medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, being the first Sunday after 12. May, is the feast day of:
Nicodemus of Mammola or of Kellárana (var.: of Cellerana; d. ca. 1010). This less well known saint of the Regno was a Greek-speaking Calabrian who founded a monastic community that recorded his memory in a late eleventh-century Bios (BHG 2305) preserved in the famous early fourteenth-century menologium of Santissimo Salvatore at Messina, codices Messanenses graeci 30 and 29. According to this account, N. was born at a place in the Saline near today's Gioa Tauro (RC); his pious parents saw to his Christian education. N. entered religion at the lavra of St. Fantinus the Younger in the mountainous region then called the Mercurion (thought to lie along the headwaters of the river Lao), where for some years he lived as an ascete and perfected himself in obedience, humility, and charity.
Muslim raids, presumably the ones that led to the breakup of Fantinus' community, caused N. to retreat to an elevated location in the wilderness at a place called Kellárana (located by various scholars in areas as far apart as the Cilento in what is now southern Campania and the Locride in extreme southern Calabria). There he lived in extreme simplicity, erected an oratory to St. Michael the Archangel, attracted disciples whom he trained, and performed numerous miracles affecting people of different social rank and from various places in Calabria. After his death on 25. March his miracles continued. Thus far the Bios.
In 1501 N.'s community moved from Kellárana to a dependency at today's Mammola (RC), where N.'s relics were deposited in the local church. A succession of pilgrimage churches at Mammola has led to today's very popular sanctuary. Remains of a monastery in the hills above Mammola are thought by some to be those of N.'s originally tenth-century establishment. N.'s current liturgical feast at Mammola is a moveable one, set for the first Sunday after the anniversary of inauguration of the present sanctuary in 1884.
Best,
John Dillon
(an older post lightly revised and moved to today's date)
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