medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (27. November) is the feast day of:
1) Facundus and Primitivus (?). The reputed martyrs F. and P. are first heard from in 652, when relics said to be theirs were placed in the basilica of Acci, the predecessor of today's Guadix (Granada). By 833 (according to rather later sources), when Muslims are said to have destroyed it, they were the titulars of a church at today's Sahagún de Campos (León). The church is said to have been rebuilt in 872 by a refugee from Córdoba who established a small monastery at the site. Destroyed by other Muslims in 883, the church and its monastery were given in the early years of the tenth century by Alfonso III of Asturias to other refugees from Córdoba who rebuilt it. The new church was consecrated in 935. In the first half of the tenth century the monastery produced a legendary Passio of F. and P. (BHL 2820-2821) asserting that they had been martyred at the site and that the church was their burial church.
F. and P. also have a Mozarabic hymn, modeled on that of St. Felix of Gerona. The first calendar in which they appear is one from Córdoba in 961, where they are entered under this day, as they also are in the Mozarabic calendars of the eleventh century. The detail that they were the sons of St. Marcellus the Centurion (M. of León) first appears in the thirteenth century.
In 1132 the monastery of F. and P. at Sahagún became a Cluniac abbey. It is one of only three Spanish monasteries other than Compostela named in the twelfth-century guide for pilgrims _Liber Sancti Jacobi_, one of the texts of the so-called _Codex Calixtinus_ (another, the Pseudo-Turpin, ascribes to Charlemagne the building of the church, its dedication to F. and P., and the founding of the abbey). In time the monastery, which had become very wealthy, gave its name to the town: Sanctus Facundus > Sant Fagun > Safagun > Sahagún.
Here's a view of a roundel in the Charlemagne window (ca. 1225) in the cathedral of Chartres. On one view, the church whose building it depicts is that of F. and P. at Sahagún:
http://tinyurl.com/6e6qzy
Some views of the later medieval remains of the abbey:
http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/1953987.html
http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/1953995.html
Eight views are here (fourth and fifth rows from the top; Ruinas de la abadía):
http://tinyurl.com/5t5vje
Two more, showing both sides of the entry arch:
http://tinyurl.com/62rfot
http://flickr.com/photos/22094293@N07/2396233521
Views, etc. of the originally twelfth-century iglesia de San Facundo y San Primitivo at Silió (Cantabria):
http://tinyurl.com/5cqfol
http://tinyurl.com/63j362
http://tinyurl.com/6fwvkv
http://www.astragalo.net/interiores/inter19.htm
Five views at the foot of this page:
http://www.cantabriajoven.com/molledo/molledo.html
Views, etc. of the originally late twelfth-century ermita de San Facundo at Barrios de la Bureba (Burgos):
http://www.arte-romanico.com/autonomias/sanfacundo.htm
2) Laverius (d. ca. 311, supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno, the patron of today's Grumento Nova (PZ) and Tito (PZ) in Basilicata, is venerated in that region's diocese of Acerenza and, in southernmost Campania, at Teggiano (SA). In all these places he is commemorated on 17. November. L. has a legendary Passio (BHL 713-714) that dates for the most part from 1162 (a final part, dealing with L.'s relics, is early modern). This has him martyred near ancient Grumentum (an episcopal seat from ca. 370 until the town's abandonment in perhaps the eighth century) under Constantine prior to the latter's (legendary) conversion by St. Sylvester and given a burial church much later destroyed by Muslim raiders. The also twelfth-century Latin version (BHL 4978) of the now lost Bios of St. Luke of Demenna (or of Argento) has that tenth-century saint erect on the site a smaller church of the same dedication.
Archeological campaigns in 2008 and 2009 at a location near but outside the remains of Grumentum revealed what appear to be the remains of a masonry necropolis with at least two sarcophagi and with indications of many other burials in what is interpreted as having been L.'s martyrium. An illustrated, Italian-language journalistic account from 2009 is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yk5pzbc
The sarcophagus discovered in 2008 has been transferred to the Museo Nazionale Archeologico dell'Alta Val d'Agri at the archeological site of Grumentum in the territory of today's Grumento Nova (PZ).
The reliquary shown here, stolen in the 1960s from the originally fifteenth-century chiesa di San Laverio at Tito (PZ), is said to have contained one of L.'s arm bones:
http://tinyurl.com/yhggwcu
3) Jacob of Beth Lapat (d. 421 or 422, supposedly). The Persian martyr J. is usually known outside of Syriac studies either as James the Persian (as though Jacob/James the Notary and the James of the pair John and James commemorated in the RM under 1. November were some how _not_ Persian) or, from the nature of his reported martyrdom, as James the Hewn-Apart or James the Sawn-Asunder or James the Sliced or James the Mangled (in "Western" instances the Latin form Jacobus Intercisus is often used in preference to the vernacular). Denys Pringle, apparently not concerned that some might take J. for a practical joker, calls him "James the Persian (or the Cut-up)" (_The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem_, Vol. 3: _The City of Jerusalem_, p. 321). J.'s originally seemingly early medieval legendary Passio has versions in at least Syriac, Coptic, Greek, Georgian, and Latin.
According to this tale, J. was a general in the Persian army and a Christian from a Christian family. Despite his upbringing and despite his having married another Christian, he was seduced into Zoroastrianism by the flattery and the gifts of the king (Yazdegerd I; r. 399-420). When J.'s mother and his wife learned of this, they sent him a letter expelling him from the family and depriving him of any expectation of inheritance. J. then repented and, at a time of official persecution of Christians, confessed his faith. The king (now Bahram V, r. 420-ca. 439) attempted to intimidate him into recanting; when that failed, he ordered J.'s execution. After suffering a lengthy, gruesome torment in which his extremities and sections of limbs were sliced off _seriatim_, J. was executed by decapitation on this day.
Thus far J.'s Passio. The tradition of the Coptic Orthodox Church holds that the originally Syrian St. Peter the Iberian (Peter of Edessa) brought J.'s relics with him to Egypt when he withdrew thither from Maiuma in the 450s. J.'s monastery at Qâra in Syria is said to go back to the sixth century (its much rebuilt present church is later tenth- or eleventh-century). According to a narrative written soon after 1103 (BHL 4102), J.'s head was brought to the abbey of Cormery near Tours by a monk of that house who had been in Constantinople, Nicomedia, and Jerusalem in 1190 (this seems to be the head of J. that's now in St. Peter's on the Vatican). Like other great saints, J. seems to have been polycephalous. BHL 4101d records a translation of a different head to Braga in Portugal and in the late thirteenth century the Russian Anonymus reported the presence of yet another one in Constantinople's Pantrocrator monastery. Here's a view of J.'s present head reliquary at Braga:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25727578@N04/3120027467/
A few portrayals:
a) J. (at left in the lower left-hand panel; at right in that panel, St. Gregory the Thaumaturge) as portrayed on the reverse of the mid-tenth-century Harbaville Triptych in the Musée du Louvre, Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/2f463kh
b) J. as depicted in a probably mid-thirteenth-century fresco (ca. 1260) on an arch in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peæ at Peæ in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://www.pravenc.ru/data/567/504/1234/i400.jpg
c) J. as depicted in a later thirteenth- or earlier fourteenth-century Palaeologan style fresco (location not given; can anyone on the list say with certainly where's it's located?):
http://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/91626/91626.JPG
d) J. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Graèanica in, depending 8on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/yb24pwm
http://tinyurl.com/ycunag5
e) J. (at right) as depicted as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2gywgpd
f) J.'s martyrdom as depicted in a November calendar scene 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 the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/ygfqe4e
g) J. (at right; at left, St. Artemius) as depicted in the earlier fifteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1406 and 1418) in the church of the Holy Trinity at the former Manasija monastery near Despotovac (Pomoravlje dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/2agehmz
h) J.'s martyrdom as depicted on an earlier sixteenth-century painted glass roundel (ca. 1520) from Leiden, now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://tinyurl.com/2bo6yrs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maulleigh/4395940825/
i) J. as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (Theophanes the Cretan) in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1527) in the katholikon of the monastery of St. Nicholas Anapafsas in the Meteora district of Greece's Trikala prefecture:
http://tinyurl.com/2fl49a6
http://tinyurl.com/24f976q
j) J. as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (Theophanes the Cretan) in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1546 or 1546) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://pandektis.ekt.gr/pandektis/handle/10442/85718
A larger view (but the yellow is much too bright):
http://tinyurl.com/2ftew52
3) Siffredus (d. 543). According to his relatively late Vita (two versions: BHL 7703, 7704), S. (in Latin also Sigfredus; in French, Siffred and Siffrein) arrived in southern Gaul as a child, having been brought from Campania by his father to be taught at the monastery of Lérins, then governed by St. Caesarius of Arles. Had Caesarius ever been abbot of Lérins this story might be more credible and S. might not be, as he now is, a merely putative saint of the Regno. We are further told that S. studied the trivial arts and that in 503, at the age of thirty, he was made bishop of Venasque, an early designation of the diocese better known by the name of Carpentras. Here again we run into difficulty, as until 529 this see is known to have been occupied by a bishop Julianus.
The Vita ascribes to S. the founding of at least two churches at Venasque (the Gallo-Roman town in today's Vaucluse that gave its name to the Comtat Venaissin) and one at Carpentras (the central town and later capital of the aforementioned Comtat). Late in life, but before 541 (when Carpentras' bishop was named Clementius) S. retired from office and devoted himself at Venasque to aiding the poor with great generosity. After his death on this day in 543 he was buried in the church of the Holy Trinity in Venasque. Later his remains were translated to Carpentras.
One of the churches that S. is said to have built was the predecessor of today's église de Notre-Dame at Venasque. The church has been rebuilt many times since and even its enclosed baptistery, a centrally planned structure in the form of a Greek cross terminating in four apses, is mostly of the eleventh century and later. Relatively recent excavation has uncovered a shallow octagonal basin below its floor, suitable for baptism by semi-immersion and thought to be a survivor of the baptistery as it was in S.'s day. Herewith some views of the church and its baptistery:
http://tinyurl.com/yztvtc4
http://www.venasque.fr/index.cfm?srub=21
http://tinyurl.com/yrqane
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~truffe/image/venasque.jpg
An illustrated, French-language page on the baptistery:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist%C3%A8re_de_Venasque
The ex-cathedral of the former diocese of Carpentras (Vaucluse) is dedicated to St. Peter and to S. and is commonly referred to as the cathédrale (or église) de Saint-Siffrein. Built between 1405 and 1519 and incorporating remains of a late twelfth-century predecessor (some of which are visible next to the chevet), it presents the viewer with a variety of styles (views expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/6bw59s
http://tinyurl.com/5vqzlm
Other views of the facade:
http://flickr.com/photos/manufrakass/2043187139/sizes/l/
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2650345.jpg
The south flank (in part):
http://tinyurl.com/2xpjg7
http://tinyurl.com/69ysye
The ornamental south door, the so-called Porte Juive:
http://tinyurl.com/yd9ow58
http://tinyurl.com/ydynder
Upper portions of the chapels on the north flank:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carpentras_Kath4.jpg
Interior view:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/5817222.jpg
Other views of the interior will be found here (showing medieval construction above and behind later ornament):
http://tinyurl.com/6bq3ve
For much of the later Middle Ages Carpentras' Jews were vassals of the bishop. Carpentras' synagogue dates to 1367 and is one of the oldest in France. It was largely rebuilt from the ground floor up in the eighteenth century but down below it preserves the original ritual baths, bakeries for leavened and unleavened bread, and a prayer room. These lower areas have been off limits for some while.
4) Virgilius of Salzburg (d. 784). The learned Irishman V. (whose name in Irish will have been Fearghal _vel sim._) had been in Francia for two years at the court of Pepin the Short before P.'s brother in law Odilo, duke of Bavaria invited him to succeed a recently deceased incumbent as abbot-bishop at Salzburg. V. served at first only as abbot while a fellow Irishman exercised episcopal functions. But in 749, it is now thought, V. was consecrated bishop; he served in that capacity until his death on 27. November 784. V. is remembered for St. Boniface's attacks upon him for treating as valid a baptism in which the formula had been badly garbled and for some doctrine which Boniface seems to have interpreted as involving a belief in a separate antipodean world. He founded several monasteries in Bavarian territory including the newly conquered Carinthia. V. was canonized in 1233.
A thirteenth-century subterranean chapel in Vienna once had an altar in it dedicated to V. and for that reason is known as the Virgilkapelle. Two views:
http://leo.skyar.com/stationen/images/atw05.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2v4zv8
The two bishops whose twelfth-century images in the St.Johannes-Kapelle at Pürgg in Pürgg-Trautenfels (Liezen) in Steiermark are linked to below are thought to be V. and St. Rupert (but which is which?):
http://tinyurl.com/ycarmh3
http://tinyurl.com/yeajqmw
In the pair of bishops shown here from ca. 1520 originally in the Rupertikirche at Stainach-Niederhofen (Steiermark) but now in the diocesan museum of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau the figure on the right is recognizable from his salt bucket as St. Rupert. The general assumption is that the figure on the left represents V.:
http://www.niederhofen.at/seiten/erforschen_detail23.html
5) Apollinaris, abbot of Montecassino (d. 828). This less well known saint of the Regno is one of Montecassino's early heroes. Its eleventh-century abbot Desiderius II (as pope, Bl. Victor III) begins his _Dialogi de miraculis sancti Benedicti_ with accounts of two miracles associated with A.: 1) his crossing the river Liri on foot without so much as getting his sandals wet and 2) his revealing to abbot Bassacius in a nocturnal vision that St. Benedict had obtained divine protection for the abbey, threatened by attack from Muslim raiders (in 846). In the latter story once the abbot, having received his vision, had gone to sleep a sudden heavy rain arose: this downpour caused the Liri to go into flood, thus preventing the raiders from crossing the river and reaching the abbey.
Expanded versions of these miracle accounts occur in Leo Marsicanus' summary of A.'s abbacy (_Chronica monasterii Casinensis_, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann, 1. 18 ad fin. - 22) and in Peter the Deacon's rather more inventive Vita of A. (_Ortus et vita iustorum cenobii Casinensis_, ed. R. H. Rodgers, cap. XXVI).
Desiderius had A.'s remains exhumed and re-interred in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in his rebuilt abbey church; he also had inscribed on A.'s tomb verses of his own composition (PL, vol. 149, cols. 1017-18) that add no lustre to his artistic reputation. A. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Here's a reconstruction of the abbey of St. Benedict at Montecassino in its eleventh-century form:
http://tinyurl.com/y4zwxh
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Jacob of Beth Lapat / Jacobus Intercisus)
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