medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Tomorrow (16. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Felix and Gennadius (?).  F. and G. are martyrs of Africa already called ancient by our sole source for their existence, Evodius of Uzala (d. ca. 426), who in his _De miraculis Sancti Stephani protomartyris_ refers to their suburban martyrium at Uzala.  They entered the RM under Bl. Cesare Baronio, who assigned their commemoration to today.


2)  Peregrinus of Auxerre (d. 259, perhaps).  According to his very late sixth- or early seventh-century Vita (BHL 6623; many witnesses), P. was a Roman priest whom pope St. Sixtus II consecrated bishop and sent to Gaul with some companions to assist Christians who were being persecuted there,  After converting through his eloquence numerous pagans at Auxerre, He then went on to today's Entrains-sur-Nohain (Nièvre) and preached Christianity on a feast day of Juppiter.  Commanded to make sacrifice to the idols, he refused and was imprisoned at today's Bouhy (Nièvre).  The emperor, who was passing through, interrogated P. and then ordered him decapitated.

P. is one of the saints of Auxerre and vicinity whose entries in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology are thought to date from ca. 592.  His entry, which notes his martyrdom at Bouhy, calls him the first bishop of the city (i.e. Auxerre).  But he is absent from Auxerre's official calendar of ca. 570.  In about 700 an oratory dedicated to him was erected there.  This was the predecessor of Auxerre's much rebuilt and now Protestant temple de Saint-Pèlerin, whose crypt contains remnants of the oratory (later, chapel).  Expandable views of some of those will be found towards the bottom of this page:
http://perso.orange.fr/erfauxerre/patrimoine.htm

Pope St. Leo III (795-816) erected outside the Leonine City next to a hospice for Frankish pilgrims a little church dedicated to P., today's San Pellegrino.  Rome's Porta San Pellegrino is named from a street leading to it.  The chiesa di San Pellegrino at Viterbo, after whose homonymous piazza that city's medieval quarter is named, is said to be dedicated to today's P.  Already in existence in 1045, it has been rebuilt so often that it has lost almost completely its medieval aspect.  A view and a brief, Italian-language account are here:
http://tinyurl.com/2kgcph     


3)  Possidius of Calama (d. after 436).  The north African P. was a close friend of St. Augustine of Hippo and a member of his monastic community in that city before being named bishop of Calama in Africa Proconsularis (now Guelma in Algeria).  We know about him chiefly from A.'s correspondence and other writings, from P.'s own biography of Augustine (written between 430 and 435), and from a notice by Prosper of Aquitaine telling us that he was driven out of Calama by the Vandals in 437.  P. had major difficulties with the Donatist church in Calama, was one of Augustine's ambassadors to the emperor Honorius in 410, and took part in the following year's council in Carthage.  Baronio entered him in the RM under today's date (along with St. Alypius of Tagaste, now commemorated on 15. August).

Here, from St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex Sangallensis 571, are the openings of P.'s bibliography of St. Augustine's writings (_Indicium librorum sancti Augustini episcopi_), of the _capitula_ to P.'s Vita of A., and of the Vita itself:
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0571/1
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0571/50
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0571/55/medium

Here's the publisher's description of Erika Hermanowicz' recent _Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate in the Age of Augustine_ (Oxford University Press, 2008):
http://tinyurl.com/pkg9u4
 

4)  Forty-four Martyrs of Mar Saba (d. 614).  These monks of the Great Lavra of St. Sabas in the valley of the Kidron some nine miles southeast of Jerusalem were killed by invading Persians who also destroyed their monastery.  The latter was soon revived and there were again monks at Mar Saba to be killed by Arabs in 797 (Martyrs of Mar Saba; 20. March).  Skulls said to be those of today's forty-four are on display in a chapel at St. Sabas' Cave on the monastery grounds on the opposite side of the gorge from the main buildings. The latter are shown here (distance view):
http://tinyurl.com/6x56up
and here (several views):
http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/Marsaba.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Saba


5)  Ubaldus of Gubbio (d. 1160).  Bereft of his parents while still a boy, the wealthy U. was educated at a community of canons at Fano in the Marche, embraced an ascetic lifestyle, and returned to his native town of Gubbio in Umbria, where he became a canon of Gubbio's cathedral chapter and later its prior.  After a disastrous fire he undertook the rebuilding of the cathedral church.  U. was ordained priest and in 1129 became Gubbio's bishop.  Noted for his pastoral zeal and and for careful management of church property and revenues, he refused to be dissuaded or even angered when physically threatened during a period of factional strife in the city.  Gubbio's victory in 1151 over an attacking force from Perugia and other cities was credited to the efficacy of U.'s prayers.  In 1155, already elderly and infirm, he succeeded in convincing Friedrich Barbarossa, who had just burned Spoleto, to lift his siege of Gubbio.  U. is Gubbio's patron saint.

U. is the subject of two very early Vitae, the first (BHL 8354) emphasizing his leadership in the nascent Augustinian Canons and the second (BHL 8355, 8357; two versions, of which the longer, dedicated to Barbarossa, is the earlier) on his merits as a reforming bishop.  He was canonized by Celestine III in 1192.  Two years later, his body, exhumed for transportation to the predecessor of the early sixteenth-century basilica di Sant'Ubaldo atop Monte Ingino above the city, was found to be incorrupt.  As it still is, apparently.  Here's a view:
http://digilander.libero.it/santubaldo/Ubaldo44.jpg

U.'s cult remained local until the latter half of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth, when it spread across northern Italy chiefly in Augustinian contexts.  Also in the fourteenth century it crossed the Alps and found a home at Thann in Alsace, where a collegiate church was dedicated to him under the name of Theobald (that being, probably not coincidentally, the name of U.'s successor as bishop at Gubbio and author of his _Vita secunda_).  Thann's _Vita sancti Theobaldi_ (BHL 8028) presents a form of U.'s _Vita secunda_ thought to be intermediate between its two aforementioned versions from Gubbio and Thann's finger of its Saint Theobald is said to have been shown to have come from the body preserved on Monte Ingino.  A view of Thann's reliquary housing that finger is here:
http://www.ilmiositoweb.it/santubaldo/Reliquia.jpg

In the fifteenth century U.'s prowess as a thaumaturge, barely mentioned in the early Vitae, came to the fore and the church at Thann (in French, the collégiale Saint-Thiébaut) prospered as a pilgrimage site.  Herewith a couple of distance views of this very striking building:
http://digilander.libero.it/santubaldo/Thann.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/28wa6xe

Rear view:
http://bluezoo.org/honeymoon/thann-kirche.jpg

West portal (notable reliefs):
http://tinyurl.com/2fcc3df
http://r.kirsch.free.fr/archives2001/LorraineEte2001/ThannTympan.jpg
http://webwiller.com/alsapix/PAViewPhoto.asp?ID=256
http://tinyurl.com/kphog

North portal:
http://tinyurl.com/fugva

Side views:
http://tinyurl.com/jtqtv
http://tinyurl.com/fj3r6
side and rear:
http://cfcai.marot.online.fr/images/Thann_68800_DCP_5832.JPG

Belltower:
http://cfcai.marot.online.fr/images/Thann_68800_DCP_5834.JPG

A page of expandable detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/4hwkm9

For a really first-rate collection of essays on different aspects of U. (whose name, BTW, appears to be an Italian version of Hucbald) and of his cult, see: Stefano Brufani and Enrico Menestò, eds., _Nel segno del santo protettore: Ubaldo vescovo, taumaturgo, santo.  Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Gubbio, 15-19 dicembre 1986_ (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1990; repr., Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1992).


6)  Simon Stock (d. 1265, supposedly).  S. (also Simeon) is the name of the Carmelite who is said to have received from the BVM a promise of salvation for any member of his order wearing its scapular.  By the early fifteenth century Carmelites believed him to have been a member of their English province who became prior general, died on this day, and was buried at Bordeaux.  Although S. is absent from earlier Carmelite writing, the Dominican Gérard de Frachet in his thirteenth-century _Vitae Fratrum_ tells of a Carmelite prior general named Simon who had a vision of Bl. Jordan of Saxony after the latter's death.  According to his legend, before joining the Carmelites in 1201 S. had resided as an hermit in a hollow tree (hence his byname Stock).

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised)

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