medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Quite astonishing that Francis and his major biographer should share a death day. Is this likely a historical date or a pious fiction?
jbw

> -----Original Message-----
> From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dillon
> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2010 1:24 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [M-R] saints of the day 4. October
> 
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> 
> Today (4. October) is the feast day of:
> 
> 1)  Petronius of Bologna (d. ca. 445).  Bologna's principal patron saint, P. is
> thought to have been elected bishop of Bologna in about 432.  That the first
> two surviving writers to mention him (St. Eucherius of Lyon; Gennadius of
> Marseille) were both associated with the monastery of Lérins suggests that he
> may have studied there.  P., whose relics were the subject of an Inventio in
> Bologna's Santo Stefano complex in 1141, has an artistically written and rather
> legendary twelfth-century prosimetric Vita (BHL 6641), a later medieval Office,
> and several also legendary late medieval Italian-language Vite.  His huge,
> originally late fourteenth- to seventeenth-century church in Bologna is not that
> city's cathedral.  An illustrated, Italian-language page on this pile:
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_di_San_Petronio
> The pertinent page at Italia nell'Arte Medievale:
> http://tinyurl.com/48ngmg
> 
> Other views of Bologna's basilica di San Petronio:
> Exterior (some showing the main portal before the huge portrait of P. was
> added to it):
> http://tinyurl.com/y99p76n
> http://tinyurl.com/y8crjyc
> http://tinyurl.com/yc9gmkx
> http://tinyurl.com/ycvbcuf
> http://tinyurl.com/y9c2qp5
> http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2125766100084374364UJEmbN
> http://tinyurl.com/ybfboc6
> 
> Main portal (the Porta Magna):
> http://www.wga.hu/art/q/quercia/bologna/40portal.jpg
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahahaha/3943634227/sizes/l/
> P., at right, in the sculptures of the lunette:
> http://flickr.com/photos/copetan/2247040046/sizes/l/
> Views of the other portals in the unfinished facade:
> http://tinyurl.com/y8qucdm
> http://tinyurl.com/yar9byl
> http://tinyurl.com/ycq73he
> 
> Interior views:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Bologna054.jpg
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmpm/3431884937/sizes/o/
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Bologna055.jpg
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Bologna050.jpg
> http://tinyurl.com/ybpcyff
> http://tinyurl.com/yb5j6y5
> 
> The capella dei Re Magi (a.k.a. capella Bolognini) is now perhaps best known
> for its fresco of the Last Judgment, executed in ca. 1415 by Giovanni da
> Modena (Giovanni di Pietro Faloppi):
> http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
> Detail (Mohammed at right):
> http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-images/LastJudgementMohammed.jpg
> http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/FEATURES/moore/moore10-2-3.asp
> Returning to this view:
> http://tinyurl.com/y8qdgoo
> the frescoes at right belong to a cycle by the same artist depicting scenes from
> P.'s legend.  Here's another view, with the chapel at left:
> http://tinyurl.com/ydogd58
> Access to this chapel is now severely restricted (I believe that the official
> version is "closed for restoration"; the likelihood of damage by a person or
> persons whose passions have been inflamed by the depiction of Mohammed in
> Hell furnishes another possible reason).  Does anyone have better views to
> share of its fresco cycle of P.?
> 
> A donor (Michael de' Marescoti) offering a chapel to P. in an earlier fourteenth-
> century relief now in Bologna's Museo civico medievale:
> http://tinyurl.com/39suf6m
> 
> P.'s fourteenth-century tomb in the chiesa del Santo Sepolcro in Bologna's Santo
> Stefano complex:
> http://tinyurl.com/ybmf7z6
> http://tinyurl.com/yevwsy5
> http://tinyurl.com/yae44uh
> http://tinyurl.com/ycabzj9
> http://tinyurl.com/yajhszj
> http://tinyurl.com/ybjppr4
> The head of the skeleton believed to be that of P. was translated into San
> Petronio in 1390; the remainder stayed in Santo Sepolcro until 2000.  Herewith
> some views of Jacopo del Roseto's reliquary of 1380 for J.'s head:
> http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/19_Bologna2009.jpg
> http://tinyurl.com/2ae3arf
> http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/20_Bologna2009.jpg
> http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/21_Bologna2009.jpg
> http://www.iagi.info/Araldicaforum/22_Bologna2009.jpg
> 
> P. as portrayed by Pierpaolo dalle Masegne in a bust of ca. 1390 forming part of
> a group figuring Justice and Bologna's patron saints created for the niches of
> Bologna's Loggia della Mercanzia and now in that city's Museo civico medievale:
> http://tinyurl.com/39bkjyz
> 
> P. surrounded by scenes from the Passio of St. Stephen in a fifteenth-century
> fresco now in the Martyrium of the Santo Stefano complex in Bologna:
> http://tinyurl.com/yee4bs8
> 
> P. (at left) as depicted by Francesco del Cossa in his Mercanzia Altarpiece
> (1474) now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna :
> http://tinyurl.com/2urodsl
> 
> Michelangelo's statue of P. (1494-95) on the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna's
> basilica di San Domenico:
> http://tinyurl.com/39bzgdb
> http://tinyurl.com/yekqzje
> 
> A useful, fairly recent book on P. and his cult, with scholarly articles and with
> texts of the twelfth-century Vita and his later medieval Office, is Enzo Lodi,
> ed., _San Petronio. Patrono della città e diocesi di Bologna_ (Bologna: Edizioni
> Renografica, 2000; xiii, 298pp.).
> 
> 
> 2)  Quintinus, venerated at Meaux (d. 6th cent.?).  According to his rather late
> Passio (BHL 6998; oldest witness is of the twelfth century), Q. (in French,
> Quentin) was a noble in the service of a count or duke named Guntram.  When
> he repeatedly spurned the adulterous advances of G.'s wife, she had him killed
> in the territory of Tours.  He had a cult medievally at Tours, at Meaux, and at
> Paris.
> 
> 
> 3)  Aurea of Paris (d. 666).  We know about A. (in French, Aure) from Jonas of
> Bobbio's Vita of St. Columban (BHL 1898) and from St. Audoenus' Vita of St.
> Eligius of Noyon (BHL 2474).  In 663 Eligius placed her in charge of a women's
> monastery that he had founded at Paris.  A. is said to have died of a pestilence
> that nearly put paid to her house.  A. is one of Paris' patron saints; several
> commemorative sermons on her survive (BHL 814-816).
> 
> The upper cover of the Évangéliaire dit de sainte Aure, a ninth-century Gospels
> venerated medievally as a relic of A. (Paris, BnF, site Arsenal, Bibliothèque de
> l'Arsenal, Rés. Ms. 1171) :
> http://tinyurl.com/yc3fon2
> The cover itself is later; its ivory plaque has been dated to the tenth century.
> 
> A. as depicted in an early fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris
> (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 362r):
> http://tinyurl.com/yaolees
> 
> 
> 4)  Thomas of Celano (Bl.; d. ca. 1260).  Today's fairly well known holy person
> of the Regno was born around 1190 in the Marsican town for which he is
> named.  A relatively early follower of St. Francis of Assisi, he was
> commissioned by Gregory IX in 1228 to write a life of the saint, which he did;
> in the 1240s he then wrote a second using anecdotes and other material either
> previously omitted or not yet supplied at the time of the first writing.  Known
> for convenience as the _Vita prima_ and the _Vita secunda_ of Francis, these
> were supplanted within his order by St. Bonaventure's _Legenda maior_ (1263)
> but survived a subsequent Franciscan directive that they be destroyed.
> 
> T.'s other uncontested writings include a treatise on the miracles of St. Francis
> and the sequence _Sanctitatis nova signa_.  Controversially attributed to T. is
> the prose _Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis_ (1255-56) written for the
> canonization of St. Clare; possibly her contemporary _Legenda versificata_ is
> by him as well.  It was once customary to assign to T. the famous sequence
> _Dies irae_, but the latter's textual history and relatively early style of
> versification are against this.
> 
> In his last years T. was chaplain to the convent of Poor Clares at today's
> Valdevarri, a locality of Sante Marie (AQ) in Abruzzo.  He was buried there but
> in the sixteenth century his remains were removed to the Franciscan church of
> San Francesco in Tagliacozzo (AQ), where they are today.  Here's an illustrated,
> Italian-language account of this originally thirteenth-century structure (rebuilt
> in the fifteenth century and later modified):
> http://tinyurl.com/24tpjz
> Other views of this church:
> http://www.freevax.it/ITINERARI/Simbruini/DSC02624.JPG
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/56800268/sizes/l/
> http://tinyurl.com/ye9uh9w
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/3024818503/sizes/l/
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowbatt/3939138652/sizes/l/
> http://tinyurl.com/ybnp9vc
> A not very good view of T.'s effigy reliquary is here:
> http://tinyurl.com/y85gago
> 
> 4. October is T.'s day of remembrance among the Franciscans; at Celano he is
> celebrated on the second Sunday of this month.
> 
> 
> 5)  Francis of Assisi (d. 1266).  The doctissimi of this list require no
> introduction to the founder of the Order of Brothers Minor.  Herewith links to
> the Sacred Destinations main page and gallery page on the basilica di San
> Francesco in Assisi:
> http://tinyurl.com/y8jjxfz
> http://tinyurl.com/ya8ox32
> Another illustrated, English-language account of the basilica:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Francesco_d%27Assisi
> 
> Best,
> John Dillon
> (last year's post revised)
> 
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