medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (5. August) is the feast day of:

1)  The Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore) in Rome (ca. 435).  In 431 the Council of Ephesus in the course of its condemnation of Nestorianism asserted the BVM's role as Theotokos ('Mother of God').  Her newly enunciated position of prominence was underscored shortly thereafter by pope St. Sixtus III (432-40), who built and dedicated to Mary the Roman basilica now known as Santa Maria Maggiore.  Since at least the time of Francesco Maria Fiorentini's _Vetustius occidentalis ecclesiae martyrologium_ (1668), this has been considered the first church in the West to be dedicated to Mary.

The feast is entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology with an entry that reads as follows: _Romae dedicatio basilicae sanctae Mariae_.  Santa Maria Maggiore was either a replacement for or a rebuilding of an earlier basilica erected on the same spot by pope Liberius (352-66).  In later legend it was claimed that Mary had appeared to Liberius and to others in a dream on the night of 4./5. August saying that she would mark out in snow the outline of a space where a church should be built in her honor.  On the following day the outline was discovered on the Esquiline and there Liberius built his basilica, which in this account was then already dedicated to the BVM close to a century before Sixtus' creation of Santa Maria Maggiore.

In accordance with the legend, Santa Maria Maggiore came also to be called Santa Maria ad Nives ('Our Lady of the Snows') and in the general Roman Calendar from 1568 until its revision of 1969 the feast was called this as well.  As -- in Italian, at least -- it still is at the Basilica itself.

Modified several times over the centuries, Rome's Santa Maria Maggiore retains much of its original basilican form and indeed some of its late antique decoration.  Here's the English-language version of the basilica's illustrated website:
http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/sm_maggiore/index_en.html
A page of expandable views is here:
http://tinyurl.com/eu9kk
In this view of the interior, note the columns, capitals, and the mosaic panels above them (these are all early):
http://tinyurl.com/jtdr5
Another view, showing the triumphal arch as well (and a bit of the apse mosaic):
http://tinyurl.com/cw2w8
More views (Paradoxplace; Sacred Destinations):
http://tinyurl.com/5tlduo
http://tinyurl.com/2czr69w
http://tinyurl.com/2dt4udf
Some expandable views of sculpture surviving from Arnolfo di Cambio's late thirteenth-century crèche for the Basilica:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/arnolfo/4/index.html

An illustrated, Italian-language page on the originally later sixth-century battistero di Santa Maria Maggiore at Nocera Superiore (SA) in Campania:
http://tinyurl.com/2c7ysox

Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally eleventh- to late thirteenth(?)-century basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Lomello (PV) in Lombardy:
http://tinyurl.com/22wf5a8
http://tinyurl.com/27bbtwe

The originally eleventh(?)-century basilica (minore) di Santa Maria at Siponto, the predecessor of Manfredonia (FG) in Apulia, is also a Santa Maria Maggiore.  It was extensively re-worked in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, only to be largely abandoned, with the rest of Siponto, in the later thirteenth century.  Herewith an illustrated English-language and some illustrated Italian-language pages on this former cathedral of the see of Siponto (archdiocesan from 1074), itself a predecessor of today's archdiocese of Manfredonia-Vieste-San Giovanni Rotondo:
http://www.itineraweb.com/english/grandtour/5ci6s6.htm
http://tinyurl.com/275plug
http://www.garganonline.net/Siponto/SMaria.htm
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Foggia/Manfredonia.htm
A whole page of expandable views is here:
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/cultura/s_siponto/siponto/index.htm
Three pages of expandable views (black-and-white) from the archeological campaign of 1953, including details not otherwise shown:
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto1/index.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto/index.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto/index_2.htm
An illustrated Italian-language account of the crypt :
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Siponto/Costruzione.htm
A plan of the crypt:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Siponto/Planimetria.htm

Siponto was the principal early and central medieval port serving the Gargano peninsula.  Numerous pilgrims passed through it on their way or from the famous Michaelic sanctuary at Monte Sant'Angelo.  Monte Sant'Angelo too has a Santa Maria Maggiore (originally eleventh-/twelfth-century).  Herewith a page with a few expandable views:
http://tinyurl.com/lmxf2d
and another view of the ornamental portal:
http://tinyurl.com/26wvnwc

An illustrated, Italian-language page on the originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore in Guardiagrele (CH) in Abruzzo:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_di_Guardiagrele
Four pages of views, including a number of this church's ornate, fourteenth-century main portal, begin here (left-click here):
http://tinyurl.com/245uh79
Other views of that portal:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariarita-g/2374566123/
http://en.fotolia.com/id/5351204

An illustrated, Italian-language page on the originally twelfth- to fourteenth-century chiesa si Santa Maria Maggiore in Lanciano (CH) in Abruzzo:
http://tinyurl.com/2c6t5lv

Three illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally twelfth- to sixteenth-century basilica concattedrale di Santa Maria Maggiore in Barletta (BT) in Apulia:
http://tinyurl.com/3a9za5j
http://www.mondimedievali.net/edifici/Puglia/Barletta.htm
http://tinyurl.com/37nw7nb

Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally twelfth-century basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (BG) in Lombardy:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_Maggiore_(Bergamo)
http://tinyurl.com/24ndxkc

An illustrated, Italian-language page on the mostly originally thirteenth-century chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/26prp5g
Two illustrated (one view each), English-language pages on this church:
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/2397c0/
http://www.viswiki.com/en/Santa_Maria_Maggiore,_Florence

An illustrated, Italian-language page on the the originally twelfth-century chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore in Gazzo Veronese (VR) in the Veneto, restructured in the fifteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/28m4fym
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/35rad88
http://tinyurl.com/37svhz2
http://tinyurl.com/34ymh9z
http://tinyurl.com/32alhz3

Two Italian-language pages, with expandable images, on the later fifteenth-century church of Santa Maria della (delle) Neve at Pisogne (BR) in Lombardy, famous for its frescoes (finished in 1534) by Girolamo Romanino:
http://www.luoghimisteriosi.it/lombardia_pisogne.html
http://tinyurl.com/56lw5l
An interior view, showing some of the mise-en-église of the frescoes:
http://tinyurl.com/6cvj4z
There are more views in the album here (starting in the fourth row from the top):
http://tinyurl.com/5po48o


2)  Emigdius (d. 304, supposedly).  E. (also Migdius, Emygdius, Emindius, etc.; in Italian, Emidio) is the reputed evangelist of Ascoli Piceno (AP) in the Marche.  There are two versions of his legendary Passio.  The briefer of these (BHL 2537), called Recensio 2 because it was the later to be discovered, is dated to the eleventh century; the longer one (Recensio 1; already printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_; BHL 2535), is generally dated to the thirteenth or perhaps early fourteenth century.  These make E. a healer who in Rome overturns a cult statue of Asclepius (to use, as do both versions of the Passio, the standard form of this name in medieval Latin) and whose divinely granted healing powers supersede vain belief in the efficacy of this pagan deity.  Consecrated bishop by the pope and sent to Ascoli to spread the faith, E. is in time apprehended there with several companions and suffers martyrdom by decapitation.

In both versions of the Passio E. is a cephalophore.  In the earlier version he walks a fifth of a Roman mile carrying his head in his hooded cloak; in the later version this distance is increased to a third of a Roman mile. 

E.'s cult is attested to from the late ninth century onward in eastern Sabina and in Picene territory.  It is thought to have been diffused by the imperial abbey of Farfa, where the author of Recensio 2 may have resided; the author of the later version, Recensio 1, seems to have been a cleric of Ascoli Piceno.  E. and his companions repose in an ancient sarcophagus in the crypt of his cathedral at that city; the inscription on its cover (_Cum sociis aliis Emindius hic requiescit_) has been dated to the eleventh or twelfth century.

The cathedral of Sant'Emidio at Ascoli Piceno
http://tinyurl.com/2bs5vm7
has been rebuilt so often that there is little medieval left to see in its fabric other than transept and the domed presbytery with its three apses (the latter said to go back to the eighth century).  A nearby inscription dates its two side towers to the twelfth century.  Some sections of the originally eleventh-century crypt still have their original columns and sometimes even their medieval capitals:
http://tinyurl.com/9bczx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gengish/3357058154/
E.'s tomb (a fourth-century sarcophagus) in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/244zzdf
Its setting, though, is not entirely medieval:
http://tinyurl.com/24js876
An illustrated, Italian-language page on Ascoli Piceno's originally twelfth-century baptistery:
http://tinyurl.com/2u8wzgx

The cathedral's cappella del Sacramento houses the altarpiece (1473) by Carlo Crivelli shown and discussed here (E. is at the Virgin's immediate left):
http://tinyurl.com/33o6rdu
http://arengario.net/momenti/momenti51.html
A view of Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation with Sant'Emidio (1486), in the National Gallery, London:
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/c/p-crivell2.htm
A fuzzier reproduction, but perhaps making visible more details, is here (image expandable):
http://www.bramarte.it/400/img/cri1.jpg

Some views of the originally thirteenth-century chiesa di Sant'Emidio in Agnone (IS) in Molise with its fourteenth-century ornamental portal:
http://tinyurl.com/298lpct
http://www.francovalente.it/?p=4573
http://tinyurl.com/2exl8m7
http://tinyurl.com/2fp7g72
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troise/2950566635/in/photostream/
http://tinyurl.com/3858ukw
http://tinyurl.com/2ucuy8n

Best,
John Dillon
(matter from an older post revised)

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