medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (2. October) is the feast day of:
1) Eleutherius of Nicomedia (?). The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology records under today an E. who suffered at Nicomedia and whose _gesta_, it says, are known. But no authentic _gesta_ of this E. are known now and possibly none were known to St. Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, as his entry for E. under this day reads simply: _In Nicomedia, sancti Eleutherii_.
The also ninth-century St. Ado of Vienne has in his martyrology a circumstantial elogium of E. (greatly abbreviated by Usuard) that makes him the leading victim of a number of Christians falsely blamed for a fire in Diocletian's palace at Nicomedia, has him survive various tortures before being put to death by fire, and ends with Christians stealthily removing his remains and giving them honorable burial in Nicomedia. This very succinct Passio, sometimes thought to be of Ado's invention, could be based on a longer one now lost. But as it is a close verbal adaptation of the identically caused suffering of bishop St. Anthimus of Nicomedia and companions as recounted in Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 8. 6; available to Ado in Rufinus' Latin translation), the likelihood that its details accurately reflect E.'s fate is remote. Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM used for this commemoration an elogium based on Ado's and honored E. and companions.
2) Modestus, (once) venerated at Benevento (d. ca. 304, supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno has a brief but fulsome Passio (BHL 5983d) by the eleventh-century rhetorician Alberic of Montecassino that makes him a deacon of Sardinian birth and noble parentage and ancestry, possessed of many virtues, and martyred (somewhere) under Diocletian. It is apparent that Alberic knew either nothing or next to nothing about M. Assuming for the nonce that tradition rather than Alberic made our saint a deacon, a Sard, and a martyr, we have no means of ascertaining that tradition's age or accuracy.
M.'s Passio was written for the Beneventan monastery of San Modesto, founded under Arichis II between 758 and 774. Early modern ecclesiastical historians purveyed a legendary translation account whereby the future pope St. Gregory I persuaded Pelagius II to send M.'s remains to a Beneventan monastery of Santa Maria ad Olivolam where subsequently an altar was erected to him; for the sources of this one, see Franco Bartoloni, ed., _Le piů antiche carte dell'abbazia di S. Modesto in Benevento (secoli VIII - XIII)_ (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1950; Regesta Chartarum Italiae, v. 33), pp. vii-xii. The monastery of San Modesto lasted in practice until 1820 (in 1926 the title of abbot was granted to the pastor of the successor parish of the same name). Its church was destroyed in the USAmerican aerial bombardment of Benevento in 1943.
After the war, a new church of San Modesto was erected south of the old city. At some point, it was decided that the M. of this parish was the saint of this name from the legends of St. Vitus (15. June). When that M.'s cult was suppressed in 1969, the church retained its historic name. The archdiocese of Benevento does not include M. among its numerous saints profiled on its website:
http://tinyurl.com/mpavn
(where such worthies as St. Arthellais and St. Cassian of Benevento are also among the missing).
But the monastery had many holdings and was otherwise influential over a broad area. Consequently, M.'s cult was disseminated fairly widely. In some of these places (e.g. Morrone del Sannio [CB] in Molise, where he is the principal patron saint), M. is still commemorated today. The church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Mirabella Eclano (AV) in Campania is said to hold a relic of him. In 1480, remains said to be those of M. were discovered at the abbey of Montevergine (near Mercogliano [AV]) along with those of Januarius and other Beneventan saints. Whereas Januarius was subsequently translated back to Naples (where his presumed remains had lain prior to his early ninth-century "repatriation" by prince Sico of Benevento), Montevergine managed to hold onto M., who has an altar and a display reliquary in the crypt of that abbey's "new" basilica (opened to the public in 1961).
Alberic's _Passio sancti Modesti levitae et martyris_ is at _Analecta Bollandiana_ 51 (1933), 369-74.
In the absence of any decent visuals for M., herewith some views, etc. of the restored thirteenth- or fourteenth-century church of the former monastery of Santa Maria di Casalpiano situated on a ridge outside of the aforementioned Morrone del Sannio in Molise:
Front:
http://tinyurl.com/2w8etc
http://tinyurl.com/2ran9q
Rear:
http://tinyurl.com/2waoja
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/4yv3lt
Plan of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/2vaubd
Plans of the monastery:
http://tinyurl.com/2r4amx
Next to this church is the apse of what seems to have been an eleventh-century structure identified by some as one or the other of the two churches documented as having existed in this locale in 1017:
http://tinyurl.com/3peena
3) Leodegarius of Autun (d. ca. 678). According to his two early Vitae (BHL 4849b-4850; 4851-4852b), both of which are thought to derive from a common source, L. (in English also Leodegar, Ledger, Leger; in French usually Léger) came from the great nobility of Alsace and was educated in the palace school of Chlotar II (584-629). At the age of twenty he was archdeacon in the diocese of Poitiers, where an uncle was bishop. After his ordination to the priesthood he was abbot of the monastery of St. Maxentius in today's Compičgne, where he introduced the Benedictine Rule. The regent St. Bathild made him bishop of Autun in about 663. Still according to these Vitae, L. was banished to Luxeuil by Childeric II, was restored under Theuderic III, and was imprisoned, tortured, and killed on the orders of his enemy, Ebroin, master of the palace. He was remembered as a martyr and as a great supporter of the monasteries in his diocese.
After a contest for his body among the dioceses of Arras (in whose territory he had been executed), Autun, and Poitiers, L. was buried at St. Maxentius, where in about 682 a church was erected in his honor. His cult spread rapidly in the aforementioned dioceses, in Franche-Comté (because of his association with Luxeuil), and in his native Alsace, whence it spread into other parts of France and into Germany and Switzerland as well. The Sacramentary of Autun (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Hs. Phillipps 1 05; ca. 800) has a Mass for him. L. entered the historical martyrologies with Florus of Lyon, who recorded him under today.
Some portrayals:
a) An expandable view of L.'s martyrdom as depicted as in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 138r):
http://tinyurl.com/2cq7f5u
b) L. before Childeric II as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348) of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 267v):
http://tinyurl.com/yazqlvl
c) Expandable views of two fifteenth-century manuscript illuminations portraying L. are here:
http://tinyurl.com/3wxdbu
d) The fifteenth-century wooden statue of L. in the église Saint-Léger at Cheylade (Cantal) in Auvergne:
http://tinyurl.com/29elfaq
The second fragmentary inscription from right at the bottom of this stained glass panel in the originally later fifteenth-century Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, Tattershall (Lincs) refers to L. (photography by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/3abadd5
Some dedications:
a) A view of the originally eleventh- to fourteenth-century église Saint-Léger at Cheylade (Cantal) in Auvergne:
http://tinyurl.com/3vbfq3
b) Expandable views of the originally twelfth-century église abbatiale Saint-Léger at Murbach (Haut-Rhin) in Alsace:
http://tinyurl.com/3k38da
c) Views of the originally later twelfth-century église Saint-Léger at Champagné le Sec (Vienne) in Poitou-Charentes:
http://tinyurl.com/27u6xvl
http://tinyurl.com/2dym3vp
d) A view of the originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century église Saint-Léger at Mouy (Oise) in Picardy:
http://tinyurl.com/y9gbbfy
e) A view of the the originally late twelfth- to fourteenth-century église Saint-Léger at Guebwiller (Haut-Rhin) in Alsace:
http://tinyurl.com/542o6g
f) Two views of the originally twelfth- to fourteenth-century église collégiale Saint-Léger at Marsal (Moselle) in Lorraine:
http://tinyurl.com/4lf728
http://tinyurl.com/4a66bk
Many more views of that church start about a third of the way down this page:
http://tinyurl.com/ycqe6od
g) Views of the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Léger at Monthermé (Ardennes) in Champagne-Ardenne, greatly rebuilt after a fire in 1445:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nono08800/4093481704/
http://tinyurl.com/4zbsfd
http://www.stleger.info/annonces/montherme.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2dwaap5
h) Views of the originally fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Leodegarius at Ashby St Ledgers (Northants):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyannethorpe/4777178568/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/overton_cat/3032905682/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyannethorpe/4777190106/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyannethorpe/4776561373/
An English-language account:
http://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=4537
Many more views are on this page and the next:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennyannethorpe/page16/
More views (better for the paintings) are on this page and the next:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/overton_cat/page142/
i) Views of the originally earlier fifteenth-century St Leodegar's Church in Wyberton (Lincs), a rebuilding of a twelfth-century predecessor:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/102124
http://tinyurl.com/27a5k7e
An English-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/22wjksq
j) An illustrated, German-language page on the originally earlier fifteenth-century St.-Leodegar-Kirche in Schönecken (Lkr. Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm) in Rheinland-Pfalz:
http://www.schoenecken-eifel.de/KIRCHE.HTM
k) Views of the earlier sixteenth-century église Saint-Léger at Saint-Léger-en-Bray (Oise) in Picardy are here:
http://www.stlegerjuniors.fr/visite.php
http://www.stleger.info/les72StLeger/region3/60b.htm
4) Theophilus the Confessor (d. betw. 727 and 741, supposedly). We know about T., a victim of Byzantine First Iconoclasm, from Greek synaxary notices that seem to derive from a now lost Passio of at least largely legendary character. According to these texts, T. was born in the vicinity of Tiberioupolis (now Strumica in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but from the central Middle Ages until 1919 part of Bulgaria, whence T. is also still referred to by some as Theophilus of Bulgaria). At the age of thirteen, following a miraculous call, he slipped away from home and entered a monastery on Mt. Selenteia; three years later he made his profession there.
In time T.'s parents discovered his whereabouts and asked that he be sent with some other monks to live near them in a monastery they would found. A voice was heard in the monastery church giving approval for this move and since the message was clearly of divine origin, T. received his new foundation. He was hegumen there during the iconoclastic persecution of Leo the Isaurian (Leo III, r. 717-741), rebelled against the latter's decrees (promulgated in 726-729), and was beaten, publicly humiliated, and exiled under the supervision of a high official named Hypatius. T. convinced H. of the rightness of his iconophile position and H. obtained the emperor's permission for T. to return to his monastery. T. died there not long afterward.
Thus far the synaxary notices. T.'s story smacks of anti-iconoclast propaganda and even the names Theophilus and Hypatius, though common enough in Byzantine nomenclature, are suspiciously reflective of their bearers' roles here.
5) Ursicinus of Chur (d. ca. 760). The Benedictine churchman U. is said to have entered the monastery of Disentis in today's Disentis/Mustér (Graubünden/Grisons) in 721 and to have become its abbot in 730. With the assistance of successive bishops of Chur he rebuilt the monastery (work completed in 739) and saw to the erection of its churches of the BVM, of St. Martin, and of St. Peter. In 754 U. was elected bishop of Chur (as bishop, he is Ursicinus II). He resigned that office in 758 and retired to Disentis, where he is thought to have died within a very few years. U., characterized as a bishop, is entered in the _Liber confraternitatum_ of Reichenau. After his death both that abbey and Disentis commemorated him as one of their saints.
Herewith an illustrated, German-language page on the remains of early medieval buildings at Disentis (including some stucco from U.'s time or slightly later):
http://tinyurl.com/22p44n5
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the additions of Theophilus the Confessor and Ursicinus of Chur)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|
