medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. November) is the feast day of:
1) The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary / Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple / Mariä Tempelgang / etc. This feast, celebrating an event not mentioned in the Bible but present in the infancy gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, is commonly held to have developed from a commemoration of the dedication, in 543, of Justinian's New Church of the Theotokos in Jerusalem. In the early (pre-Byzantine) liturgical calendar from Palestine preserved in a Georgian-language version in the tenth-century _Codex sinaiticus_ 34 that feast is entered under 20. November. As a feast specifically of the Presentation of the BVM it is thought to be Syrian in origin. In Greek churches it is first recorded in late tenth- or very early eleventh-century witnesses of the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople.
By the later twelfth century this feast was important enough in Constantinople that the law courts did not sit during it. It spread to the Latin West in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. After some vicissitudes earlier in the sixteenth century it was definitively included in the Roman Calendar by Sixtus V in 1585.
Some depictions:
a) Mosaic, katholikon of the monastery of the BVM at Daphni in Attika (late eleventh-century):
http://tinyurl.com/yeku4zl
b) Manuscript illumination in an earlier twelfth-century copy of Jacob of Coccinobaphi, _Orationes encomiasticae in SS. Virginem Deiparam_(Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1208, fol. 87v), upper register:
http://tinyurl.com/ygyxgfr
Illuminations of other scenes from this episode in the Virgin's legendary childhood are at fols. 86r, 91r, 92v, 100bisv, and 103v.
c) Giotto, fresco in the Arena Chapel (Cappella dei Scrovegni), Padua (1303-1305):
http://tinyurl.com/6ccv6o
d) Fresco (ca. 1312-1321) in the sanctuary of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/yam5dg9
e) Fresco (ca. 1313-1320) in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/yezz9d3
Detail (the Theotokos before Zechariah):
http://tinyurl.com/y88ar7f
f) Mosaic, Chora Church, Istanbul (betw. 1315 and 1321), vault in the exonarthex:
http://tinyurl.com/yebthnd
http://tinyurl.com/277gukb
g) Icon (fourteenth-century) formerly in the church of the Peribleptos at Ohrid, now in the Icon Gallery in the same complex:
http://www.soros.org.mk/konkurs/019/eng/i38.htm
h) Icon (Novgorod School; fourteenth-century), now in The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg:
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=en&type=1&id=587
i) Guariento di Arpo, Coronation of the Virgin Altarpiece (1344), now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA:
http://tinyurl.com/6blapz
j) Manuscript illumination in a later fourteenth-century _Speculum humanae salvationis_ produced at Bologna (Paris, BnF, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. Arsenal 593 [fols. 1-42], fol. 7r), at left:
http://tinyurl.com/y8uz8sf
k) Andrea di Bartolo, panel painting (ca. 1400), now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC:
http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/photo_ME0000093565.html
l) Manuscript illumination, Breviary of Martin of Aragon (Paris, BnF, ms. Roth 2529; early fifteenth-century), fol. 312r:
http://tinyurl.com/266zqle
http://tinyurl.com/27jylpz
m) Manuscript illumination, Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms. 65; early fifteenth-century), fol. 137r:
http://tinyurl.com/6oa5gu
n) Icon tablet (betw. 1426 and 1450), now in the Sergiyev Posad State History and Art Museum, Sergiyev Posad (Moscow oblast):
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=en&type=1&id=3325
o) Manuscript illumination in a fifteenth-century _Speculum humanae salvationis_ produced at Basel (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 512, fol. 6v), at left:
http://tinyurl.com/yhf9kew
p) Martin de Soria, panel painting (ca. 1475), now in The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB (acc. no. 1996.05):
http://tinyurl.com/2ess5yf
Four churches:
a) Athens' originally eleventh- to thirteenth-century Kapnikarea Church, situated in the Plaka district, is dedicated to the Presentation of the Mother of God. Some illustrated, English-language accounts of this structure:
http://www.greece-athens.com/page.php?page_id=277
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo752024.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2gyj7d3
http://tars.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Greek/kapnikar.html
Other exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/ybjs6vc
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/82/218500828_fc9c5abab6_o.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yemy9gd
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7438010.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yfby349
Other interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/ychdqfo
http://tinyurl.com/2du7syc
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/ciudades/obras/27558.htm
http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/34910/gazi-075.jpg
b) The originally late twelfth- and earlier thirteenth-century church of the Theotokos at the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia is, like the monastery itself, actually dedicated to her Presentation. A page of exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/y96l4nc
c) An English-language account and a page of exterior views of the originally earlier fourteenth-century church of the Presentation of the Virgin in in Lipljan (Priština dist.) in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://www.srpskoblago.org/Archives/Lipljan/
http://tinyurl.com/y9dpvo5
d) The originally later fourteenth-century church of the Presentation of the Theotokos at the Nova Pavlica monastery in Pavlica (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia:
Illustrated, English-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/25qqham
Illustrated, Serbian-language account (with many views):
http://www.vojvodinacafe.com/forum/465492-poruka92.html
Exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/27xronp
http://tinyurl.com/2fes692
http://tinyurl.com/26mo6hv
http://tinyurl.com/2839rn4
http://tinyurl.com/2c5t2h9
http://tinyurl.com/2fv2fgr
Interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/28pk4c5
http://pixdaus.com/pics/1232369781fmYPASa.jpg
Views of the frescoes:
http://picasaweb.google.com/svilajnac001/NovaPavlica#
2) Rufus, disciple of the Apostles (d. 1st cent.). This is the R. living at Rome to whom, as well as to to R.'s mother, St. Paul sends greetings at Romans 16:13. He could be the R. named at Mark 15:21 as a son of Simon of Cyrene.
3) Maurus of Parentium (d. probably late 3d or very early 4th cent.). Though we know virtually nothing about him, M. (also Mavro of Poreč) is Istria's first historically attested bishop. He is the local saint of Poreč in Croatia, where he is depicted, third from left, with a martyr's crown, in the apse mosaic of the mid-sixth-century Basilica Euphrasiana:
http://www.omniplan.hu/2000-Croatia/11-Opatija-Porec-Pula/388-Porec.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ybc5djf
http://www.porec-appartements.de/images/basilika2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yzoevvl
http://tinyurl.com/26h7mzl
Cate Gunn's views on Medrelart of this basilica are here:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/2067
In the seventh century pope John IV, who was of Dalmatian origin, removed M.'s relics to Rome along with those of other Istrian and Dalmatian saints. M. is said to be among the saints depicted in the Lateran Baptistery's Chapel of St. Venantius, though he is not one of the figures of its apse mosaic
http://www.gliscritti.it/arte_fede/giovbatt/imgs/img02.jpg
as these are interpreted here:
http://www.santamelania.it/arte_fede/giovbatt/giovbatt.htm
Back in coastal Croatia, two views of what's left of a church dedicated to a St. M. at Vrbnik on the relatively nearby island of Krk:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/16239922.jpg
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EetSZJizL7UJCtvwMsEhzw
Some views of the rebuilt amphitheater at Caesarea:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11721350@N00/366669375/
http://flickr.com/photos/83031170@N00/2314717657/
http://comps.fotosearch.com/bigcomps/SIX/SIX138/071MI1.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/5hrfqy
http://image06.webshots.com/6/4/4/72/105340472YpgEJt_fs.jpg
5) Gelasius I, pope (d. 496). A native Roman of recent North African ancestry, G. had been a close associate of pope St. Felix III (II), for whom he wrote official documents, before succeeding to the papacy in 492. G. continued his predecessor's policy of opposing the Christology of the patriarchs of Constantinople from Acacius onward, considered by western Chalcedonians to be monophysite. In the course of this activity G. wrote his _De duabus naturis in Christo_ and other treatises as well the letter to the emperor Anastasius I for which is now best known and in which he affirmed the primacy of the ecclesiastical over the secular power. At Rome he suppressed the Lupercalia.
Neither the so-called Gelasian Decree attempting to establish a canon of Holy Writ nor the Gelasian Sacramentary is now considered an artefact of G.'s papacy. But their nomenclature bears witness to the once standard nature of these attributions. Here's G. at left, with pope St. Gregory I at right, as depicted in the later ninth-century Sacramentary of Charles the Bald:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Gelasius_I-Karl-Gregor_I.jpg
6) Maurus of Cesena (d. earlier 10th cent.). According his eleventh-century Vita by St. Peter Damian (BHL 5771), M., a nephew of a pope (probably John X), was ordained priest, entered a monastery at Classe of which he became abbot, and was named by his uncle bishop of today's Cesena (FO) in the Romagna. All of this will have occurred prior to the removal in 926 of the exarchate of Ravenna, to which Cesena belonged, from papal jurisdiction. Peter presents M. both as pastorally and administratively active and as eremitically inclined, retreating nightly to pray on a nearby mountain where he erected a small cell that after M.'s death was converted into his burial church.
A monastery that arose on the site is said to be attested from 1042 and is certainly well documented from the twelfth century onward; rebuilt in the sixteenth century it is now Cesena's Santuario Santa Maria del Monte. Parishes with churches dedicated to M. are recorded from the central Middle Ages in the dioceses of Rimini and Cesena. Shortly before 1470 relics believed to be M.'s were removed for reasons of safety from their sarcophagus in the abbey church. In 1470 some of these were translated to Cesena's cathedral, where they remain today.
Two Italian-language accounts of Cesena's originally fourteenth-century cathedral of San Giovanni Battista (now a co-cathedral of the diocese of Cesena-Sarsina):
http://tinyurl.com/6947r6
http://www.homolaicus.com/arte/cesena/duomo/nascita.htm
Some views of this structure:
http://tinyurl.com/66tchl
http://tinyurl.com/5awkdb
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usychan/1461979817/
http://tinyurl.com/6ozyy9
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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