medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. November) is the feast day of:
1) Mitrias (?). We first hear of M. (in Latin also Mytrias; in French, Mitre) from St. Gregory of Tours, who at _In gloria confessorum_, 70 relates how he was regarded by the church of Aix as its miracle-working patron saint. Gregory gives as an example from the time of king Sigibert (d. 575) M.'s treatment of a powerful courtier who had used a court in his power to alienate land belonging to said church and to fine its bishop after he had protested: the malefactor was made to suffer from a wasting disease until at long last he repented and made restitution, whereupon he was deprived of life as punishment for his crime.
Prior to his narration Gregory says that in life M. had been a slave and refers to an account of this Christian athlete's struggles and ultimate victory. The legendary Vita of M. that we have now (BHL 5973) first appears in a later eighth-century collection of saint's lives in which it is part of a small group of early Vitae of saints of Provence. This makes him an emigrant from Thessalonica who worked as an agricultural laborer for a priest of Aix whom M. did his best to dissuade from continuing an unholy life out of wedlock with a female companion. The priest would have none of this and when M. operated a miracle he had the saint tried for sorcery. Convicted, M. was executed by decapitation (said to have been thirty-three, he is also a type of Christ), after which he picked up his head and brought it to Aix's cathedral church. Thus far his Vita.
Prior to 1383 M.'s putative relics reposed in a series of bishop's churches dedicated to the BVM, of which the last was the originally eleventh-century église Notre-Dame de la Seds, shown here:
http://tinyurl.com/ylyjvzp
An illustrated, French-language account of that church:
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35093735.html
In 1383 they were translated to Aix's cathédrale Saint-Sauveur, an originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century building that incorporates an originally late antique baptistery and that has seen many subsequent modifications. Herewith and illustrated English-language overview and some illustrated, French-language accounts of different aspects of the church:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/aix-cathedral
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35444034.html
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35444195.html
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35635273.html
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35633771.html
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-35444115.html
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/ydlhsme
http://tinyurl.com/yacte2g
http://tinyurl.com/ydgtmzh
The cathedral also houses this later fifteenth-century (ca. 1470-1475) panel painting of M. by Nicholas Froment:
http://tinyurl.com/yaf5lgg
http://leparisaquasistain.over-blog.com/article-essai-59495426.html
2) Arcadius, Paschasius, Probus, Eutychianus, and Paulillus (d. 438?). We know about these martyrs of Africa from Prosper's _Chronicle_ and from a letter of the bishop of Cirta to the emperor Arcadius. The first four were military officers of Spanish origin; Paulillus was a young brother of Paschasius and Eutychian. They were all close to the Vandal king Genseric, who in 437 commanded them to become Arian. When they refused he dismissed them, had them exiled, and later had the first four executed and had Paulillus, spared on account of his tender years, condemned to slavery. They entered the historical martyrologies with Florus of Lyon, who placed them under 12. November. Usuard changed their day to today.
3) Brictius of Tours (d. ca. 444). According to Sulpicius Severus (_Dialogi_, 3. 15), B. (also Brictio, Briccius, Brixius, etc.; in French and in English usually Brice) was raised by St. Martin of Tours, whom he succeeded as bishop of that town. Attested since the time of bishop St. Perpetuus (d. 491), B.'s cult is closely connected with that of his mentor. St. Gregory of Tours relates a story (_Historia Francorum_, 2. 1) in which B., after having served as bishop for thirty-three years, was unjustly driven from Tours by a mob that believed, wrongly, that he had impregnated a dedicated virgin; his exile is said to have lasted for seven years.
B. (at right) with M. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (1348) copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 304r):
http://tinyurl.com/yhnr4sg
B. (at left) with M. as depicted in a closely contemporary French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 173r):
http://tinyurl.com/yezr24z
B. bringing coals to the tomb of the deceased Martin as depicted in a panel painting of 1483 now in the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest:
http://www.mng.hu/en/collections/allando/181/oldal:3/962
For an explanation of this scene, see:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden306.htm
B. (at right) and M., flanking St. John the Precursor, as portrayed in a wooden sculpture of the same year now in the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest:
http://www.mng.hu/en/collections/allando/181/oldal:3/961
Illustrated French-language and (far more detailed) German-language pages on, and some other views of, the mostly twelfth-century église Saint-Brice at Saint-Bris-des-Bois (Charente-Maritime):
http://tinyurl.com/2fh3jz3
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St-Bris-des-Bois
http://tinyurl.com/25m3q2h
http://tinyurl.com/24dy3sl
Several expandable views of the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Brice at Saint-Mandé-sur-Brédoire (Charente-Maritime) are here:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Mand%C3%A9-sur-Br%C3%A9doire
Other views (somewhat expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/2davse6
An illustrated, French-language page on the originally twelfth- and thirteenth-century fortified église Saint-Brice at Champougny (Meuse):
http://chateau.over-blog.net/article-36362264.html
A page of expandable views of this church:
http://tinyurl.com/34s3uy8
Two pages of expandable views of the originally twelfth- and early sixteenth-century église Saint-Brice at Autreville (Vosges) begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/2v2sdu3
A French-language account of the originally thirteenth-century église Saint-Brice at Grisy (Calvados):
http://tinyurl.com/3ym9sq
Views (expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/2ujbz9
An illustrated, German-language page on the originally mid-thirteenth-century fortified Sankt-Briccius-Kirche in Huntlosen, an _Ortsteil_ of Großenkneten (Lkr. Oldenburg) in Niedersachsen:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankt-Briccius-Kirche_%28Huntlosen%29
Views of the originally thirteenth-/fourteenth-century église Saint-Brice at Tournai/Doornik:
http://tinyurl.com/3xjgro
http://www.belgiumview.com/belgiumview/tl2/view0000998.php4
NB: The main portal came from an older structure (later eleventh- or early twelfth-century).
An illustrated, German-language page on, and other views of, the originally later fifteenth-century (ca. 1455) Pfarrkirche St. Brictius in Schöppingen (Lkr. Borken) in Nordrhein-Westfalen (the tower is a survivor from a predecessor of ca. 1100):
http://schoeppingen.shop-ftp.de/index.php?id=67
http://tinyurl.com/23rhae4
http://tinyurl.com/26gghvl
http://tinyurl.com/2cmxwre
http://tinyurl.com/2fvpuy5
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/KPY3VLa0m00/0.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2bpdhbu
An illustrated, French-language page on the originally fifteenth-/sixteenth-century église Saint-Brice at Aÿ-Champagne (Marne):
http://montagnevaldor.cef.fr/EglAy.htm
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/3akggo
4) Himerius of the Suze (d. 7th cent.?). H. (in French, Imier and Himier; in German, Immer; in the Latin of the Bollandists, Himerius erem. Susingensis) is a very poorly documented saint of the Bernese Jura. His cult is first attested from 884 when a chapel dedicated to him and said to have been built over his grave already existed at what is now Saint-Imier (canton Bern/Berne). H. has a legendary Vita (BHL 3959; no witness earlier than the fifteenth century) that makes him a native of the Jura who became an hermit, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, returned and established himself in the valley of the Suze (also Suse; in German, Schüss), evangelized in the surrounding territory, and died on 12. November of an unspecified year. Other chapels dedicated to him are recorded from nearby locales.
H.'s cult arose in an area that from the end of the tenth century onward belonged ecclesiastically to the diocese of Lausanne and territorially to the diocese of Basel. He was venerated in both dioceses as well as in those of Geneva, Besançon, and Mainz. The center of his cult remained at Saint-Imier, where in the twelfth century a collegiate church was erected in his honor. Now the town's Reformed church, it was damaged by a fire in 1512 that caused a partial rebuilding, received a belltower in 1840, and underwent restorations in 1927-30 and in 1982.
A French-language history of the building is here:
http://www.eglise-protestante.ch/?site=4&page=14
Single views:
http://flickr.com/photos/myfrenchwindow/2519111570/
http://tinyurl.com/5nvk6u
http://tinyurl.com/66gvss
http://tinyurl.com/6bncq5
http://tinyurl.com/6h8ebr
Thirteenth-century painting of Christ in the apse:
http://tinyurl.com/6sxbt9
Sixteenth-century vault painting of the Four Evangelists:
http://tinyurl.com/6cepn3
http://tinyurl.com/5lxo4t
Detail views of the Evangelists are here (though the manner in which they are identified, particularly Matthew, are perhaps less than satisfactory):
http://tinyurl.com/64vmaa
In time, Saint-Imier seems also to have had a saint Longinus. But one should watch out for hagiographic falsehoods (to say nothing of bad puns).
5) Nicholas I, pope (d. 867). The Roman-born N., a trusted adviser of Benedict III, succeeded to the papacy in 858. His pontificate was marked by a series of actions in which he asserted papal primacy over his metropolitans, including John of Ravenna, Günther of Köln, and Theutgaud of Trier, all of whom he deposed, and Hincmar of Reims, whose own depositions and excommunications of others he reviewed and sometimes overturned. N. was equally successful in enforcing his will against Lothar II of Lotharingia, whose divorce and re-marriage to his mistress he refused to sanction even when under the threat of military invasion. With the Roman emperor in Constantinople, Michael III, he was strikingly unsuccessful, both in his campaign to secure the reinstatement of the patriarch Ignatius and in his attempt to influence the course of the church in Bulgaria.
N.'s letters are in PL 119. Those to the emperor Michael and other important East Romans are literary masterpieces: concise, vigorous, and eloquent. Light years above the chancery standard of his remaining correspondence, they are apparently the product of a writing team whose chief member was the former anti-pope and future papal librarian Anastasius Bibliothecarius.
In 868 N.'s immediate successor, Hadrian II, urged bishops attending a synod at Troyes to include N.'s name in the payers of the Mass. But whatever cult N. enjoyed then did not last. He entered the RM only in 1630.
6) Homobonus of Cremona (d. 1197). H. (in Italian, Omobono) was a merchant tailor of Cremona, married, exceptionally charitable, and extraordinarily upright. His reputation for holiness was such that he was canonized a mere two years after his death. According to André Vauchez, H. was the first lay saint of non-noble birth to be accorded papal canonization. H. is a patron of the cities of Cremona and Modena. Here he is at right, after bishop St. Himerius and the Madonna Incoronata, in the loggia over the porch of Cremona's originally twelfth-/fourteenth-century cathedral:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz/3053429730/sizes/l/
The two flanking statues are attributed to Gano da Siena (Gano di Fazio; d. before 1318).
H. as depicted by the fifteenth-century Bolognese painter Pietro di Giovanni Lianori:
http://digilander.libero.it/gregduomocremona/immagini/omobono_lianori.jpg
H. (at lower right) as depicted in Domenico da Tolmezzo's St. Lucy altarpiece (1500) now in the Galleria d'Arte Antica in Udine:
http://www.wga.hu/art/d/domenico/tolmezzo/stlucy.jpg
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/ykfpanm
H. is also the patron saint of tailors. Here are some exterior views of the now deconsecrated, originally twelfth-century church at Catanzaro (CZ) in Calabria dedicated to H. by the tailors' guild:
http://www.mycatanzaro.it/galleria/moderne/img51.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2n4elp
http://tinyurl.com/ydplyh6
7) Donatus of Montevergine (d. 1219). Today's less well known saint of the Regno was an energetic abbot of Montevergine in today's Mercogliano (AV) in Campania, where he is celebrated in conjunction with a number of the monastery's other abbots. From at least the sixteenth century until 1836 he was venerated as the patron saint of his reputed home town, Acerno (SA), also in Campania. Acerno's originally fifteenth-century cathedral of San Donato was once dedicated to him. Both the dedication and the patronal designation now honor St. Donatus of Arezzo. The cathedral, rebuilt in the later sixteenth century, still shows much of its predecessor's late medieval plan. Plans and views from its latest restoration are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6j32lx
D. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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