medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (22. May) is the feast day of:
1) Castus of Calvi [and Cassius of Sinuessa] (d. 66, supposedly). C. is the legendary martyred protobishop of today's Calvi Risorta (CE) in northwestern Campania, the successor to ancient Cales and medievally called simply Calvi. He and his homonym of relatively nearby Sinuessa (CE) and Sessa Aurunca (CE), a supposed martyr celebrated locally on this day, are probably in origin the same saint whose cults differentiated in the early or central Middle Ages. A widely held scholarly view is that both of these Casti are in origin the third-century African martyr of this name (see no. 2, below) whose cult spread early to Campania and there generated new identities for C. at different locales.
In addition to the places already mentioned, a C. has been venerated in today's northwestern Campania and southern Lazio at Capua, Gaeta, and Sora at the very least. Another, C. of Larino (4. July), is the legendary protobishop of Trivento (CB) in Molise, whence relics said to be his were translated to Benevento in the later eighth century and were venerated there in Santa Sofia. He too is probably identical in origin with today's C., much as the Secundinus of relatively nearby Troia (11. Feb.) is likely to be the northwestern Campanian saint of that name locally re-imagined in the central Middle Ages.
In this view of sets of relics accorded a solemn recognition at Gaeta in 2008, the bones at upper right are said to be those of C. and of the Campanian St. Secundinus, translated to Gaeta in 966:
http://tinyurl.com/yaqs56d
Our C. (he of Calvi) has a legendary Passio (BHL 1649) linking him with a fellow martyr Cassius (also thought to be a transplant from Africa but said in this Passio to have been the protobishop of Sinuessa). Surviving in the form of lections for their feast at Capua and making them victims of the Neronian persecution, this is thought to be derived from the now lost Passio of these saints said (by the not entirely reliable Peter the Deacon) to have been written by the young Gregory of Terracina while he was still a monk at Montecassino. That would put his text on C. and Cassius towards the end of the eleventh century and make it closely contemporary with Calvi Risorta's originally late eleventh-century cathedral of San Casto. An Italian-language fact sheet on that structure is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2v64e9
Recent views of Calvi Risorta's cathedral dedicated to C., now a co-cathedral of the diocese of Teano - Calvi:
http://tinyurl.com/22uknm5
http://tinyurl.com/34t8xsw
A somewhat older exterior view:
http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/cop.jpg
Early twentieth-century views:
http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/comera.htm
Capitals in the crypt:
http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/imgCript.htm
In this later twelfth-century mosaic in the cathedral of Monreale (PA) in Sicily Cassius and C. are shown causing the destruction of a temple, its idol, and its priests:
http://www.jemolo.com/alta/mo68.jpg
Much better black and white views of this mosaic and of a companion showing the saints' condemnation _ad bestias_ will be found in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 3, cols. 935-936 and 937-938.
As Monreale's cathedral was designed for William II as a sort of national shrine for the kingdom of Sicily, it is not surprising that these now less well known saints of the Regno would be portrayed there. Monreale may have had relics of C. and Cassius, just as it still does of the also Campanian St. Castrensis (11. Feb.), who was venerated medievally in the same towns as were C. and Cassius (even today he's the patron saint of, e.g., Sessa Aurunca). Please try to keep Cassius, Castus, and Castrensis straight; likewise Sora, Sinuessa, and Sessa (anciently Suessa). There may be a quiz.
The sixteenth-century historian of the archdiocese of Capua, Michele Monaco, reports having seen an altar to C. and to Cassius at Sora (where both were celebrated today) with the two saints depicted as bishops on the arch above it. Monaco also briefly recounts a legend whereby enemies preparing to attack Sora were dissuaded by a dream vision of the two saints holding up torches atop a mountain and displaying a huge army arrayed in the form of a cross.
Prior to its revision of 2001 C. and Secundinus were entered in the RM under 1. July as martyrs of Sinuessa. Though that laterculum no longer appears in the RM, C. is celebrated at Calvi Risorta on this day in a diocesan feast of Castus and the [other] Martyrs. The latter presumably include Cassius, who seems never to have graced the pages of the RM and whom some have thought to be in origin nothing more than a doublet of C.
2) Castus and Aemilius (d. ca. 250). According to St. Cyprian of Carthage's _De lapsis_, cap. 13 (our only narrative source for these saints), C. and A. were martyrs of the province of Africa who during the Decian persecution at first apostasized but then, touched by divine grace, acknowledged their faith, underwent execution heroically, and redeemed with their blood their earlier sin. St. Augustine's _Sermon 285_ was delivered on the anniversary of their martyrdom. C. and A. are entered under today in the early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage.
3) Julia of Corsica (d. 5th cent., supposedly). J. is entered under today in the (pseudo- )Hieronymian Martyrology as a martyr on Corsica. She has a legendary Passio (two closely related versions, BHL 4516 and 4517) that makes her one of the many saints from Italian coastal areas to have fled persecution in distant Africa. In J.'s case, the legend appears to originate not in Corsica but at Gorgona, an island in the Tuscan Archipelago approximately 37 km. distant from Livorno: monks of Gorgona, apprised by mournful angels that J.'s crucifixion had just taken place, sailed to the Corsican shore, took J.'s corpse down from her crucifix, brought her to Gorgona with miraculous speed in the face of a strong contrary wind, and there embalmed her and placed her in a tomb. In one version, the legend itself is ascribed to angelic authorship.
According to medieval tradition, in the early 760s Ansa, wife of the Lombard king Desiderius, had J.'s relics translated to Brescia, where they were interred in the abbey church of San Salvatore at the time of the latter's consecration by pope Paul I. This translation in turn has recently been pronounced fictional, with the start of J.'s major cult at Brescia being effectively re-dated to the ninth or tenth century (in the Renaissance the abbey was greatly expanded and became known as Santa Giulia). Texts of hymns from her Office there and of other liturgical poetry honoring J. are accessible from here:
http://www.santagiulia.info/documenti/index.htm
J. is the principal patron of Corsica and is also patron of Livorno. Like the Corsican martyrs Paragorius, Parthaeus, and Parthenopaeus (7. September; discussed briefly in connection with yesterday's St. Restituta of Corsica), J. seems also to have been venerated medievally at Noli in western Liguria. For her cult, see Giancarlo Andenna, ed., _Culto e storia in Santa Giulia_ (Brescia: Grafo, 2001), esp. the articles by Gabriel Silagi on the Passio and hymns and by Gian Pietro Brogiolo on the history of J.'s cult at Brescia. An illustrated, Italian-language page on J.'s putative relics is here:
http://www.santagiulia.info/reliquie_santa_giulia.htm
Views of San Salvatore at Brescia:
http://www.brescia.lombardiainrete.it/brescia/santagiulia.asp
http://tinyurl.com/59a6z8
http://tinyurl.com/3cdrr3
Thumbnail views of two twelfth-century capitals figuring J., now in Brescia's Museo cristiano di Santa Giulia:
http://tinyurl.com/2ae8x9t
http://tinyurl.com/272nob3
A page of expandable views of the originally eleventh- to thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Giulia in Caprona, a locality of Vicopisano (PI) in Tuscany:
http://www.stilepisano.it/immagini/index29.htm
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/2agyvnl
Still in Tuscany, an illustrated, Italian-language page on, and other views of, Lucca's chiesa di Santa Giulia, a thirteenth-century rebuilding of a church first attested from the tenth century:
http://www.santagiulia.info/santa_giulia/lucca/index.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2crnd3o
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/P9YGwlS0-JLOrNZPOlB1jA
And now for something completely different: a ruined church (or perhaps two churches) on Cape Noli, a structure that _may_ once have been the church dedicated to J. mentioned in 1191 as being in that vicinity:
http://www.archaeoastronomy.it/santa%20giulia3.JPG
4) Quiteria (d. 5th cent., supposedly). Q. (in French, Quitterie; in Occitan, Quitaria; in Catalan, usually Quitéria; in Spanish, Quitería and Quitaría; in Portuguese, Quitéria) is a saint of Gascony, northern Spain, and Portugal whose cult is at least as old as the later sixth century, when St. Gregory of Tours intended to include her in his _In gloria confessorum_. She has a complicated dossier (Vitae: BHL 7041d-7043), whose texts of Spanish and French origin (those from Portugal are said to be quite different) make her a pagan king's daughter who converts to Christianity, flees with angelic assistance to an Arian-ruled kingdom in order to evade an arranged marriage, is there imprisoned, operates miracles, and is released, and is martyred (usually at today's Aire-sur-l'Adour [Landes]) on this day by her rejected betrothed, who had discovered her whereabouts and pursued her.
Herewith some exterior views of the mostly originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century église Sainte-Quitterie in Aire-sur-l'Adour (the chevet and the crypt are thought to be originally of the late eleventh or twelfth century):
http://tinyurl.com/3xnakzu
http://tinyurl.com/32jr54c
http://tinyurl.com/29huytg
http://tinyurl.com/32dpufg
http://tinyurl.com/3ytgj5v
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/T1W94a5qbFlXBGkklorBzw
http://tinyurl.com/3a4yuk4
http://tinyurl.com/2vjlxkb
http://tinyurl.com/35q4z4c
http://tinyurl.com/32s528o
Interior carvings:
http://www.ostaldoccitania.net/img/istoria/sta_quitaria.png
http://tinyurl.com/27n9gye
http://tinyurl.com/24aaqd7
This church possesses a late third- to fifth-century marble sarcophagus re-discovered in the crypt in the nineteenth century and said to have held Q.'s relics before their profanation in the sixteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/3a687lh
http://tinyurl.com/2cztxfs
http://tinyurl.com/24xnhga
Views of the thought-to-be-originally-pre-Romanesque église Sainte-Quitterie at Laspeyres, a locality of Fourcés (Gers) begin a quarter of the way down this page:
http://www.fources.fr/eglises.html
Some views of the originally eleventh-century ermita de Santa Quiteria y San Bonifacio at Montfalcó (Huesca):
http://tinyurl.com/383ll88
http://tinyurl.com/37y27b9
http://tinyurl.com/39m58wp
http://tinyurl.com/36c47tb
Some views of the originally twelfth-century église Sainte-Quitterie in Aubous (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), expanded in the seventeenth or eighteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/2dzrqrn
http://tinyurl.com/29tcf7u
Some views, etc. of the originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century chapelle Sainte-Quitterie at Magrigne, a locality of Saint-Laurent-d'Arce (Gironde):
http://www.insolite.asso.fr/templiers/magrinne.htm
http://www.caruso33.net/magrigne.html
TAN: Some greatly views of the originally sixteenth-century (probably somewhat later than our cut-off date of 1550) ermita de Santa Quiteria at Encinacorba, a locality of Uncastillo (Zaragoza), occur near the top of this page (after the almond blossoms):
http://enzinacorba.blogspot.com/search?q=Santa+quiteria
Further views, incl. several of the interior:
http://www.lahornacina.com/denunciasquiteria2.htm
http://tinyurl.com/25x8p8o
5) Heliena of Laurino (d. before 915, supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno (in Italian, Eliena) is the patron saint of Laurino (SA) in the Cilento in southwestern Campania. Marguerite of Burgundy, going to Naples in 1267 to marry Charles I, is said to brought with her from Auxerre remains believed to be those of H. These in turn are said to have been given by their son, Charles II, to St. Elzear, who brought them to his comital city of Ariano (today's Ariano Irpino in Campania's Avellino province).
A brief fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Vita (BHL 3800) in three lections from the diocese of Capaccio (now the diocese of Vallo della Lucania) makes H. a native of Laurino who at a young age became a solitary in a cave on Monte Pruno, where she lived very ascetically, made cowls for the monks at a nearby monastery, assisted local shepherds, and died on 20. April. According to this text, the monks wished to make her the saint of their own church but an angel forbade that and instead she was buried by the bishop of Paestum (Capaccio's predecessor) in his cathedral.
H.'s date, which is pure guesswork, reposes on the datum about the bishop and upon there having been a Muslim sack of Paestum in 915 (shortly after which, it is thought, the see was relocated to the more defensible Capaccio). Explanations of how H.'s putative relics got from Paestum or Capaccio to Auxerre strain belief. Laurino got some of its relics of her from Ariano in 1713 and the remainder in 1882. H. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. Today is her feast day in Laurino.
6) Bovo of Voghera (d. 986, supposedly). B. (in Latin also Bobo and Bobus; in Italian also Bovone, Bobone, Bonone) is a traditional patron of Voghera (PV) in southwestern Lombardy's Oltrepò Pavese. A church dedicated to him there is first recorded from 1119 and an adjacent hospital is first recorded from 1198. In the later Middle Ages an important fair named after him was held at Voghera on this day. In 1469 an Inventio of his remains in Pavia's church of St. Apollinaris spurred a competing invention, followed by a formal recognition and by numerous reported miracles, in his altar in his own church at Voghera.
B. has a legendary Vita (versions: BHL 1383 and 1383a) and an accompanying account of post-mortem healing miracles (BHL 1384), all transmitted in witnesses of the later fifteenth century when his cult was experiencing renewed popularity and a radiation to other locales in northern Italy. The Vita presents B. as a nobly born Provençal knight who in the later tenth century expelled from their lair at today's La Garde-Freinet (Var) Saracen raiders who were harrassing towns in Provence (the Chronicle of Novalesa more plausibly ascribes this to duke Guilhem I of Provence in 973), who then gave up soldiering and undertook annual pilgrimages to Rome, and who fell severely ill on one of these voyages, distributed his goods to the poor, and died at Voghera on this day in a year that from data in the Vita works out to have been 986.
B.'s name allowed him to be seen as a protector of bovids and other farm animals (not surprisingly, his fair was known for its cattle market). This and his status as a _miles Christi_ are the two salient aspects of his construction as seen in his later fifteenth-century iconography. Despite the latter's abundance, I couldn't quickly find clear instances on the free web. But many representations of him from this period are reproduced by Dominique Rigaux, "San Bovo: l'Iconographie d'un Culte Rural Italien du XVe Siècle", in J.-P. Massaut et M.-E. Henneau, eds., _La christianisation des campagnes. Actes du colloque du C.I.H.E.C. (25-27 août 1994), vol. 1, pp. 171-198.
7) Atto of Pistoia (d. 1153?). The probably Tuscan A. (there is also a view that he was of Iberian origin) is thought to have entered the abbey of Vallombrosa around 1100. He wrote, in addition to a now lost commentary on the Epistles, Vitae of St. Barnabas, of Vallombrosa's founder St. John Gualbert, and of Parma's bishop Bl. Bernard of the Uberti. A. became abbot of Vallombrosa around 1120 and bishop of Pistoia in 1134. As bishop he continued to observe the rules of his order, served as a papal mediator in ecclesiastical disputes in Tuscany, and founded three hospitals (one of which was enriched with a part of the skull of St. James, donated by the archbishop and chapter of Compostella to the bishop and chapter of Pistoia).
A. was buried in a church near the cathedral; he received a cult both at Pistoia and among the Vallombrosans. In 1337 his remains were accorded a formal recognition, were pronounced incorrupt, and were translated to an altar in Pistoia's cathedral. A.'s cult was confirmed papally in 1605. In this detail of Neri di Bicci's late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century painting of St. John Gualbert and other Vallombrosan saints and blesseds in Florence's Santa Trinità, A. is the mitred figure to the founder's left:
http://tinyurl.com/56u348
8) Humility of Faenza (d. 1310). The monastic founder and mystic H. (in Italian, Umiltà) is perhaps unique in medieval Italy as a known woman author of a substantial body of Latin texts unlikely to have been ghostwritten or significantly redacted by a male secretary or confessor. These are her fifteen so-called _Sermons_, of which some are sermons in the general medieval and modern sense and the remainder, for which H. accurately uses the term _oratio_ (‘prayer’), are formally addresses of devotion to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and others.
Apart from the testimony of the _Sermons_ themselves, almost all that we know of H. comes from two early fourteenth-century lives, one in Latin and one in Italian. A talented and determined individual with little if any formal education, she was born into a noble family at Faenza. There Humility (her name in religion; previously it had been Rosanese) moved from married life to that of a conventual, then became an ascetic solitary, and subsequently founded a community of Vallombrosan nuns. In 1282 together with a few companions she traveled to Florence and established in that city the Vallombrosan convent of St. John the Evangelist, where she spent the remaining years of her life. Recognized as a living saint both in Faenza and in Florence, H. was shortly after her death the subject of a statue by Andrea Orcagna and of a polyptych altarpiece whose paintings have often been attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti.
H.'s cult was papally authorized in 1720 for the Vallombrosans and in 1721 for the dioceses of Florence and Faenza. She was canonized in 1948. Julia Bolton Holloway has an excellent website on H., complete with color images from the now disassembled polyptych illustrating H.'s life and miracles often ascribed to Pietro Lorenzetti:
http://www.umilta.net/umilta.html
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the additions of Castus and Aemilius, Quiteria, and Bovo of Voghera)
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