.com/67m5ly
(Yes, those crosses are lit at night.)

L. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.  Though his cult seems now largely in abeyance, he is still celebrated on 15. May (his usual late medieval feast day) at the former cathedral dedicated to him in Magliano Sabina (RI) in eastern Lazio and in the _frazione_ of Cappella San Liberatore in Ariano Irpino (AV) in south-central Campania, where he is traditionally considered a former bishop of Ariano.  Here's an aerial view of L.'s church at Magliano Sabina:
http://tinyurl.com/ooa3h2
At Civitacampomarano (CB) in Molise, where L. is the patron saint, he is celebrated on 13. May.
An L. who may be the same saint has a moveable feast on the last Sunday in August at his much rebuilt, originally early fifteenth-century church at likewise Campanian Massa Lubrense (NA) on the western end of the Sorrentine peninsula:
http://www.massalubrense.it/canon/sliberatore2.jpg


2)  Eutychius of Ferentum,  (d. before ca. 590; perh. 303).  We first hear of E. (also Euticius, Eutitius; in Italian, Eutizio) in the _Dialogues_ of St. Gregory the Great, who tells us (3. 38) that he was a martyr with a church and that in it he appeared by his tomb to bishop Redemptus of the _Ferentina civitas_ and predicted to him the coming end of the world.  Although that Redemptus is venerated now as St. Redemptus of Ferentino in southern Lazio (8. April), the prevailing scholarly belief is that he was actually bishop of Ferentum (also Ferentinum) near Viterbo in northern Lazio.  At today's nearby Soriano nel Cimino (VT) in the _frazione_ of Sant'Eutizio a succession of churches dedicated to E. has been built over catacombs that were in use in the fourth century and in which was built in the fifth century a shrine over a tomb believed to be that of E.

An undated, legendary Passio of E. (BHL 2779-2880) makes him a martyr under an emperor Claudius (also the emperor of the legendary Passio of the Roman saints Marius and Martha [BHL 5543]), gives today as his _dies natalis_, has him buried in a crypt about fifteen miles from Ferentum (which would fit the location at Soriano nel Cimino), and has him re-interred there in a marble sepulchre once the Edicts of Milan had taken hold.  In 1496 a marble sarcophagus containing corroded bones was discovered at E.'s church at Soriano nel Cimino, which was then being rebuilt.  These were promptly identified as E.'s; they are said to be still housed in the eighteenth-century Santuario di Sant'Eutizio now occupying the site.

E. is a co-patron both of Soriano nel Cimino and of nearby Carbognano (VT), where he continues to be celebrated liturgically on this day.  He was removed from the RM in 2001.  Carbognano also has a small church dedicated to E.  In its present rebuilt form it has a late medieval peaked facade but is thought to be originally of perhaps the ninth century.  Herewith two smallish views:
http://tinyurl.com/2c6a2jt
http://www.carbognanonline.it/assets/images/Navata_S._Eutizio.jpg


3)  Simplicius "of Fausania" (d. before ca. 625; perh. 303).  All we know for certain of this saint is the common fund of information given by the principal witnesses of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology: _In Sardinia Simplici_ ("In Sardinia, Simplicius/Simplicus").  Later witnesses unlikely to be drawing upon ancient testimony round out the notice by calling S. either priest or bishop.

A church dedicated to a saint Simplicius at Fausania, one of the predecessors of today's Olbia (OT) in the former judicate of Gallura, is first attested to in the eleventh century.  Evidence for the antiquity of S.'s cult at Olbia and vicinity is said to be lacking.  A somewhat later Passio making S. bishop of Fausania and assigning his martyrdom to the Diocletianic persecution confers antique distinction upon the diocese of Civita (as Olbia was called in the central and later Middle Ages).  Despite its acceptance by the early modern father of the Roman Martyrology, Cardinal Baronio, this account is fiction.

S.'s church at Olbia (its ex-cathedral, the diocese of Civita having been suppressed in 1503), on the other hand, is splendidly factual.  Constructed chiefly of granite (much of it of the local pink variety), its colors are richer in some lights than in others.  Particularly impressive is the band of really rosy brick (emblematic of a martyr?) on the rear wall above the apse and continuing for much of the way along the sides at the same height.  Some images follow:
Exterior views, strong summer sunlight:
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria9/index.html
Exterior in winter, colors better:
http://www.ilportalesardo.it/galleria/detail.asp?iType=2&iPic=44
Exterior (2 views), interior (1 view), excellent colors.  Scroll down to "La basilica di San Simplicio"; click on views for enlargements:
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/files/101.htm
Exterior details:
http://www.sansimplicio.org/chiesa/chiesa.htm
Exterior views (front and rear), interior details:
http://www.ilportalesardo.it/monumenti/ssolbia.htm
Exterior and interior views, good for interior height:
http://web.tiscali.it/Olbia2000/pages/sanSimplicio.htm
Exterior and interior views, better for aisle structure:
http://www.quiolbia.it/sansimplicio.php


4)  Primianus and Firmianus (?).  This pair of less well known saints of the Regno first comes to light in Radoin of Larino's tenth- or early eleventh-century Vita et Translatio_ of St. Pardus of Larino, which latter exists in two forms (BHL 6464 and 6465) both deriving from the _sanctorale_ of the chapter library at Bovino (FG) in Apulia.  According to Radoin, P. and F. were martyrs of today's Larino (CB) in Molise whose bodies stolen by people of today's Lesina (FG) in northern Apulia at some point after the destruction of Lucera by Constans II (an event that occurred in 663).

F. seems also to have been venerated at today's Foiano Valfortore (BN) in eastern Campania not far from the latter's borders with southern Molise and northern Apulia, as he is very likely to have been the titular of a church of St. Firmianus there that was recorded in a donation of 1153.  Along with its adjacent small monastery, this church was destroyed by fire in 1160, after which the monks of St. Firmianus joined the community of Santa Maria del Gualdo Mazzocca, also in Foiano.  One could guess that they brought F.'s cult with them but Charles Hilken's recent study of Santa Maria del Gualdo Mazzocca (_Memory and Community in Medieval Southern Italy_ [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008]) is silent on this point.  

The cults of P. and F. appear to have fallen into desuetude at Lesina well before November 1597, when Father Aurelio Marra of Naples' chiesa dell'Annunziata, who was in Lesina to assess the state of two ruinous churches belonging to the Annunziata, found in the crypt of Lesina's then originally thirteenth-century principal church (one of the Annunziata's dependencies) a wooden reliquary chest of P. in the church's altar of St. Paschasius.  The cover of this chest was reported to have portrayed P. in relief with a martyr's palm.  On 2. March 1598, with a papal emissary present, Fr. Marra found buried in the same crypt a marble chest containing human bones whose cover is reported to have said  _S. Primianus, S. Firmianus_  and which also held a lead plaque identifying these saints by name.

These relics of what at the time were thought to be newly discovered saints were translated to Naples in 1598, where in fairly short order they were housed in the Annunziata; they were returned to Lesina in April 2000.  P. and F. are Lesina's patron saints; they have yet to grace the pages of the RM.


5)  Achilles of Larissa (d. ca. mid-4th cent., perhaps).  A. (also Achillius; also A. the Thaumaturge; in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia also A. of Prespa) is known through synaxary notices and through two similar, undated Vitae (BHG 2012, 2013).  As he is always associated with Larissa in Thessaly, there is an excellent chance that he was a native of that place and that his name was traditional there, honoring the city's ancient Greek hero famous from Homer and from other literary texts (e.g. Vergil, _Aeneid_ 2. 197, _Larisaeus Achilles_).  The tradition of the aforementioned texts makes him a Cappadocian from a prominent family who was educated in pagan philosophy and Christian religion, who after the death of his parents distributed his fortune to the poor and undertook pilgrimages to Palestine and to Rome, and who then became a missionary, arriving ultimately at Larissa where he was acclaimed its metropolitan.

Apart from thus having A. participate in the topos of "the saint who has come to us from afar", the same tradition -- unsupported by evidence external to it -- has A. be present at the Council of Nicaea in 325, where he vigorously opposes Arius and operates a miracle.  He then goes to Constantinople, where he is honorably received by the archbishop and where he receives titles of dignity from the emperor Constantine and lavish funds for the erection of churches and hospitals in his diocese.  Returning to Larissa, A. miraculously heals the physically ill and drives demons from the possessed.

At some point in the last decades of the tenth century czar Samuel of the Bulgarians, who had conquered Larissa in 978, translated relics venerated as A.'s to an island in lake Prespa in what is now Greece's Florina prefecture and there erected in his honor a church intended as the cathedral of Greater Bulgaria.  Herewith two views of its remains:
http://tinyurl.com/otjl5e
http://www.soros.org.mk/archive/G02/A02/sa0904.htm

An expandable view of A.'s portrait in the late twelfth-century frescoes of the church of St. George at Kurbinovo in the adjacent part of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is the first of the images on this page:
http://www.mpc.org.mk/English/vGal.asp?kw=Frescoes&Page=2
Context (some views of the church and its frescoes):
http://www.fidanoski.ca/Macedonia/Kurbinovo/index.htm
When clicked on the image here opens a QuickTime virtual panorama of the church's interior:
http://tinyurl.com/p5qglj

A. as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century (1230s) narthex frescoes in the church of the Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in southern Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/yje7o23
http://tinyurl.com/yak3r8t

A. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/2wcm8u6

A. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the prothesis of the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's Kosovo province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2ebox7m

An illustrated, English-language page on A.'s late thirteenth-century church in Arilje (Zlatibor dist.) in Serbia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Achillius_Church_(Serbia)


6)  Adiutor, venerated in Campania (d. 5th cent., supposedly).  An A. who seems to be this less well known saint of the Regno appears in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology under 2. June and again under 17., 18., and 19. December.  His cult in Campania is at least as old as the earlier ninth century, when he appears under 1. September along with St. Priscus (of Capua) in the Marble Calendar of Naples.  In the central and later Middle Ages A. was also venerated in the dioceses of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, as well as at the abbey of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni (SA), where in 1049 a fortified place called in our twelfth-century source and in other texts _castrum sancti Adiutoris_ was given to St. Alferius for the use of his then nascent monastery.  In these places A. was usually celebrated liturgically on 18. or 19. December.

When in 1513 the diocese of Cava was erected A. was chosen its patron saint; its present cathedral, begun in 1517, is dedicated to him.  The late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century ecclesiastical historian Michele Monaco identified A. with one Benignus, the companion of St. Priscus of Capua in the synthesizing and highly legendary eleventh- or twelfth-century _Passio sancti Castrensis_ (BHL 1644; makes its protagonists African bishops sent to sea in an unseaworthy vessel by Vandal persecutors and arriving safely in Campania).  Probably because of that Passio's dubious reputation, A.'s Office at Benevento was suppressed in 1945.  In 2001 he was dropped from the RM where, thanks to his association with St. Priscus, he had been commemorated on 1. September.  A. is a co-patron of the city of Cava de' Tirreni and of the archdiocese of Amalfi-Cava de' Tirreni and in those places he is now celebrated liturgically on this day.


7)  Isidore the Laborer (d. ca. 1130).  I. (also I. the Farmer; in Spanish, Isidro Labrador) has a later thirteenth-century Vita (BHL 4494) that makes him a pious orphan of Madrid who worked there as an agricultural laborer and who after the Muslim capture of his city moved to Torrelaguna (now 53 km. north of Madrid, which latter has grown somewhat since the twelfth century), where he 1) worked again as an agricultural laborer, 2) was for his great piety miraculously rewarded by the multiplication of the grain he harvested for himself, and 3) drew upon himself the enmity of his fellow laborers and the mistrust of his employer.  Later he returned to Madrid, where he continued his practice of praying while working in the fields.  His employer there, suspecting that I. was depriving him of the full measure of his labor, went to see for himself and found angels doing the work while I. was engaged in prayer.  So the texts tell us.

Incorrupt remains identified as those of I. were translated in 1275 from Madrid's church of St. Andrew to the sanctuary of the Virgin at Atocha.  After many further translations they now repose in Madrid's cathedral.  I.'s popular cult was approved papally in 1619.  He was canonized in 1622.  Here's a recent view of him:
http://www.oremosjuntos.com/San_Isidro_Labrador.jpg
I. is one of Madrid's patron saints.  He is also a patron saint of small farmers and of day laborers.  He is not a patron saint of Labrador.

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's posts combined and revised and with the addition of Primianus and Firmianus)

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