medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. September) is the feast day of:
1) Eustachius, Theopista, Theopistus, and Agapius (d. ca. 118, supposedly). Unknown to early martyrologies and with no known really ancient cult, these saints are the the subject of an extraordinarily popular romance-like Passio whose original version was thought by Delehaye to be best represented by BHG 641 (the latter or a text like it was quoted from by St. John Damascene in ca. 730) and that exists in many languages other than Greek. One of those other languages is Latin: a translation into this tongue (BHL 2760), widely available from the early ninth century onward and an ancestor of numerous treatments in several "western" languages, has been assigned conjecturally to the pontificate of St. Gregory II (715-731).
According to this tale, in the reign of Trajan the Roman general Placidas (or Placidus), one of nature's noblemen, was out hunting one day when he saw a stag of surpassing beauty bearing between its horns a luminous cross with the figure of Jesus Christ. This marvelous beast announced its identity to P. as Jesus Christ, asked why it/He was being pursued, and invited P. and P.'s family to accept baptism. Which they did, P. taking the name Eustachius (or Eustathius), his wife Theopista, and his sons Theopistus and Agapius (all significant names but Eustachius does NOT signify 'Good Stag').
Still according to the legend, E. became a new Job, undergoing all sorts of privations, as did also his immediate family. One of these that was important for their construction in the later Middle Ages was that they lost all their slaves and their horses and cattle to a plague; as they themselves survived, they became plague-saints. At the end of all these adventures, during which E. had been separated at different times from T., T., and A., they were reunited to take part in celebrating a military victory that E. had won for Trajan. This of course required ritual sacrifice, E. refused, he and his family were condemned, and all four, after exposure to wild beasts had proved ineffectual, found quick death in a bronze bull made red-hot by a fire beneath it. Their miraculously unburnt bodies were buried by fellow Christians; when Constantine had ended the persecutions an oratory was built over their grave.
The earliest known dedication to E. is that of a diaconal church in Rome first attested from the time of Gregory II (715-731), a predecessor of today's Sant'Eustachio in Campo Marzio (a.k.a. Sant'Eustachio in Platana). The church been rebuilt since the Middle Ages. But its belltower has not:
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/758/274722.JPG
E., T., T., and A. were entered by Usuard under 2. November in the second edition of his martyrology; this quickly became their usual feast day in the Latin West. The feast, which had been moved to today in accordance with the practice of the Greek church, was removed from the general Roman Calendar in the latter's revision of 1969. T., T., and A. were dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001 (in Orthodox churches they are still celebrated today along with E.); E. was retained as the saint of the aforementioned diaconal church. E. is a patron saint of (among others) Madrid, Matera (MT) in Basilicata, Acquaviva delle Fonti (TA) in Apulia, and Campo di Giove (AQ) in Abruzzo.
Herewith a few images of E., T., T., and A.:
a) E. (at right; at left, St. George of Lydda) on the Harbaville Triptych (tenth-century), now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/3m3sj6
b) E., T., T., and A. in the bull as depicted in the so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613; later tenth- or very early eleventh-century):
http://tinyurl.com/2c4rdpb
c) E. and the Stag in a wall painting (twelfth-century?) in the rupestrian cripta di Sant'Eustachio (a.k.a. Santo Stasio alla Gravina) at Matera (MT) in Basilicata:
http://www.ilvicinato.com/data/s%20eustachio.jpg
http://www.lacittadelluomo.it/sez03_05_saneustachio.htm
Another view of this former church:
http://www.ilvicinato.com/data/s%20eustachio%202.jpg
d) Head reliquary of E. (late twelfth-century), formerly in the cathedral treasury at Basel and now in the British Museum, London:
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/basel_cathedral/1.L.htm
http://www.internetindia.com/enduring/me205.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seriykotik/3898876085
e) The St. Eustace window (ca. 1210), cathédrale de Notre-Dame, Chartres (photos by Colum Hourihane):
http://tinyurl.com/54e4yl
The same window (photos by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/2aeeayb
f) The St. Eustace window (ca. 1210-1220), cathédrale Saint-Étienne, Sens:
http://tinyurl.com/389k2mw
g) Illumination of E. and the Stag in a thirteenth-century psalter of English origin (Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, ms. lat. I, 77 [2397], fol. 6v):
http://tinyurl.com/4hhstz
h) E. as depicted ca. 1300 in a fresco attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/museum/gallery/panselinos/54.jpg
i) Illumination of E. and the Stag in an earlier fourteenth-century collection of French-language saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 231v):
http://tinyurl.com/mc667a
j) E. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) frescoes of the nave in church of the Holy Ascension 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/352glx9
http://tinyurl.com/28kb7pf
k) E., T., T., and A. in the bronze bull as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) frescoes of the narthex in church of the Holy Ascension 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/2eqy6cy
l) In these not awfully good views of the later fourteenth-century fresco cycle of scenes from E.'s Passio as depicted (by Vitale da Bologna?) in the apse of the basilica di Santa Maria at the abbey of Pomposa in today's Codigoro (FE) in northeastern Emilia-Romagna one can at least make out the scene of E., T., T., and A. in the bronze bull:
http://tinyurl.com/2vudzhf
m) Panels from the now dismembered late fourteenth-century (ca. 1380) altarpiece of E. reported stolen in 1902 from his church in Campo di Giove (AQ) in Abruzzo and returned from the United States late in 2008 (destined for the Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo, they went first to a Carabinieri office in Rome while the museum, located in L'Aquila, made preparations to mount them -- does anyone know whether they reached L'Aquila before the earthquake of 6. April 2009, in which the museum suffered serious damage?):
Illustrated,English-language accounts (the second is a video, with detail views starting at about 2:11):
http://tinyurl.com/5a8u92
http://tinyurl.com/4gupqc
Illustrated (just not awfully well), Italian-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/3uxbu7
n) E. and the Stag as depicted by Pisanello ("Vision of St. E."; ca. 1440), now in the National Gallery, London:
http://tinyurl.com/4prm5u
o) E. and the Stag as depicted (ca. 1465) by the Master of the Benedict Passion, variously said to be either in the National Museum in Kraków or else in the Holy Cross chapel of that city's cathedral (can anyone on the list say for certain where this painting now resides?):
http://artyzm.com/obraz.php?id=2182
p) Wall painting (ca. 1480) of scenes from E.'s legend, Canterbury cathedral:
http://flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/368385671/
Detail (E. and the Stag):
http://flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/369230784/
q) Illumination of E. and the Stag and E., T., T., and A. receiving baptism (ca. 1480-1490; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 245 [Jean de Vignay's French-language version of the _Legenda aurea_], fol. 152r):
http://tinyurl.com/mlb3pd
r) E. as depicted by Albrecht Dürer on a panel of the Paumgärtner Altarpiece (ca. 1498-1504), now in the Alte Pinakothek, München:
http://tinyurl.com/3kzppm
s) E. and the Stag as depicted by Albrecht Dürer in a print from an engraving (ca. 1501):
http://www.zeno.org/Kunstwerke.images/I/323D034a.jpg
t) E. (center) on the tomb of the Kurfürstin Anna (1512), church of the former monastery of Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach) in Bayern:
http://tinyurl.com/4zl3w3
u) E. as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1545-1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the catholicon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://www.mesageitonias.com/20_sept_eustathius.jpg
Some dedications:
a) Remains of the eleventh-century church of the abbey of Sant'Eustachio alla Posterga in Matera (MT) in Basilicata, underlying that city's present, originally thirteenth-century cathedral of the BVM:
Longitudinal section:
http://tinyurl.com/4tweao
Transverse section:
http://tinyurl.com/4td9ec
Plan:
http://tinyurl.com/4yftgg
Views:
http://tinyurl.com/3my3vl
http://tinyurl.com/3zbcv6
http://tinyurl.com/43bezv
http://tinyurl.com/47h45c
For comparison, the originally eleventh-century chiesa di Ognissanti of Valenzano (BA) in Apulia:
http://tinyurl.com/53w432
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_Ognissanti_(Valenzano)
That church's vaulting:
http://tinyurl.com/43ujfa
Also for comparison (for the shape of domes) the originally eleventh-century former church of Sant'Eustachio ('San Staso') in the rural territory of Giovinazzo (BA) in Apulia:
http://www.mondimedievali.net/pre-testi/images/archit11.jpg
b) The recently restored ruins of the originally later twelfth-century basilica di Sant'Eustachio at Pontone di Scala (SA) on the Amalfi Coast in Campania:
http://tinyurl.com/52f4pu
http://tinyurl.com/44hcyb
http://tinyurl.com/4rctgp
A distance view:
http://tinyurl.com/4gdeoa
c) The ruins of the originally early twelfth-century abbazia di Sant'Eustachio at Nervesa della Battaglia (TV) in the Veneto:
http://tinyurl.com/4np76g
http://tinyurl.com/3oectv
http://tinyurl.com/4r2kws
http://tinyurl.com/497jse
http://tinyurl.com/4nryce
http://tinyurl.com/3q2675
http://tinyurl.com/4mw7ks
d) The originally thirteenth- and fourteenth-century église Saint-Eustache at Mosles (Calvados) in Normandy:
http://www.oti-omaha.fr/IMG/jpg/omahabeacheglisedemosles.jpg
A French-language page on this church (including a plan):
http://paroisse.st.exupere.free.fr/DocMosles/MoslesEglise.htm
e) the église Saint-Eustache in Paris (built, 1532-1637):
http://tinyurl.com/3mg84s
http://tinyurl.com/4w5332
2) Dorymedon (d. 2d or 3d cent.). D. is entered under this day in the later fourth-century Syriac Martyrology as an ancient martyr (i.e. one who suffered prior to the Great Persecution) of Synnada. Apart from that, we know nothing about him. The legendary and synthesizing Passio of Trophimus, Dorymedon, and Sabbatius (at least three versions: BHG 1853-1855) presents him as a secret Christian who during a [supposed] persecution under the emperor Probus visits T. and S. at Synnada in Phrygia (today's Şuhut in Turkey) and who a few days later refuses to sacrifice to the Dioscuri. Arrested, D. is subjected to various tortures, is exposed to beasts together with T., and is decapitated with him once the animals have declined to slaughter the two saints. Thus far the Passio (insofar as D. is concerned).
Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM commemorated T., D., and S. on 19. September (which latter, following the practice of the Greek church in this respect, is where the RM still enters T.).
The martyrdom of D. and T. (at left; at right, S. undergoing torture) as depicted in the so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613; later tenth- or very early eleventh-century):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Menologion_of_Basil_044.jpg
The martyrdom of S., T., and D. (shown with an unnamed female saint) as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) frescoes of the narthex in church of the Holy Ascension 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/38sr3ts
3) Adelpretus (Albert) of Trent (Bl.; d. 1172). A. was bishop of Trent, now the capital of Italy's Trentino-Alto Adige region and from early in the eleventh century until its Napoleonic conquest in 1801 the administrative center of a sizeable imperial territory governed by bishops who in time came to be styled formally as prince-bishops. A., who was zealous in the maintenance of episcopal rights -- and thus income -- within this territory, is said to have used that income generously on behalf of children and of the poor. He was assassinated by a local noble with whom he had been at odds and with whose family the prince-bishops of Trent remained in conflict until 1273.
A.'s veneration as a martyr seems to have begun almost immediately. Though one could not tell this from the website of the Archdiocese of Trent, where a discreet silence masks the never papally canonized A.'s very existence, the main altar of Trent's originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century cathedral was dedicated jointly to the early bishop St. Vigilius (26. June) and to A.
From at least the sixteenth century until the early twentieth, when the archdiocese of Trent dropped him from its calendar, A. was celebrated liturgically on 27. March. That is also where he was in the RM until its revision of 2001, when his commemoration was moved to today to accord with information provided by our one detailed source for this event, the thirteenth-century hagiographer Bartholomew of Trent.
Bartholomew's Passio and Miracula of A. are available in Emore Paoli's modern critical edition: Bartolomeo da Trento, _Liber epilogorum in gesta sanctorum_ (Florence: SISMEL; Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001). The text is at pp. 379-85; there's important contextual matter in the Introduzione at pp. xxvi-vii.
Work on Trent's present cathedral of St. Vigilius began in 1212 and went on for over a century. A plan is here (East at top):
http://www.tamtamtravel.com/opera.php?opera=586
And Italia nell'Arte Medievale's two pages on this pile are here:
http://tinyurl.com/3psesq
http://tinyurl.com/4bd98f
A.'s sarcophagus in the cathedral was once covered with this plaque showing him being run through by a lance wielded by a figure identified by name, in a nimbus-like defined space, as Aldrigitus (i.e. Aldrighetto da Castelbarco, the nobleman said to have committed the murder):
http://www.ora-et-labora.net/image015.jpg
4) Thomas Johnson (Bl.; d. 1537). The priest J. was a choir monk of the London Charterhouse who along with a number of others of his house, professed and lay, refused in May 1537 (when the priory was dissolved) to subscribe the Oath of Supremacy. All were sent to Newgate prison where over the next several months with one exception (Bl. William Horne; d. 1540) they perished of starvation or illness. J., who died on this day, was the last of these.
J. was one of fifty-four English martyrs beatified together in 1886.
The fabric of London's Carthusian priory of the Salutation of the Mother of God, founded in 1371, was greatly transformed following this house's dissolution. The Norfolk Cloister, shown here, was built in the early 1570s. But the rubble wall at left is a survivor from the medieval Charterhouse:
http://tinyurl.com/274zx83
Two views of the one remaining entrance from the cloister to a monk's cell of later fourteenth-century construction (excavation following the fire-bombing of 1941 led to the discovery of the cell's original layout):
http://tinyurl.com/2fpr9sw
http://tinyurl.com/282xwxu
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the additions of Dorymedon and Bl. Thomas Johnson)
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