medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. November) is also the feast day of:
1) Mercurius of Caesarea in Cappadocia (d. 250, supposedly). The megalomartyr M. (also Mercury) had a major late antique cult at the Caesarea that is today's Kayseri in Turkey. His legendary Greek Passio (BHG 1274) makes him a general in the Roman army martyred under Decius. By the early sixth century he was also believed to have been sent from Heaven to slay Julian the Apostate. In this legend (which has Western as well as Eastern variants), St. Basil the Great (not coincidentally, a bishop of Caesarea) is said to have seen in a vision both M.'s being charged with this mission and his return to announce its successful completion. The Vatopaidi monastery on Mt. Athos has what is believed to be M.'s skull:
http://tinyurl.com/6hdn4s
One of the great military saints of Eastern Christianity, M. became a saint of the Regno in the ninth century when in the principality of Benevento his cult superseded that of another Mercurius entered in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology under 26. August as having suffered at Aeclanum (in southern Campania). Duke Arichis II, the founder of the autonomous principality, was said to have translated from the ruins of Aeclanum the relics of the Eastern martyr (these supposedly had been deposited there by Constans II in the seventh century) and to have interred them in his newly built church of Santa Sofia at Benevento (so this will have been ca. 768). In the principality M. was celebrated on 26. August, reinterpreted as the date of his translation by Arichis.
M. was a major star in the Beneventan sanctoral firmament. The extent of his literary monuments can be guessed at by looking at nos. 5933-5939 in BHL Suppl.; especially noteworthy is M.'s _Passio aucta_ in verse by the early twelfth-century archbishop of Benevento, Landulf II (BHL 5935; a modern edition is badly needed). An only slightly later visual counterpart is the also twelfth-century representation of M. (at right) in military garb in the lunette above the main portal of Santa Sofia:
http://tinyurl.com/2d8p8jo
The kneeling figure next to M. is thought to be abbot John IV of Santa Sofia, to whose restoration of the church we owe this relief. Within the Beneventan cultural area, M. is the patron saint of Toro (CB) in Molise and of Serracapriola (FG) in northern Apulia. In both towns his cult appears to be medieval in origin. Another visible token of M.'s cult in this part of the world is this fragmentarily preserved, later fourteenth-century fresco in the cattedrale di San Pardo in Larino (CB) in Molise that depicts M. seemingly having just slain Julian:
http://tinyurl.com/ygfxcmq
In 1098 M. appeared along with Sts. George and Demetrius to lift the spirits of the Crusaders issuing from Antioch to destroy a Muslim army that had been besieging them. For a recent discussion of M. in the East, see Christopher Walter, _The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition_ (Ashgate, 2003), pp. 101-08.
Some medieval representations of M. in art works of Eastern origin:
a) The bottom register in this full-page illumination in a later ninth-century manuscript of the _Orationes_ of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 510, fol. 409v) depicts M.'s slaying of Julian:
http://tinyurl.com/ykfbhn5
b) At upper left in the ivory Harbaville Triptych in the Musée du Louvre in Paris (mid tenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/2fxlfnn
c) Mosaic in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis (earlier eleventh-century; restored between 1953 and 1962):
http://tinyurl.com/234ouyk
d) Fresco in the church of St. Nicholas Kasnitzis in Kastoria in northwestern Greece (betw. 1170 and 1180):
http://tinyurl.com/25wvcyg
e) Fresco in the nave of the church of the Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in southern Serbia (1230s):
http://tinyurl.com/38crny3
Detail (M.):
http://tinyurl.com/248qb6k
f) At left in a fresco in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos (ca. 1300; attributed to Manuel Panselinos):
http://tinyurl.com/3xzbzsl
g) Fresco in the church of the Peribleptos (sv. Kliment Novi) in Ohrid (late thirteenth- or earlier fourteenth-century; by Michael Astrapas and Eutychius):
http://tinyurl.com/37ckkzj
h) Fresco in the nave 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 (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322):
http://tinyurl.com/ygpyhww
Detail (M.):
http://tinyurl.com/yjqot8s
i) Fresco in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia (ca. 1313-1320):
http://tinyurl.com/2d48hl2
j) At left in a fresco in the church of St. George in Kritsa (Lasithi prefecture) on Crete (earlier fourteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/27xs2l7
k) Fresco in the katholikon of the Chilandar monastery on Mt. Athos (ca. 1319; atelier of Michael Astrapas and Eutychios):
http://www.atlantaserbs.com/web/ikone/dec09/24-01.jpg
l) At right in a fresco in the nave of the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija (betw. 1322 and 1324):
http://tinyurl.com/263smlh
http://tinyurl.com/27lr2jl
m) Fresco in the nave of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija (1330s):
http://tinyurl.com/yemp35v
Detail (M.):
http://tinyurl.com/ybcgpbp
n) Fresco under the dome of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć 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/2doaap6
Detail (M.):
http://tinyurl.com/2f25cj3
o) Armenian miniature (fourteenth-/fifteenth-century; location not provided but a guess would be the Matenadaran in Yerevan):
http://www.armsite.com/miniatures/mnshow.phtml?slide=51
p) Fresco in the church of the Holy Trinity at the former Manasija monastery near Despotovac (Pomoravlje dist.) in Serbia (betw. 1406 and 1418):
http://tinyurl.com/ya6ezqs
M. is a co-patron of Seminara (RC) in southern Calabria, part of the Greek-speaking West in the Middle Ages and the home of the fourteenth-cenury theologian Barlaam of Calabria. A fifteenth-century relief (with an identifying inscription in Latin) showing M. mounted and spearing Julian the Apostate in the neck has been preserved at the municipio of Seminara. Herewith a detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/ybu54kl
For more on M., including an English-language translation of BHG 1274, see:
http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/Mercurius.html
2) Peter of Alexandria (d. 311). The hieromartyr P. succeeded Theonas of Alexandria as pope (bishop) of Alexandria in Egypt in about 300. At some point after the outbreak of the Diocletianic persecution in 303 he went into hiding. During P.'s absence bishop Meletius (Melitius) of Lycopolis took it upon himself to consecrate bishops for sees whose occupants had been imprisoned, thus laying the groundwork for a schism that troubled the church in Egypt for some time, and moved to Alexandria, where he replaced church officials whom P. had appointed. P., who continued to exercise authority from his undisclosed location, then excommunicated M.; he also issued a set of surviving canons that dealt mildly with _lapsi_ who wished to re-enter the church.
On 30. April 311 the emperor Galerius lifted the persecution of Christians in the East, whereupon P. resumed his public role in Alexandria. In November of the same year Maximinus Daia renewed the persecution in those parts of the empire under his control. An early victim, P. was arrested by imperial officials and swiftly executed. A few homilies and letters by him survive, as do also fragments of theological works. Our chief sources for P. are Eusebius and other late antique church historians. His numerous Passiones in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic are relatively late; where they add new material they are either legendary or conjectural. Certainly legendary is the vision P. is said to have received while awaiting execution and in which he will have seen a very youthful Christ whose linen tunic was rent in two and who foretold the Arian schism.
Commemorated along with P. in the RM are other martyrs at Alexandria who suffered in this renewed persecution, including the Egyptian bishops Hesychius, Pachomius, and Theodorus.
A few visuals:
a) P. (in this expandable view, next but one to the viewer's left of the niche in the lower register) as depicted in the later twelfth-century mosaics of the cattedrale di Santa Maria la Nuova in Monreale:
http://maik07.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/m-abside1.jpg
b) P.'s vision as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the parecclesion of the Theotokos in 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/y8odeuc
Detail (P.):
http://tinyurl.com/y9fyysf
Detail (Christ):
http://tinyurl.com/ygqs3n5
Detail (Arius):
http://tinyurl.com/y8d5b9n
c) P.'s vision as depicted in the late thirteenth- (so E. C. Constantinides; 1992) or earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1320s; the usual dating) of the Panagia Olympiotissa in Elasson (Larisa prefecture) in Thessaly:
http://tinyurl.com/22rozdd
Detail (P.):
http://tinyurl.com/28cgajw
Detail (Christ):
http://tinyurl.com/29md4rm
d) P.'s vision as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) of the prothesis of church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Pec:
http://tinyurl.com/y9e767e
Detail (Christ):
http://tinyurl.com/y8g3ugs
e) P.'s martyrdom (at right; pope St. Clement I at left) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć 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/yjvkroz
f) P.'s vision as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1546/47) by George/Tzortzis the Cretan in the katholikon of the Dionysiou monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/32mtm4h
3) Maurinus of Agen (d. 5th cent., supposedly). The martyr M. is the local saint of today's Saint-Maurin (Lot-et-Garonne) in Aquitaine and was the saint of its once regionally important abbey named for him. According to his very legendary Vita (BHL 5734; preserved in a single ms. of the eleventh century), he was born at Agen but was educated in Italy at Capua, whither his father, the count of Agen, had sent him to be schooled and where he stayed for seven years and was ordained deacon. His master was that holy friend of St. Benedict, St. Germanus of Capua.
Returning to his native town, M. evangelized in the Agenais. But the pagan governor of Lectoure (from at least the eleventh century an important comital seat), who had forbidden Christian preaching in the region, had M.'s father decapitated and M. arrested. M. converted the soldiers who were guarding him and fled with them to a nearby village, where they were captured by other soldiers sent by the governor. M. and his companions were executed on the spot by decapitation. In keeping with a frequent motif in the Vitae of evangelists in France, M. picked up his head and walked to a fountain, next to which, once he had healed a woman of leprosy, the local Christians buried him. Further miracles were reported at his grave, which latter began to draw crowds. A church dedicated to St. Peter was erected over his tomb. Thus far M.'s Vita.
The abbey for which this Vita will have been written is first documented from early in the eleventh century. A local lord restored it in about 1040 and in 1082 a son of that lord gave it to the abbey of Moissac. The abbey church (now a ruin) was dedicated in 1097 to the Holy Cross, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to St. M., and to all the saints.
A page of views of the former abbey church of Notre-Dame de Saint-Maurin, many showing some of the church's exterior (into which a modern dwelling has been built):
http://www.romanes.com/Saint-Maurin/
Other views of the tower of that church:
http://www.ffct.org/bcn-bpf/departements/47/st-maurin06.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/10478200.jpg
After the Albigensian Crusade the abbot of Saint-Maurin became the local lord and the monastery was fortified. Some views of what's left of the keep of this _château abbatiale_:
http://www.ffct.org/bcn-bpf/departements/47/st-maurin01.jpg
http://www.ffct.org/bcn-bpf/departements/47/st-maurin07.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Peter of Alexandria)
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