medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. October) is the feast day of:
1) Longinus the soldier (d. 1st cent.). Today's commemoration in the RM honors the soldier who at John 19:34 pierces the crucified Jesus with a lance and who in the apocryphal _Acta Pilati_ (?fifth-century) and in later texts is called Longinus. He is widely identified with the centurion at the Cross who confesses Jesus' divinity (Mt 27:64, Mk 15:39, Lk 23:47). L.'s rich and varied legendary career includes both his evangelizing in Cappadocia and being martyred at the Caesarea there and his bringing the Holy Blood of Christ to Mantua. He has Passiones in Greek (BHG 988) and in Latin (BHL 4965). L. is entered under 15. March in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology; this is also where he was in the RM until its revision of 2001. In the Greek and other eastern churches his feast day has ordinarily been today, as it is also in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples.
Some portrayals:
a) L. (at right, piercing Jesus) as portrayed on an ivory panel originally from an early fifth-century casket, now in the British Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/29z2bl
b) L. (left of center, piercing Jesus) as depicted in the late sixth-century Rabbula Gospels (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, cod. Plut. I, 56, fol. 13a):
http://tinyurl.com/2w5nojx
c) L. (second from left, piercing Jesus) as portrayed in a mid-eighth-century fresco (betw. 741 and 752) in Rome's chiesa di Santa Maria Antiqua:
http://tinyurl.com/3amwt9w
http://tinyurl.com/ykgylsd
d) L. (at left, piercing Jesus) as depicted in the later ninth-century Gospels "of Francis II" (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 257, fol. 12v):
http://tinyurl.com/2bt9psy
e) L. (at right) as depicted in a Crucifixion scene in the mid-eleventh-century mosaics in the katholikon of the Nea Moni on Chios:
http://tinyurl.com/28d22a4
Detail (L., in a somewhat different state of the mosaic):
http://tinyurl.com/2fq78d2
f) L. (at far right) as depicted in a Crucifixion scene in the eleventh- or early twelfth-century frescoes of the Karanlik Church (Dark Church) at Göreme (Nevºehir province) in Turkey:
http://www.pbase.com/dosseman/image/41566363
g) L. (at far right) as depicted in an earlier twelfth-century (1136) exultet roll from Fondi (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition latine 710):
http://tinyurl.com/25xcnal
h) L. (right rear, behind St. John) as depicted in an earlier thirteenth-century fresco (1209) in the nave of the church of the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Ra¹ka dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/29ntvfs
Detail (L.):
http://tinyurl.com/29hyr5c
i) L. (left of center, with spear) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century fresco (betw. 1263 and 1270) in the nave of the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoæani (Ra¹ka dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/28bs4f5
j) L. (left of center, with spear) as depicted in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 39v):
http://tinyurl.com/3acd8vs
k) L. (at left, piercing Jesus) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century manuscript (mixed content; ca. 1320-1330) of north Italian origin (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 187, fol. 62v):
http://tinyurl.com/ykc9qr9
l) L.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's lives (BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 88v):
http://tinyurl.com/yf9mtj9
m) L. (at far right) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the Crucifixion scene in the dome of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2ex2fbt
Detail views (L.):
http://tinyurl.com/234n65u
http://tinyurl.com/2bc4t87
n) L. (at left, piercing Jesus) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/3akzgy5
o) L.'s martyrdom as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/ykwhejy
p) L. (second from left, piercing Jesus) as depicted by Beato Angelico in an earlier fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1437-1446) in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/6oddl8
q) L. (at left, above the BVM and St. John) as depicted in the later fifteenth-century (ca. 1465-ca. 1480) east window of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, East Harling (Norfolk; photograph by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2481549152/
An English-language account of this window, with expandable views of all the panels, is accessible from here:
http://www.norfolkstainedglass.co.uk/east_harling/home.shtm
r) L. as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1545-1546) by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (a.k.a. Theophanes the Cretan) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/23ozwn3
A dedication:
The originally twelfth-century rotunda sv. Longina in Prague/Praha. Initially dedicated to St. Stephen and the parish church of a village later incorporated into the city (it's in the New Town added in 1348), it was re-consecrated to L. in the fourteenth century once today's kostel sv. ©tìpána had been built nearby:
http://tinyurl.com/2ekjj7o
http://tinyurl.com/28bu63d
http://tinyurl.com/28kkdes
http://tinyurl.com/25ayadw
http://www.hrady.cz/wnd_show_pic.php?picnum=4156
Some Holy Lances:
a) In Etchmiadzin:
http://tinyurl.com/256hgbg
http://s3.hubimg.com/u/753634_f520.jpg
b) In Vienna:
http://tinyurl.com/2av6m2w
http://tinyurl.com/27k7kuj
http://tinyurl.com/2e3owka
A contemporary L.:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/castrovalva/3255984014/
2) Gall (d. ca. 645). G. (in Latin, Gallus) is the saint of the Benedictine monastery in Switzerland that bears his name (Sankt Gallen) and that according to its tradition was founded early in the eighth century at the very spot where he had lived as an hermit. He has three early Vitae, all of which share a common narrative thread: the fragmentarily preserved Vita vetustissima (BHL 3245), written ca. 770; a much more completely preserved Vita by Wetti(nus), a monk of Reichenau (BHL 3246), composed between 816 and 824; and an expanded reworking of the latter by the literarily talented Walafrid Strabo, also a monk of Reichenau (BHL 3247-3249), written in 833/34.
According to these accounts, G., an Irishman and an ordained priest, was St. Columban's disciple and accompanied him on his mission to the Continent. When C. was driven out of both Luxeuil and the Burgundian kingdom G. traveled with him to the shores of the Bodensee (a.k.a. Lake Constance) and, operating from Arbon in today's Switzerland and from Bregenz in today's Austria, assisted in evangelizing among the Alemanni. When C. left to settle at Bobbio G., being badly ill, stayed behind. Seeking greater solitude, G. retired to a cell he had built for himself on the Steinach south of the Bodensee but later resumed his missionary activity in collaboration with a priest at Arbon. Miracles attested to his sanctity. G. died at Arbon, where the bishop of Konstanz officiated at his funeral service. Seeming to act on their own, the horses carrying his bier brought him to his cell, where he was interred. Further miracles confirmed G.'s immediate cult. Thus far the Vitae.
Herewith the title page and the opening text page of Walafrid Strabo's _Vita sancti Galli_ in its oldest witness, a manuscript of the last decade of the ninth century (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 563, pp. 2, 3):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0562/2/small
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0562/3/medium
The same in a later eleventh-century (1072-1076) manuscript also at Sankt Gallen (Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 560, pp. 24, 25):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0560/24/small
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0560/25/medium
3) Lullus (d. 786). The Anglo-Saxon L., also known by the English-language forms of his name 'Lul' and 'Lull', was a friend and missionary collaborator of St. Boniface, whom he succeeded as bishop of Mainz and whose accomplishments he subsequently did much to preserve. Hence he is often referred to Lullus of Mainz. His formation as a monk of Malmesbury, together with William of Malmesbury's early twelfth-century interest in his abbey's connection with the Bonifatian project, have also led to his being called Lullus of Malmesbury. It seems a particularly German thing to call him Lullus of Hersfeld, though hardly an inappropriate one considering that he founded this once important abbey and that he remained its abbot throughout his episcopate (later, archiepiscopate) at Mainz.
L. was buried in the abbey church and it was there that his canonization occurred in 852 when his remains were moved to the abbey's then new basilica. The abbey's town, today's Bad Hersfeld in northeastern Hessen near the latter's border with Thüringen, celebrates him as its founder and patron saint. Its Lullusfest, which takes its origin in the events of 852, proclaims itself Germany's oldest civic celebration.
For a relatively recent account of L., of his role in promoting the memory of St. Boniface, and of his own later memory, see James Palmer, "The 'vigorous rule' of Bishop Lull: between Bonifatian mission and Carolingian church control", _Early Medieval Europe_ 13 (2005), 249-27. The text of the same scholar's sympathetic evocation of L. in a recent BBC "Legacies" programme is available here:
http://tinyurl.com/ylhjx6
The twelfth-century abbey church at Hersfeld (which latter officially became Bad Hersfeld only in 1949) survived the dissolution of the monastery but not the Seven Years War, when (in 1751) the French first used it as a powder magazine and then set it afire. A plan of the structure:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dehio_I_42_Hersfeld.jpg
Views of the ruin:
http://tinyurl.com/ych8qx
http://www.konradlipphardt.homepage.t-online.de/hefruine.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ybdq67
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stiftsruine_Hersfeld.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yed8tv
On the grounds of the former abbey is a belltower known as the Katherinenturm. This houses the Lullusglocke, said to have been cast in 1038 and to be Germany's oldest dated church bell. Various views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/t9qez
http://tinyurl.com/y42889
http://www.konradlipphardt.homepage.t-online.de/hefkatha.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lullusglocke.jpg
4) Bertrand of Comminges (d. 1123). According to his Vita (BHL 1304), written in about 1168 for a younger relative who was archbishop of Auch, the Gascon nobleman B. was educated militarily but avoided the sins into which a military life is likely to lead and instead emulated the virtues of the soldier-saint Martin of Tours before/in becoming in the early 1070s a cathedral canon and archdeacon of Toulouse (the latter post, at least, suggests some prior religious training not mentioned in the Vita). In about 1079 B. was advanced to the see of the then semi-abandoned Comminges, today's Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute-Garonne). He built a cathedral that was visited by pilgrims on their way to Compostela, established a chapter of canons regular, acted as a reform bishop for over forty years, and (so the Vita, roughly two-thirds of which is devoted to B.'s miracles) was humble, chaste, and generous and died an obvious saint.
Honorius III instituted a canonization inquest on B.'s behalf in 1220 and from 1222 Comminges was being called Saint-Bertrand. In 1309 B.'s namesake and former episcopal successor Bertrand de Goth, now pope Clement V, accorded him an Elevatio in the cathedral, where B.'s relics are said to remain.
Two illustrated, French-language pages on the cathedral of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges:
http://tinyurl.com/6fdpwq
http://architecture.relig.free.fr/comminges.htm
Both of those have expandable views of B.'s sculptural representation on the tympanum of the cathedral's main entrance. Other representations of B. are shown here:
http://www.cathedrale-saint-bertrand.org/saint-bertrand.html
5) Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243). H. (in Polish, Jadwiga ¦l±ska) was a daughter of a count of Andechs in Bavaria and for that reason is sometimes called H. of Andechs. After having been educated in a convent she was married at age twelve to duke Henry I of Silesia (Henry the Bearded). She encouraged German-speaking settlement in Silesia and the furtherance there of a German-speaking church. In 1202 Henry founded at H.'s request the Cistercian abbey of the BVM and St. Bartholomew at Trebnitz (in Polish, Trzebnica) in Lower Silesia. After Henry's death in 1238 H. moved to the convent, where she buried Henry, where a daughter was abbess, and where she spent the last few years of her life. In her Vitae (maior: BHL 3766; minor: BHL 3767) she is said to have been very pious, to have lived simply and increasingly ascetically, and to have donated her wealth to the church and to the poor.
H.'s charter of 1242 (now in the Warsaw City Archives) making over her possessions to the abbey at Trebnitz/Trzebnica:
http://tinyurl.com/yfgp8of
H. was laid to rest in the abbey church. She was canonized in 1267. She is Silesia's patron saint and one of the patron saints of Poland.
The abbey church, since greatly rebuilt, was originally constructed between 1202 and 1240. Surviving from its early state is the north portal of the west facade with this tympanum whose sculptures are of David playing to Bathsheba with a servant behind her:
http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje38/h_trzebnica.jpg
http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje38/harp02.jpg
H.'s chapel and effigy tomb in this church are rather later. Some views:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeart/1128532613/
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/12541472.jpg
http://www.przewodnik.org.pl/trzebnica_2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yhv5pcd
http://tinyurl.com/yjqz4pb
http://tinyurl.com/yfy9p3z
The abbey's reliquary of H., originally from 1533 (the crown is eighteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/yzhea39
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeart/2885181469/
H. as depicted in the Schlackwenwerther Codex / Codex Ostrovsky (so called from its having once belonged to the Piarist monastery in Schlackenwerth/Ostrov in today's Czech Republic) commissioned by duke Ludwig I of Liegnitz and Brieg (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. LUDWIG XI 7), a manuscript from 1353 devoted to H. and containing her Vita maior:
http://tinyurl.com/yj26xqz
H.'s marriage to Henry, as depicted in the same codex:
http://tinyurl.com/yfgston
There's a clearer view (also enlargeable) of the wedding scene here:
http://www.zgapa.pl/zgapedia/Jadwiga_%C5%9Al%C4%85ska.html
H. as portrayed in an earlier fifteenth-century statue (ca. 1420) in the church of Niedernburg Abbey in Passau-Niedernburg:
http://tinyurl.com/yhqv5tr
Two altar panels from ca. 1430, now in the National Museum in Warsaw, with scenes of H.'s life:
http://webart.omikron.com.pl/paint/glosary/gotyk/gotyk5.jpg
http://webart.omikron.com.pl/paint/glosary/gotyk/gotyk6.jpg
Detail from one of those panels:
http://tinyurl.com/yfqvm63
Another Hedwig:
http://tinyurl.com/ygu6ks3
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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