medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (28. September) is the feast day of:
1) Chariton, abbot in Palestine (d. earlier or mid 4th cent.). The monastic founder C. (also C. the Confessor, C. of Iconium) has a seemingly later sixth-century Bios (BHG 300z) that presents him as a native of Iconium (today's Konya in Turkey) who had suffered for his faith under Aurelian -- A.'s persecution seems to have been at least very largely an imaginary construct of later writers -- and who spent many years in Palestine alternating between being a solitary and being the pioneering head of communities of disciples he had attracted. The latter were the eremitic lavras of Pharan, Douka, and Souka (later known as the Old Lavra). These were located close to towns and are independently attested as having existed in the later the fourth century.
According to this Bios (which was written by a monk of one his foundations who appears to have been influenced by Cyril of Scythopolis' Bioi of later monastic founders), C. is said to have practiced hospitality, to have spent his days in fasting, prayer, and manual labor, to have established a rule for his fellow monks, and to have been very old at his death. C. also has a tenth-century Bios by Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 301).
C. as depicted in the upper portion (above St. Theodosius the Coenobiarch) of an eighth- or ninth-century triptych wing at the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai:
http://tinyurl.com/73b4fx
C. as depicted in the late twelfth-century (1192) frescoes of the church of the Panagia tou Arakou in Lagoudera (Nicosia prefecture), Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/38rgfpo
C. as depicted in the very late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century frescoes in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Novi) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/28x5eg9
C. (at right; at left, St. Gerasimus) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (1317-1318; conservation work in 1968) by the court painters Michael and Eutychius in the church of St. George in Staro Nagorièane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/2c2nwon
Detail (C.):
http://tinyurl.com/29gyto5
C. (at left) as depicted in September calendar portraits in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peĉ 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/33884jk
C. as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the church of the Timios Stavros at Pelendri (Limassol prefecture), Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/248nedm
C. as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the refectory of the monastery of St. John on Patmos:
http://tinyurl.com/2dvj36c
2) Zama (?). According to Bologna's earliest catalogue of its bishops, the _Elenco renano_ (which ends in the eleventh century), Z. was that city's first bishop. Since the fifth bishop, St. Eusebius, was a contemporary of St. Ambrose of Milan, some have dated Z. to the second or third decades of the fourth century. Others push him back to the later third century in accordance with Baronio's assertion that Z. was consecrated by pope St. Dionysius. Z.'s cult, on the other hand, is more recent. Named, but not as a saint, in a later medieval inscription in Bologna's abbazia dei Santi Nabore e Felice, he is first so referred to in the earlier sixteenth century by the Dominican historian Leandro Alberti (_Libro primo della deca prima delle historie di Bologna_, 1541). Since 1586, when they were translated thither from Santi Nabore e Felice, his putative remains have reposed in Bologna's cathedral of San Pietro.
Underneath Bologna's ex-abbey church of Santi Nabore (also Naborre) e Felice is a crypt that in its present form is largely of the eleventh century but that is thought to be paleochristian in origin. It was from there that Z.'s aforementioned putative remains were translated in 1586. Herewith a single view and a page of expandable views of this recently restored cripta di San Zama:
http://tinyurl.com/yelryxw
http://tinyurl.com/ycsj32v
3) Eustochium of Bethlehem (d. 418 or 419). We know about E. chiefly from the correspondence of St. Jerome. A younger daughter of St. Paula of Rome and of her husband, the senator Toxotius, after her father's death in 379 she took part in her widowed mother's newly adopted ascetic lifestyle. A few years later, when both had come under Jerome's influence, E. was in constant attendance at his lectures on Holy Scripture at the house of the matron Marcella. J.'s Letter 22, on virginity, is addressed to her. In 385-86 E. accompanied her mother on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; for much of this tour they were accompanied by Jerome. In 386 the party settled in Bethlehem, where P. founded a monastery for women plus a smaller men's house for J. and where she and E. learned Hebrew and supported J. The latter's translation of Kings is dedicated to both of them; his prefaces to Isaiah and to Ezechiel are addressed to E. alone.
After P.'s death in 404 E. took charge of the women's monastery in Bethlehem and continued to collaborate with J. until her own passing. In one of three letters in which J. recounts his sorrow caused by E.'s death, he calls her a "holy and venerable virgin of Christ" (Letter 151); in another (Letter 154) he again calls her "holy and venerable". E.'s cult is apparently late medieval in origin: she is included in Pietro de Natalibus' _Catalogus sanctorum_ (ca. 1375) and is entered under today in an expanded Usuard written at Haguenau in 1412.
A view of what are shown as the tombs of P. and E. in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem:
http://tinyurl.com/agvblv
An illuminated page of the ninth-century First Bible of Charles the Bald (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1, fol. 3v) showing in the center panel J. instructing E. and P.:
http://tinyurl.com/yaghn2r
The inscription underneath is said to read (abbreviations expanded): _eustochio nec non paulae divina salutis / jura dat altithrono fultus ubique deo_.
4) Leoba (d. 782). The Englishwoman L. (also Lioba) was the leading female figure in the mission to Germany conducted by St. Boniface (to whom she was related through her mother). Her name in Old English was Leofgyth. L. entered the monastery at Wimborne as an oblate and was educated there. It is not certain when she arrived in Germany: some have taken the order of material in her Vita by Rudolf of Fulda (BHL 4845) to imply that this occurred in 748. Boniface founded a monastery for her at today's Tauberbischofsheim (Lkr. Main-Tauber-Kreis) in Baden-Württemberg. There she trained women missionaries (including her relative St. Thecla of Kitzingen and St. Walburga of Heidenheim) and seems to have exercised a supervisory role over all of them as St. Sturm did for the men.
After Boniface's death L. continued to rule her monastery. She was revered by Pepin the Short and by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman. According to Rudolf, whose Vita (written between 822 and 836) draws on the recollections of L.'s associates, she was friendly with Charlemagne's wife Hildegard but hated life at the court. In her old age she withdrew with a few nuns and with her Anglo-Saxon chaplain Torhthat to an estate provided for her at today's Schornsheim (Lkr. Alzey-Worms) in Rheinland-Pfalz. Today is her _dies natalis_. Her body was translated to Fulda for burial, at first in the crypt of the main church but soon at its west porch, where miracles were reported. In 836 or 838 L. was translated by abbot St. Rabanus Maurus to a church on the nearby Ugesberg, now the Petersberg in today's Petersberg (Lkr. Fulda) in Hessen.
The church of St. Peter on the Petersberg (now also known as the Liobakirche) has been rebuilt several times, most notably in and just before 1479, the year in which the present "gothic" nave was completed and the church was reconsecrated. Herewith a few views of differing date:
http://www.wobau-plan.de/innovaeditor/assets/Lioba-kirche.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/yac5jmr
http://www2.erzbistum-freiburg.de/uploads/pics/lioba-02.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/actmephisto/4219661990/
http://tinyurl.com/33ehz82
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/3156495150_5c5cd79c87.jpg
http://www.suehnekreuz.de/hessen/pic/PETERS02.jpg
L.'s remains were translated back to Fulda during the Peasants' War of the 1520 and were partly returned (the head or some part thereof) to St. Peter's on the Petersberg in 1995.
L.'s shrine in the crypt:
http://www.kloster-st-lioba.de/images/bild126.jpg
Carolingian-period frescoes in the crypt:
http://www.prause-restaurierung.de/
Some German-language accounts of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/3h32hv
http://tinyurl.com/ya5shhz
http://tinyurl.com/4l22vd
The Medieval Sourcebook's presentation of C. H. Talbot's English-language translation of Rudolf's Vita is here:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/leoba.html
Rudolf was Rabanus' successor as director of the school at Fulda and a very accomplished writer. For those who wish to sample his Latin here (he's also the author of Rabanus' Vita), his _Vita beatae et venerabilissimae Leobae virginis_ as edited by Georg Waitz is at MGH, SS, vol. 15, pt. 1, pp. 118-131 (text at 127-131).
5) Wenceslas (d. 935). The very pious W. (in Latin: Wenceslaus; in Czech: Václav; in German: Wenzel), who is said to have taken a vow of virginity, succeeded his Christian father Wratislaus (Vratislav) as duke of Bohemia. Generally said to have been a dutiful client of the German king Henry the Fowler, he moved his dominion into the Christian and Germanic orbit of the western empire. This state of affairs did not sit well with W.'s non-Christian mother, who as regent had opposed the expansion of Christianity in Bohemia, and with other members of his family. His brother Boleslaus (Boleslav) had him murdered as he was about to hear Mass at an oratory in today's Stará Boleslav (German: Altbunzlau) in the Czech Republic. W. was buried there but was later moved by B. to a tomb in the predecessor of Prague's present cathedral of St. Vitus.
By the 980s W. was honored as a saint. W. is a Czech national hero and a patron saint of the Czech Republic. His hagiographic dossier is extensive. One of his early Passiones (BHL 8821) was written at the behest of Otto II by bishop Gumpold of Mantua (d. 985). A later one of some literary merit (BHL 8824) was written by Lawrence of Montecassino (Lawrence of Amalfi, d. 1048). Here's a view of the dedication portrait of an early copy of Gumpold's _Passio sancti Vencezlai martyris_ now in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, showing W. receiving a martyr's crown from Christ while Hemma (d. 1006), wife of duke Boleslaus II, prostrates herself at his feet:
http://www.hab.de/ausstellung/ma-erzaehlt/ma01.htm
W. enthroned, as depicted in a late eleventh-century Gospels made, probably at Regensburg, for the Bohemian monarchy (Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, Codex Vyssegradensis):
http://tinyurl.com/3n4ccj
The twelfth-century crypt in W.'s memorial church (bazilika sv. Václava) at Stará Boleslav:
http://tinyurl.com/5x9usy
Views of W.'s chapel in Prague's cathedral of St. Vitus (the decor is originally of the fourteenth century):
http://tinyurl.com/2s4zxd
http://tinyurl.com/2joblk
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2975878940026919454aKtqOi
http://tinyurl.com/2ey397t
http://old.hrad.cz/castle/svvac1v_uk.html
http://tinyurl.com/2b5jsfh
http://www.visitpraha.cz/img/65b.jpg
A panel portrait of W. from a mid-fourteenth-century triptych by Tommaso di Modena in the Chapel of the Holy Cross at Karlıtejn Castle, Karlıtejn, Czech Republic:
http://www.volny.cz/ikonaciko/vaclav.htm
W.'s martyrdom as depicted in the mid-fourteenth-century (ca. 1360) _Liber Viaticus_ of Johann von Neumarkt (Prague, National Museum, ms. XIII A 12, fol. 313r):
http://tinyurl.com/yeel3zp
Some views of the originally mid-fourteenth-century kostel sv. Václava na Zderaze in Prague:
http://tinyurl.com/ybumg4c
http://tinyurl.com/42g8vc
http://tinyurl.com/ydmp49m
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/19598614.jpg
Some views of the mostly fifteenth-century Stadtkirche St. Wenzel in Naumburg (Sachsen-Anhalt), a replacement for a church of the same dedication first documented from 1228:
http://tinyurl.com/4xdqcz
http://tinyurl.com/4n7ykz
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Chariton, abbot in Palestine)
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