medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (27. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Julius of Durostorum (?).  J. is entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, with no indication of his place of martyrdom, and again under 4. June, where he is stated to have died at Durostorum (today's Silistra in Bulgaria), an important Roman army base on the Danube in Moesia.  He has a very brief and seemingly early Passio (BHL 4556) in which he is presented as a serving soldier on the point of leaving active service who during a persecution is informed against as Christian, is encouraged by his commandant to just go ahead and make the obligatory sacrifice, declines, and is executed.  J. is sometimes referred to as Julius the Veteran, perhaps on the theory that he is enjoying his retirement in Heaven (the likelihood that the Romans would have gone ahead and mustered J. out, bronze diploma and all, before executing him seems less plausible to me than, apparently, it does to others).

J.'s Passio links him to two other poorly dated military martyrs of Durostorum, Sts. Pasicrates and Valentio.  It formed the basis for his entries in the historical martyrologies of the Carolingian perod, where from at least Florus of Lyon onward he is entered for today.

An illustrated, English-language account of Roman Durostorum is here (don't miss the hotlink to the late Roman tomb):
http://tinyurl.com/ovsb24


2)  Restituta of Sora (or of Rome; d. 272, supposedly).  According to both the ninth-/tenth-century version of her Passio (BHL 7192) and its early twelfth-century revision ascribed to Gregory of Terracina (BHL 7193), today's less well known saint of Regno was a Roman girl of Christian faith and fearful for her future because of ongoing persecution in what is said to have been the reign of Aurelian.  She was commanded by Jesus Christ to proceed from Rome to Sora, a town now in southern Lazio but formerly in Campania.  Once she had overcome her reluctance to travel alone to a destination she knew not how to find and was about to set forth, her faith was rewarded in the form of angelic transport to her destination.

At Sora R. stayed with a woman whose son Cyril, hopelessly afflicted with a painful and disfiguring disease of the skin, was soon completely cured through her prayers.  Cyril converted to Christianity, others followed suit, official persecution ensued, and R. (according to these accounts, the evangelist of Sora), Cyril, and thirty-seven others were executed by decapitation outside the city walls.

R.'s veneration seems to have extended from Sora eastward and northward into today's Abruzzo as well as south along the Liri to San Germano at the foot of Montecassino.  Little churches in this area have surviving medieval representations of a Restituta now celebrated as the R. of 17. May but in origin probably the R. of today.  The fresco of R. in the arcosolium under the church of Santa Restituta of Rosce di San Vincenzo Valle Roveto (AQ), also referred to as Santa Restituta di Morrea Inferiore, is said to be of the ninth century.  A thumbnail view of that is here:
http://www.sezione8.terremarsicane.it/miniature7/nuovo-54.JPG
R.'s fresco in the church of Santa Restituta at Oricola (AQ) is as recent as the thirteenth century.  A view of it lurks in the thumbnails here:
http://tinyurl.com/6n86cy
For some reason, the Terre Marsicane site has not been able to fulfil its intention of offering larger versions of these views.

The primary locus of R.'s cult remains the church of Santa Restituta at Sora (FR), rebuilt after Frederick II destroyed the town in 1229.
exterior views, front:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6773827.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/9rmth
Exterior view, front and side (from above):
http://www.comune.sora.fr.it/img_home/b.jpg
Exterior view, upper portion of facade:
http://tinyurl.com/qp2jee
exterior view, rear:
http://tinyurl.com/o4p7v9
belltower:
http://www.menteantica.it/soranatale/scorciosrestituta.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/pzq53n

R. has relics at Sora that were discovered during a rebuilding of her church in 1683 and others at Avigliano Umbro (TR) in Umbria, whose _frazione_ of Santa Restituta includes a small cemetery church of the same name.  She is also venerated at Rieti (RI) in eastern Lazio and quite conceivably is the titular of the chiesa/pieve di Santa Restituta at today's Pieve di Santa Restituta, a _frazione_ of Montalcino (SI) in southern Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/3aevuo8
http://tinyurl.com/249wh44
http://tinyurl.com/3xmhxht

R. was droppeded from the RM in its revision of 2001, perhaps in the belief that she is in origin the Restituta of 17. May.


3)  Restitutus of Rome (d. ca. 304, supposedly).  The earliest ms. of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology says of R. simply _Romae Restituti_ ("At Rome, Restitutus"); the seventh-century itineraries for Rome pilgrims are silent about him.  Later witnesses and the historical martyrologies specify a burial site along one or another major Roman road (Via Aurelia, Via Nomentana, Via Salaria) while R.'s sober but legendary ninth-century Passio (BHL 7197) has him martyred near the Capitol, with his corpse first exposed to dogs near an arch of triumph (thought to have been that of Septimius Severus), then buried at his rural property on the Via Nomentana, and finally translated under pope Hadrian I to to an otherwise unrecorded church in Rome (S. Andreas in Aurisaurio) whose name, misread, may underlie the Via Aurelia and Via Salaria data noted above.

Prior to its revision of 2001 R. was entered in the RM under 29. May, his _dies natalis_ in most witnesses of the (ps.-)HM.  His move to today accords with R.'s day of commemoration in that martyrology's earliest witness.  At the same time the RM, following R.'s Passio, changed his location from the Via Aurelia to the Via Nomentana at the sixteenth milestone from Rome.


4)  Eutropius of Orange (d. after 474).  E. is the traditional fourth bishop of Orange.  According to his incompletely preserved Vita by his successor Verus (BHL 2782), he came from one of the most noble families of Marseille, had a licentious youth, married, and later, after his wife's death, entered the clergy there.  He was deacon at Marseille when he was elected to succeed St. Justus at Orange.  The town had recently been devastated by Visigoths; E., having overcome an initial inclination to leave, stayed on to minister to a poor and shattered flock, exercising his body through physical labor and his soul through prayer.  Thus far this Vita, which breaks off at the point of explaining how E. marvellously withstood both heat and cold.  E. was the addressee of one of the letters of Pope St. Hilar(i)us and subscribed a doctrinal letter of St. Faustus of Riez; St. Sidonius Apollinaris (_Ep._ 6. 6) speaks highly of his learning and piety.

E.'s cult, which will have been immediate, was widely diffused in neighboring Provence and the Comtat Venaissin.  A relatively late, legendary Vita (BHL 2783) makes E. one of the Seventy Disciples, has him sent to Gaul as a missionary, ascribes to him various miracles, and reports his death on this day (this is also his day of commemoration in the martyrologies of Ado, who knew Verus' Vita of E. -- perhaps in full --, and Usuard).  Other texts expand on this by making E. a companion either of St. Trophimus of Arles or of St. Martha (setting out from Antioch in the former instance and from Jerusalem in the latter).  Here's a view of an illumination in the the Prayer Book of Charles the Bold (Los Angeles, Getty Museum and Library, Ms. 37; completed by 1469) showing E. operating a miracle:
http://tinyurl.com/37zmn7o

TAN: The hill in the southern part of Orange overlooking the town's famous Roman theatre (restored in the nineteenth century) is the Colline Saint-Eutrope.  Here's an aerial view of the theatre showing part of the hill:
http://tinyurl.com/pmwyos
Nearby may be seen remains of the substructure of the Roman capitolium, which latter stood on the hill at that point:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/georges.gambino/Capitole.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/37udb35
Both of these will have been familiar to E. (though it's an open question how decayed the capitolium was in E.'s day).  A satellite view of the hill is here (to see the northern tip and the adjacent theatre, reduce the image a few times):
http://www.cityzeum.com/plan/colline-saint-eutrope
At that distance it's a bit difficult to identify the oak planted by Queen Juliana of The Netherlands in 1952 and impossible to see the small monument commemorating her visit and thanking the citizens of Orange for their assistance in the reconstruction of her war-ravaged kingdom.  The link between Orange and The Netherlands began only in 1530, close to but still within the upper chronological limit of this list.  Do Dutch Catholics venerate the saints of Orange?


5)  Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604).  A. was a monk at Rome whom pope St. Gregory the Great chose in 596 to lead the first official mission to the Anglo-Saxons.  After a slow progress through Gaul the missonaries arrived in 597 in Kent, where king Æthelberht (whose wife was a Christian from Francia) settled them at Canterbury.  Either en route or on a quick subsequent trip to the Continent, A., who had previously been styled abbot, was consecrated bishop.  There were already Christian churches in Kent and within a few years the mission had prospered to the degree that A. as archbishop was able to appoint bishops of Rochester and of London (Sts. Justus and Mellitus, respectively).

A. had a reputation for thaumaturgy.  This doubtless helped him in his work, though Gregory the Great felt he had to remind A. not to glory in his miracles.  Yesterday was A.'s _dies natalis_.

Here are two views (the second expandable) of pages from the Gospel Book of Saint Augustine (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 286), thought to have been brought from Italy during A.'s time:
http://tinyurl.com/pdhevw
http://tinyurl.com/3e377x

And here's an illustrated fact sheet on the much transformed but originally late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century church of St. Augustine of Canterbury at Dodderhill (Worcestershire):
http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/search/county/site/ed-wo-dodll.html
Another view:
http://www.wdcra.org.uk/dodder.htm


6)  Bruno of Würzburg (d. 1045).  The very highly born B. had been head of the German imperial chancery in Italy for about eight years when in 1034 his cousin Conrad II named him bishop of Würzburg.  The author of commentaries on the Psalms and on the Lord's Prayer, among other writings, he was also a highly influential counselor of Henry III, whom in 1044/45 he accompanied on his second invasion of Hungary.  While Henry, B., and others were dining at a castle on the Danube, the floor of their chamber collapsed and B. was so badly injured that he survived for only a week.  Today is his _dies natalis_.

B. was interred in the crypt of Würzburg's cathedral of St. Kilian, which latter he had consecrated only a few years earlier.  Miracles attributed to him began to be reported ca. 1200 and in 1257 he was accorded a translation to a tomb still visible in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/44v3zs
By the late fifteenth century B. was a recognized local saint with a feast on 26. May.  Bl. Cesare Baronio entered him in the RM under today's date.  B. seems never to have been papally canonized.  In the diocese of Würzburg his feast is celebrated on 17. May.  Small pieces of a purple cope that was once his survive in the Diözesanmuseum in Bamberg and in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.


7)  Gausbert of Montsalvy (d. ca. 1080).  According to earlier seventeenth-century notices deriving from a now lost Vita, the Auvergnat G. was a priest in the diocese of Clermont who became first an hermit and then an itinerant preacher, who attracted disciples, and who in about 1060 founded on a pilgrim route at today's Montsalvy (Cantal) a church dedicated to the BVM and an monastery of Canons Regular who staffed a hospice there.

Two French-language accounts of the originally eleventh- to fifteenth-century ex-abbatiale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption at Montsalvy (the second has expandable views; scrolling up in the same page brings one to views of the chevet and the cloister and of a restored refectory):
http://tinyurl.com/386fzpt
http://tinyurl.com/2v4mf5p
Other views of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/2v3tulk
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/81/266094252_e59be9dbe3_o.jpg
Larger views of the cloister and of the monastery's chapter room:
http://www.france-poi.com/MONTSALVY.html

G. is said to have died on this day at Montsalvy's priory of St. Michael on the Laussac peninsula in today's Thérondels (Aveyron) and to have been buried there.  The chapelle de Laussac is the the sole structure to survive from said priory:
http://tinyurl.com/2vzrehb

Tradition associates G. with other churches in the region, notably the église Notre Dame at Bes-Bédène in today's Saint-Amans (Aveyron).  
http://tinyurl.com/36tfb7h
http://tinyurl.com/3x864zy
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/82/249983080_a9879d668e_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/32v8rmb
http://tinyurl.com/32ypxzn

Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Gausbert of Montsalvy)

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