medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (25. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Canio of Atella (d. early 4th cent., supposedly).  Today's less well known saint of the Regno is entered under this date in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as follows: _Atellae in Campania Canionis_ ("At Atella in Campania, Canio").  His inclusion among the saints of the now lost fifth- or early sixth-century mosaics of the basilica of San Prisco outside of (old) Capua at today's San Prisco (CE) confirms his late antique veneration in Campania.  But we have no Acta for him prior to the tenth century, when the Neapolitan hagiographer Peter the Subdeacon produced his _Passio sancti Canionis episcopi et martyris_ (BHL 1541d).  According to Peter, C. was an African bishop imprisoned at Carthage under Maximian and Diocletian, liberated by an angel, and miraculously transported to Atella, where he evangelized the locals and in time was martyred.

C. recurs in the even more legendary _Passio sancti Castrensis_ (BHL 1644 and 1645; eleventh- or twelfth-century), where he is one of twelve African bishops said to have been exiled under the Vandals and to have found found refuge in Campania.

In the latter half of the eleventh century Peter's account (or one very similar to it) formed the basis of a new version of the _Passio sancti Canionis_ accompanying the translation of C.'s remains from now-decayed Atella to Acerenza in Basilicata (BHL 1541).  Recently taken from the East Romans, Acerenza was at this time ruled by members of the Norman family that had established itself at Aversa, the Campanian fortress town that replaced nearby Atella.  In 1080 the bishop of Acerenza, who was now an archbishop with metropolitan authority over a considerable part of the newly Norman domains in Puglia and in Basilicata, conducted a solemn _inventio_ of Canio's remains as part of the opening phase of his construction of Acerenza's new cathedral dedicated to Mary of the Assumption and to C.

Acerenza is now the primary locus of C.'s cult.  Atella is no more (though some of its Roman remains are still visible) and most of it lies under today's Sant'Arpino (CE), whose patron saint, Elpidius, another of the twelve bishops of the _Vita sancti Castrensis_, is celebrated there on 24. May.  C. does get his due at Sant'Arpino in civic festivals in July and September as well as at tomorrow's Sagra del Casatiello, when locals prepare the world's largest (as certified by the Guinness Book of Records, no less) casatiello, a rich pastry often served at Easter.  This celebration takes place next to the local church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which latter incorporates a late antique structure (possibly an oratory) now known as the romitorio San Canione ("St. Canio's hermitage").  C. is also the patron saint of Calitri (AV) in southeastern Campania.

A view of the romitorio San Canione in Sant'Arpino (possibly C.'s resting place prior to his translation to Acerenza):
http://tinyurl.com/3yxxoqz

An Italian-language history and overview (with photographs) of Acerenza's cathedral is here:
http://www.acerenza.com/cattedrale/cattedrale1.html
http://www.acerenza.com/cattedrale/catint1.html
http://www.acerenza.com/cattedrale/catint2.html
The archdiocese's own three-page, illustrated, Italian-language introduction to the cathedral begins here:
http://www.diocesiacerenza.it/cattedrale.html
More and better photographs of the same structure are here:
http://www.basilicata.cc/chiese/acerenza1/index.htm
These are enlargeable and captioned; for "la chiesa" keep clicking on "continua" or on "avanti" to view all the photo sets; C.'s remains are of course in "la cripta".

The Italia nell'Arte Medievale site has a set of views of Acerenza's cathedral that's especially good for exterior details and for the ambulatory:
http://tinyurl.com/gpg5o
Notice the ancient spolia (inscriptions and sculptural bits) set into the wall of the cathedral along with arms of donor families of the sixteenth century.  Another spolium is this bust of Julian the Apostate, now in the cathedral museum:
http://www.acerenza.com/cattedrale/giuliano.gif
This is said to have been placed over the peak of the facade (where the cross is now) and to have been understood medievally as an image of C.


2)  Dionysius of Milan (d. in the period 355-374, prob. before 362).  The little we know about D. comes chiefly from St. Hilary of Poitiers and other anti-Arian writers in the wake of the Council of Milan of 355, when the emperor Constantius II had forced the attending bishops to condemn St. Athanasius of Alexandria or else go into exile.  Like Sts. Eusebius of Vercelli and Lucifer of Cagliari, D. chose exile.  Since Lucifer (_Collectio Avellana_, 2. 7) says that D. was willing to condemn Athanasius but was exiled too, it seems likely that the proposed formula of condemnation incorporated some departure from Nicene orthodoxy to which D. was unwilling to subscribe.

We have no reliable information on either D.'s place of exile or his date of death.  According to St. Ambrose of Milan, D. died in exile (_Ep._ 75a. 18), which if we could take this literally would mean that he died before Julian's general pardon of 361).  In a late letter Ambrose implies that Milan lacked D.'s remains and avers that D. died in defense of the faith (_Ep. extra coll._ 14. 69-70).  Paulinus of Milan in his early fifth-century _Vita Ambrosii_ calls D. a confessor, as does a funerary inscription from 475 (_ICLV_, 1. 1043) for a Dalmatian bishop who been buried at Milan next to a memorial for D.

In the early and central Middle Ages there arose a legend of the return of D.'s remains to Milan.  By the time of Florus of Lyon in the early ninth century it was believed that Ambrose had sought the assistance of St. Basil of Caesarea in securing these relics.  Basil's one known letter to Ambrose (_Ep._ 197) contains a spurious addition, seemingly attested from the eleventh century only and absent not only from earlier witnesses in Greek but also from a ninth-century translation into Latin, that presents itself as a reply to such a request and confirms the genuineness of D.'s Cappadocian remains.  Also in the earlier ninth century the putative relics of a bishop Aurelius were translated from Milan to Hirsau in today's Baden-Württemberg for the founding of the abbey there; A. was said to have been an Armenian bishop who had been D.'s host in his Cappadocian exile and who had effected the return of D.'s relics to Italy.   

In 1023 Milan's archbishop Heribert (Ariberto) of Intimiano translated D.'s putative remains from today's Cassano d'Adda (MI) to an extramural church dedicated to D., next to which he established a monastery.  A translation account (BHL 2170) provides a back story whereby when Aurelius was bringing D.'s relics to Milan the horses pulling the cart bearing them stopped at Cassano and would go no farther.  Whereas that's a pious fiction, the very real monastery, to which a hospital was attached, flourished in the central Middle Ages and extended D.'s cult to numerous possessions in northern Italy and what now is Switzerland.  In 1528 D.'s putative relics were appropriated from the decayed monastery church by a noble family and in 1532 they were translated to Milan's cathedral.


3)  Zenobius of Florence (d. earlier 5th cent.)  According to Paulinus of Milan, Z. (in Florentine, Zanobi) accompanied St. Ambrose of Milan on a trip from that city to Florence.  At that time Z. was not yet bishop of Florence; he had become so by ca. 422 when Paulinus composed his Vita of St. A.  Lawrence of Amalfi, whose early eleventh-century Vita of Z. (BHL 9014) is our earliest narrative account of him, draws on Florentine tradition to make Z. a Tuscan who served pope St. Damasus I in Rome and in Constantinople and whom D. then elevated to the see of Florence, his (Z.'s) native city.  Z. was said to have been buried in Florence's church of San Lorenzo and to have been translated in the ninth century to Santa Reparata, which then became the city's cathedral.

Santa Reparata was pulled down in 1375.  Z. now reposes in its successor, Florence's present cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.  Here are two views of his tomb, sculpted between 1432 and 1442 by Lorenzo Ghiberti:
http://tinyurl.com/35njhv
http://tinyurl.com/2qwwcq

Some thirteenth- through fifteenth-century depictions of Z.:
a)  Maestro del Bigallo, panel from an altar frontal (ca. 1220-1230) depicting scenes from Z.'s life, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo):
http://tinyurl.com/2dys7f
b)  Maestro del polittico Medici, John the Baptist between Sts. Z. and Reparata, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo:
http://tinyurl.com/2xuznp
c)  Bernardo Daddi (attrib.), BVM betw. Sts. Catherine of Alexandria and Z. (ca. 1335), Museo dell'Opera del Duomo:
http://tinyurl.com/2d5gjb
d)  Andrea di Cione (Andrea Orcagna; d. 1358), Z. with his deacons Sts. Eugenius and Crescentius, Santa Maria del Fiore:
http://tinyurl.com/28qkfr
e)  Jacopo di Cione, Z. and a devotee (between 1380 and 1400), Museo dell'Opera del Duomo:
http://tinyurl.com/ompone
f)  Z.'s window in Santa Maria del Fiore (ca. 1430; restored, nineteenth and twentieth centuries):
http://tinyurl.com/2qx54t
A fact sheet on that window:
http://tinyurl.com/2m5dl3
g)  Beato Angelico, Sts. Z. and Dominic flanking the BVM (ca. 1437-46), Museo Nazionale di San Marco:
http://tinyurl.com/36hv8y

And here's Z. in the cathedral's central portal:
http://tinyurl.com/3b64bv


4)  Aldhelm (d. 709/10).  The first important English scholar of enduring reputation, the West Saxon A. was a monk and later abbot of Malmesbury.  Before entering upon the latter office he had been a student of Sts. Theodore of Tarsus/Canterbury and Hadrian of Nisida/Canterbury.  Of his many writings, his largely hagiographic _De virginitate_ is occasionally cited, in one or both of its versions (prose, verse), in these "saints of the day" notices.  In 706 A. became bishop of Sherborne.  According to William of Malmesbury, he was buried in the abbey's church of St. Michael.  A.'s veneration at Malmesbury as a saint is attested as early as the tenth century.

A view of the Norman chapel dedicated to A. on St Aldhelm's Head in Dorset:
http://tinyurl.com/58h6kx
In the early twelfth century it was believed that A. had founded St Laurence's church at Bradford on Avon (Wilts).  The present structure is more recent than that but still pre-Conquest.  Two illustrated pages on it begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/6s7wno


5)  Bede the Venerable (d. 735).  The author of the first of the historical martyrologies and of the _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_, B. is well known to the learned on this list.  Shortly after his death at Jarrow (in today's Tyne and Wear) he was regarded as a saint; Alcuin attributes a miraculous cure to his relics.  Dante puts him next to St. Isidore of Seville in Paradise.  B. was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1899.  A brief, informative account of him is here (caution: not everyone accepts that B. spent most of his life at Jarrow):
http://home.mchsi.com/~numenor/medstud/life.htm
See also the rather longer introduction to B. by a contributor to this list, George H. Brown: _ Bede, the Venerable_ (Boston: Twayne, 1987).
The opening of Bede's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ in two eighth-century witnesses:
http://www.thurrock-community.org.uk/historysoc/cedd.html
http://tinyurl.com/463hl5

Bones from B.'s grave at Jarrow have since the eleventh century been in Durham Cathedral.  The latter's chapter has mounted on its website of the cathedral a photograph said to be of Bede's tomb (not his medieval resting place) but in which the really prominent items are instead articles of ecclesiastical furniture:
http://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/introduction/gallery/bede
Another view courtesy of the Dean and Chapter:
http://tinyurl.com/4fqveu
An early twentieth-century view:
http://tinyurl.com/6jhfgf


6)  Gregory VII, pope (d. 1085).  Today's well known saint of the Regno (he died in exile at Salerno and reposes there in the cathedral that he consecrated), G. too hardly needs an introduction.   He was canonized in 1606.

Before his consecration as bishop of Rome G. was was known as Hildebrand, sometimes as Hildebrand of Soana from the town in the Maremma in southern Tuscany in or near which he was born.  That place is now Sovana (GR) and there one may visit a rebuilt structure, now housing a Museo di Malacologia Terrestre (does one proceed through it at a snail's pace?), said to have been the place of G.'s birth:
http://vitruvio.imss.fi.it/foto/isd/cens/censsm_149_300.jpg
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/itinerari/immagine/img32793.html
This English-language touristic page on Sovana:
http://www.maremma-guide.com/sovana/
translates the building's name (casa natale de Ildebrando) as "Christmas Home of Ildebrando"!

Did you know that prior to his election G. had been "a dedicated pagan member of the Cybele cult"?  See:
http://one-evil.org/people/people_11c_gregory_VII.htm

A partial view of bull issued by G. in 1073 in connection with a crusade proclaimed in that year against Spanish Muslims and exempting king Sancho I Ramírez of Aragon from tithes on conquered lands (copy in the diocesan archives of Huesca):
http://www.arquivoltas.com/Presentacion/Epigrafia%2054.jpg
Detail (rota):
http://www.arquivoltas.com/Presentacion/Epigrafia%2055.jpg

G. (at upper left) as depicted in John Berard's late twelfth-century cartulary chronicle (ca. 1182) of the abbey of San Clemente a Casauria (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 5411, fol. 233v):
http://tinyurl.com/2fvx7vz
A closer view:
http://tinyurl.com/2fr87nm

A reproduction of the illustration in the Jena ms. of Otto of Freising's _Chronica_ (Jena, ThULB, Hs. Bos. q. 6) showing Henry IV with his antipope Clement III, G.'s expulsion from Rome, his subsequent excommunication of Henry and his clerics, and finally his death:
http://tinyurl.com/pt9hkw
A clearer reproduction of the excommunication scene:
http://tinyurl.com/53nyxo

G.'s sarcophagus at Salerno (re-worked in the seventeenth century):
http://tinyurl.com/34rs7cn
Here's G. now, in a modern effigy reliquary:
http://tinyurl.com/4jzjfd
Back in Sovana, there's a Tomba Ildebranda (but it's an Etruscan temple tomb):
http://www.maremma.name/sovana/tomba_ildebranda_it.html

Also back in Sovana there's an originally late tenth- or early eleventh-century cathedral (now a co-cathedral of the diocese of Pitigliano-Sovana-Orbetello) that was rebuilt in the thirteenth century.  An illustrated, Italian-language page on it is here:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_di_Sovana
See also the first eight views here:
http://www.aritaly.net/gallfoto/gallerie_foto_gite_e_viaggi.asp
More views (including some sculptural details):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Duomo_(Sovana)


7)  Heribert of Knechtsteden (Bl.; d. 1138?).  H. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.  Our information about him comes from the early histories of Premonstratensian Order.  He is said to have been director of the monastery school at Holy Apostles in Köln when he met St. Norbert of Xanten and entered the new order.  In 1130 N. appointed him provost (abbot) of the newly founded Premonstratensian abbey of Knechtsteden near today's Domagen (Lkr. Rhein-Kreis Neuss) in Nordrhein-Westfalen.  

Herewith some views of the abbey's originally mostly twelfth-century Basilika Sankt Andreas, thought to have been begun in 1138 by H.'s successor Christian (the present choir dates to 1477):
http://tinyurl.com/2uwkop3
http://tinyurl.com/27qztyl
http://tinyurl.com/3xbwlw5
http://tinyurl.com/33bkd6g
http://tinyurl.com/2e2mskg
http://tinyurl.com/24oluda
More views and a ground plan are here:
http://tinyurl.com/288lo63
A German-language account of the abby and its church:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kloster_Knechtsteden
 
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the additions of Dionysius of Milan and Heribert of Knechtsteden)

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