medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (14. June) is the feast day of:
1) Protus of Aquileia (d. ca. 304, supposedly). By the middle of the fourth century a martyr named Protus was being venerated at a _memoria_ in the great necropolis at today's San Canzian d'Isonzo (GO) in Friuli - Venezia Giulia on the Via Gemina about twelve Roman miles to the east of Aquileia. Also venerated there were the remains of Sts. Chrysogonus (24. November) and Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla (31. May), all of whom were said to have been martyred early in the Great Persecution. Those saints have legendary Passiones in which P. appears as the tutor of the Cantiani and as the companion in martyrdom of Cantius and Cantianus at that locale (then called Aquae Gradatae). Who he really was and when he suffered are unknown.
Web-based visuals of the important surviving monuments of P.'s early veneration are as difficult to find as are those of the Cantiani. Does anyone on this list have views to share of P.'s sarcophagus with its inscription BEATISSIMO MARTYRI PROTO or of the stela also incised with those words (both at San Canzian d'Isonzo) or of P.'s representation in mosaic in the sixth-century procession of male martyrs in Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare Nuovo? Absent those, herewith an exterior view of San Canzian d'Isonzo's fifteenth- or sixteenth-century chiesa di San Proto, built over the spot where P.'s fourth-century _memoria_ and a later, two-chambered structure had been:
http://www.isonzo.com/sancanzian/PAGE7.HTM
2) Valerius and Rufinus (d. ca. 304, supposedly). According to their perhaps eighth-century legendary Passio (BHL 7373; ninth-century expansion by Paschasius Radbertus: BHL 7374), V. and R. (also Ruffinus) were keepers of a Roman imperial granary on the river Vesle who were pursued and martyred under Diocletian and Maximian by the same official who had previously persecuted St. Quintinus if Vermand (and who is also the villain of other, related Passiones) and whose bodies were later translated to Reims. The ninth-century martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Rabanus Maurus enter V. and R. under today as martyrs of Soissons. Florus of Lyon and Usuard, who give highly abbreviated versions of the Passio, speak of the martyrs as having come from Rome and place their death merely somewhere in the territory of Soissons. The tenth-century Flodoard of Reims relates various of their miracles. Later it was said that V. and R. had been executed at or near Bazoches.
The cult of V. and R. spread widely across today's northern France and southern Belgium. Here's an exterior view of the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Rufin et Saint-Valère at Pierre-Morains (Marne):
http://tinyurl.com/la7bs5
A thumbnail exterior view of the originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century église Saint-Rufin et Saint-Valère at Bézu-le-Guéry (Aisne):
http://tinyurl.com/6cc22z
An interior view of the same church from 1918:
http://tinyurl.com/lblt9n
A somewhat more recent interior view:
http://www.battlegroundpro.com/jpg/clg_now.jpg
3) Fortunatus of Naples (d. ca. 345?). According to the _Chronicon episcoporum sanctae Neapolitanae ecclesiae_, today's less well known saint of the Regno was Naples' ninth bishop, the immediate successor of St. Ephebus/Euphebius (23. May) and the immediate predecessor of St. Maximus (11. June). Readers of the _Chronicon_ will remember that some of its stylish little elogia are tricked out with an initial anaphoric keyword: Paul's (the fifth bishop) is 'mirabilis', Ephebus' is 'pulcher', and F.'s is 'sanctissimus'. We are told nothing about him other than that he lived a very holy life and engaged unceasingly night and day in very holy prayers that he might attain the kingdom of heaven.
F. was buried in a basilica dedicated to him near the catacombs of St. Gaudiosus. This church was ruinous in the early seventeenth century when the ecclesiastical historian Bartolomeo Chioccarelli saw frescoes in it painted in what he called a Greek manner and depicting F. and his successor Maximus in their episcopal vestments. The Marble Calendar of Naples gives today as the date of F.'s laying to rest. In the first half of the ninth century he was translated to the Stefania, an episcopal basilica replaced at the end of the thirteenth century by the present cathedral. The Neapolitan _Ordo ad unguendum infirmum_ used in the tenth and eleventh centuries includes F. in its litany of the city's sainted bishops.
In 1589 the Capuchins of Naples found under their church of Sant'Efremo (now Sant'Efremo Vecchio) what they announced as F.'s remains, along with those of Sts. Ephebus/Euphebius and Maximus; in this they were guided by a now lost inscription (our sources differ as to whether this were on a marble tablet or a lead plaque) proclaiming two of these sets of relics to be those of F. and of M. deposited by a bishop Paul who has not been securely identified. A formal recognition was followed by a reburial under this church's main altar. When F.'s cult was confirmed in 1872 celebrations took place both in the cathedral and in Sant'Efremo Vecchio.
4) Aetherius of Vienne (d. earlier 7th cent.). We know about A. (in French, Ethère) from the ninth-century _Chronicon _ of St. Ado of Vienne. That city's traditional thirty-first bishop, he had previously been a layman; upon his election as bishop his wife became a nun. She seems to have continued to assist him, as when A. translated the body of St. Desiderius of Vienne to the then extramural church of Sts. Peter and Paul, it was she who, during the ceremonies, brought to D.'s tomb a blind man whose immediate cure was the saint's first miracle in his new home.
5) Methodius I, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 847). M. is Sicily's only ecumenical patriarch. He moved early to New Rome, became a monk, and seems to have entered the service of patriarch St. Nicephorus I. Probably at the latter's bidding he was sent to Rome as an envoy in 815, the year in which the iconophile N. was removed from office and replaced as patriarch by the iconoclast Theodotus I. For the next six years M. was in the West, mostly at Rome. Specimens of his scribal activity survive from this period. See Paul Canart, "Le patriarche Methode de Constantinople copiste a Rome," in _Palaeographica, diplomatica et archivistica. Studi in onore di Giulio Battelli_ (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 343-53.
Also during this period M. journeyed to Reichenau, where his name was inscribed in the monastery's _Liber confraternitatum_. The entry can be seen in the digital MGH (<http://www.dmgh.de/>) presentation of Johanne Autenrieth, Dieter Geuenich und Karl Schmid, hrsg., _Das Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau_ (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1979; MGH, Antiquitates, Libri mem. N. S., 1), facsimile p. 4 (the facsimiles are at the end of section V: Nachweis der nicht von den anlegenden Händen geschriebenen Texte). It's in column A, two lines below NOMINA.
In 821 Theodotus died and M. returned to Constantinople only to run into serious difficulties with the emperor Michael II, who had him exiled for seven years to an island where he is said to have been badly treated. M. was recalled by the emperor Theophilus (829-42). In 843 T.'s _de facto_ successor, the regent Theodora, deposed the last iconoclast patriarch, John VII, and elevated M. to the patriarchate in his stead.
There's a brief notice of M. with bibliography in the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database <http://tinyurl.com/nmnhfe> at:
http://tinyurl.com/22usaee0
The Dumbarton Oaks account does not mention M.'s religious verse. For that, see Enrica Follieri, _Initia hymnorum Ecclesiae graecae_ (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1960-66; Studi e testi, 211-215 bis), vol. 5, pt. 2 (index), p. 293.
Nor does the account mention Elpidio Mioni, ed., "L'encomio di S. Agata di Metodio patriarca di Costantinopoli", _Analecta Bollandiana_ 68 (1950), 58-93 [text on pp. 76-93]. There is a Latin version of this encomium in Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, vol. 100, cols. 1271-92. In the last few years Dr. Dirk Krausmüller of Cardiff University has written extensively on M.
It is possible that the M. depicted in the upper of the two roundels shown here from the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) on the triumphal arch of 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/2g2etcp
is today's M. and not his homonym of Olympus (a.k.a. M. of Patara; 20. June). Many, though not all, of these roundels depict bishops of Constantinople, and on this particular side of the arch the roundels immediately above M.'s depict patriarch St. Germanus I, a celebrated opponent of Byzantine first iconoclasm, and patriarch St. Nicephorus I, deposed at the outset of Byzantine second iconoclasm. On the other hand, the roundel opposite M.'s depicts St. Ambrose, like M. of Olympus the author of a major patristic work on virginity.
In this late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century festal icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (celebrating the restoration of the icons under Theodora) now in the British Museum, M. is the patriarch in the upper register:
http://tinyurl.com/38chs6e
Detail (M.):
http://www.saint.gr/photos/standard/0614/AgiosMethodios02.jpg
A page from the British Museum on this icon:
http://tinyurl.com/36v9wjk
6) Anastasius, Felix, and Digna (d. 853). We know about these three martyrs of Córdoba from St. Eulogius of Córdoba's _Memoriale sanctorum_, 3. 8. A. was an elderly monastic priest who early in life had been trained at Córdoba's basilica of St. Acisclus and who in the third year of public opposition by some Christians of greater Córdoba to Muslim rule publicly confessed his faith in a way that caused him to be condemned to death. The monk F., who had been born at Alcalá de Henares, was of Numidian Muslim parentage but had converted to Christianity in Asturias. As a confessed apostate from Islam his life too was forfeit. Both perished early enough on this day for the nun Digna of nearby monastery at Tábanos to learn of their fate and, encouraged by a vision of St. Agatha, to achieve the palm of martyrdom before the day was out.
7) Gottschalk (d. 1066). We know about G. (in Latin, Godescalcus) chiefly from Book III of Adam of Bremen's _Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum_. A son of an Obodrite tribal chief, he had been raised a Christian but upon succeeding to his father's rule he led a force of pagan Wends against Christian Saxons for several years before surrendering to duke Bernhard II of Saxony (whom the June volume of _Butler's Lives of the Saints_ as revised by Kathleen Jones and Paul Burns rather implausibly calls "Bernard II of Savoy"). G. then became an ally of archbishop Adalbert I of Hamburg-Bremen in establishing Christianity among the Slavs of northeastern Germany: the founding of the dioceses of Ratzeburg and Mecklenburg was their work. G. was slain in battle resisting a large-scale Wendish uprising that had broken out shortly after Adalbert's political fall and expulsion from his see in 1066.
G. has yet to grace the pages of the RM. He is commemorated as a saint in the dioceses of Münster and Oldenburg.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Anastasius, Felix, and Digna)
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