medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. June) is the feast day of:
1) Quirinus of Siscia (d. 308). Q. was bishop of Siscia (today's Sisak in Croatia; in Hungarian, Sziszek), martyred under Galerius late in the Great Persecution. St. Jerome, writing in his continuation of Eusebius' _Chronicon_, says that Q. was thrown off a bridge over a river -- presumably the Arabona, today's Rába or Raab -- with a handmill tied to his neck, that for a long time he swam on the surface, speaking with the onlookers and urging them not to be frightened by his fate, that he then prayed that he might sink, and that his prayer was granted immediately.
A well known poetic fashioning of the same is Prudentius, _Peristephanon_ 7, where, however, Q.'s weight is no longer a hand mill (_manualis mola_) but instead a huge millstone (_suspensum laqueo gerens / ingentis lapidem molae_; vv. 25-26). An early version of Q.'s legendary Acta, circulating in Rome at the time of Q.'s translation to the Eternal City (see below), probably underlies these accounts as well as Q.'s entry for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.
About the same time that Prudentius quit public life in order to devote himself full-time to Christian poetry remains of Q. were installed in the martyrs' mausoleum (the so-called Platonia) adjacent to the fourth-century catacomb church later dedicated to St. Sebastian (San Sebastiano fuori le Mura; San Sebastiano ad Catacumbas). That church has been rebuilt several times. Its early modern facade includes an arcade carried on paired columns said to have come from the old basilica (also known, because Peter and Paul were said to have been laid to rest here, as the Basilica Apostolorum):
http://tinyurl.com/quzcvn
Late nineteenth-century archaeological investigation underneath this church failed to discover resting places for either Peter or Paul but it did reveal, in 1892, Q.'s resting place, complete with a partly preserved painted verse inscription that one may read in editions of Pope St. Damasus' _Carmina_. In Ihm's ed. it's no. 76a in the pseudo-Damasiana; in Ferrua's edition (the current standard edition of reference) it's no. 27; in the edition of unknown origin reproduced here it's no. 85:
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/damasus.html
A noteworthy medieval dedication to Q. in Croatia is his originally late twelfth-/thirteenth-century church in Krk, attached to the cathedral at right angles (or nearly so). It is the upper church in a bipartite building whose lower portion is dedicated to St. Margaret of Antioch.
Exterior views:
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=149154
http://tinyurl.com/32xcn4c
http://www.csatolna.hu/hu/erdekes/Elbi/horvat/krk3.jpg
http://ineco.posluh.hr/pgz/krk/k_krkv.jpg
http://ineco.posluh.hr/pgz/krk/k_krk1v.jpg
Interior views:
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=149163
http://en.structurae.de/photos/index.cfm?JS=149164
An interior view of the lower church:
http://tinyurl.com/7qye8
An interior view of the cathedral (said to be first recorded from 1188 or 1189 and to have replaced a paleochristian basilica):
http://www.csatolna.hu/hu/erdekes/Elbi/horvat/krk2.jpg
Here's an illustrated, Italian-language page on the originally thirteenth(?)-century crkva Sv. Kvirina at Jasenovik on the Istrian peninsula in Croatia (fresco from the early or mid fifteenth century; capitals dated 1503; building expanded around 1550):
http://tinyurl.com/2bhxrkb
Another exterior view:
http://tinyurl.com/2c2qsqo
Because Q. was a martyr of the ancient diocese of Pannonia, a forerunner of the medieval and early modern kingdom of Hungary, he is venerated elsewhere in this general region, especially in areas now or formerly of Slavic settlement, including the Italian portion of the Julian Alps (Venezia Giulia). He was also venerated early a little farther to the west at Aquileia, the source of a fifth-century reliquary now at Grado that bears an image of Q. as well as other other saints (including the recently celebrated Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla); today his cult is widespread throughout Friuli.
One medieval dedication to Q. from today's Friuli - Venezia Giulia is his late fifteenth-century church at San Pietro al Natisone (UD), replacing a predecessor documented from 1250 and located just beyond today's Ponte San Quirino:
http://www.lintver.it/img/dcp_2501.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/4f6fuu
http://tinyurl.com/3kkccy
http://www.lintver.it/storia-vicendestoriche-sanquirino.html
http://tinyurl.com/r54u64
Another, now a ruin but locally famous as the site of a thirteenth-century accord between the patriarchate of Aquileia and the county of Gorizia (the Peace of St. Quirinus; 1202), is his former church at Cormons (GO), shown here in views dated 1960-1970:
http://www.issrgo.it/istituto/index.asp?numero=465.jpg
http://www.issrgo.it/istituto/index.asp?numero=237.jpg
http://www.issrgo.it/istituto/index.asp?numero=346.jpg
A set of views from 2007:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/azart/sets/72157613775538353/
Yet another dedication to Q., on the Italian peninsula but not in today's Italy, is this sixteenth-century church in the Republic of San Marino, built on the site of an older chapel to Q. in honor of San Marino's foiling of an occupation attempt on 4. June 1543:
http://tinyurl.com/4w7kdo
2) Metrophanes of Byzantium (d. ca. 325). M. was bishop of Byzantium under Constantine the Great. Contrary to later tradition, he did not attend the First Council of Nicaea (convened in 325) and his traditional dates of office are 306-314. Byzantine synaxaries make M. a relative of the emperor Probus (r. 276-82) and the third member of his family to occupy this see. In the sixth century the emperor Justinian I restored a church at Constantinople dedicated to him.
M. as depicted in a June calendar portrait in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/349q87v
M. (at right; St. Tarasius of Constantinople at left) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) on the triumphal arch of the the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/ykbrj6l
M. (at left; St. Eustathius of Antioch at right) as depicted, in a representation of the First Ecumenical Council, in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/yftpfhf
3) Optatus of Milevis (d. after 383). The African O., a convert to Christianity, became bishop of Milevis in Numidia and wrote a surviving treatise _Adversus Donatistas_ ('Against the Donatists'). Sts. Augustine and Jerome speak highly of him. Fulgentius of Ruspe mentions him together with Augustine and with Ambrose, styling all three _sanctus_.
4) Petroc (d. 6th or 7th cent. ?). P. (also Pedrog) is famous in Cornwall, where he is the legendary founder of the the church of Padstow (Petroc's stow) and the patron saint of Bodmin. He is said to have died on this day at Padstow. None of P.'s surviving Lives is earlier than the eleventh century. By the end of that century Bodmin had his relics; these were stolen in 1177 and brought to the abbey of St. Méen in Brittany, where they operated many miracles before being quickly restored at the behest of the Angevin court in England.
P.'s tenth-century reliquary chest in his mostly later fifteenth-century church at Bodmin:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petroc-cof.jpg
Two exterior views of the church:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/51028
http://tinyurl.com/29ck9qa
A link from this page leads to a summary of P.'s hagiography and to a brief account of the church (click on 'Church History'):
http://www.st-petroc-bodmin.co.uk/
The church's twelfth-century font:
http://tinyurl.com/2xg5pz
An illustrated, English-language account of Padstow's originally earlier fourteenth-century church of St. P. and of its furnishings (incl. a fourteenth-century font):
http://www.padstowparishchurch.org.uk/padstowchurch.htm
Other views of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/26tc8n8
http://tinyurl.com/2bodguo
http://tinyurl.com/25t72nk
http://tinyurl.com/26d5uwx
P. is one of Cornwall's patron saints. His cult is widespread in neighboring Devon, where it is at least as old as the eleventh century.
5) Nicholas and Tranus (d. before 1218). In 1519 the bishop of Ampurias and Tempio (since 1986, the diocese of Tempio-Ampurias) in northern Sardinia issued an encyclical account of the construction by two Franciscans in 1218 of three churches at Capo Soprano, one to the BVM, one to saint Nicholas, and one to saint Tranus. The latter two saints were said to have been hermits the location of whose bodies had been revealed to the Franciscans in a dream. The bishop's source was the now lost _condaghe_ (record book) of the monastery administering these three churches.
The early seventeenth-century Sardinian annalist Salvatore Vidal claimed to have seen in the same _condaghe_ a record of the dedication in 1229 (or 1219; I've seen both in what are presented as quotations of the identical text) of an altar, by a titular bishop of Selymbria, dedicated to saint Peter, to saint Nicholas the confessor, and to saint Tranus the martyr. In the later Middle Ages the site became known by the name it still bears today: Luogosanto ('Holy Place'). Remains of the monastery were still visible in 1636.
Who these saints really were, and when they may have lived, is anyone's guess. In recent centuries reliance on their Greek names ('tranos' means 'clear'; think of Clarus, the hermit of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte) and on T.'s reported status as a martyr has led to the supposition that this was in origin an early Christian cult. But that T. was really a martyr is dubious. And there seems to be no epigraphic evidence for an early cult site here, let alone any remains of a martyrium. Chances are that the Franciscans (who are unlikely to have come up with T.'s name on their own) found a local cult surviving from Sardinia's early medieval Greek church and adapted it to their own ends.
T.'s little church outside of today's Luogosanto (OT) is thought to be the direct successor, on the same site, of its early thirteenth-century homonym. Sometimes referred to (but not by the diocese of Tempio-Ampurias) as the church of saints Nicholas and Tranus, it is built up against a cave said to have been that of these hermits. Here's a distance view with the church at the lower right:
http://www.luogosanto.info/images/Luogosanto.gif
Two closer views of the exterior:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vapy/523251506/
http://tinyurl.com/qpqje
A couple of views of the interior, showing the cave:
http://tinyurl.com/ondrn
http://tinyurl.com/ntw7j
Today is the RM's day of commemoration for N. and T. At Luogosanto they are celebrated liturgically on the first Sunday in June.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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