medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (17. November) is the feast day of:

1)  Acisclus and Victoria (?).  A. (in Catalan, Iscle) is a martyr of Córdoba first recorded, without specifics, by Prudentius at _Peristephanon_ 4. 19-20.  A legendary, originally eighth-century Passio sanctorum Aciscli et Victoriae_ (BHL 26) gives A. a sister named Victoria and has them imprisoned in a persecution that could be either that of Septimius Severus or that of Diocletian a century later and then executed by decapitation on 18. November in the amphitheater of Córdoba.  V. is probably in origin the Victoria of Gerapolis entered under today's date in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology.  A. and V. were celebrated jointly in Visigothic Spain and France and are entered jointly, under today, in the martyrologies of Florus, Ado, and Usuard.  They were also commemorated jointly under today in the RM until its revision of 2001, when (as Delehaye had urged) V. was dropped.  V. continues to be celebrated along with A. in the diocese of Córdoba.

St. Isidore of Seville (_Historia Gothorum_, 45) speaks of A.'s tomb at Córdoba without mention of V.  But the ninth-century St. Eulogius of Córdoba (_Memoriale sanctorum_, 2. 9) records a basilica there of which both were titulars.  In the thirteenth century a Cistercian house was established next to the basilica, which had survived the period of Muslim rule; in the fourteenth century the monastery passed to the Dominicans.  Putative relics of V. and A., the city's principal patrons, and of other martyrs of Córdoba are displayed in the rebuilt, early modern church of San Acisclo y Santa Victoria:
http://www.silencioblanco.org/2005/2005%20Martires%2001.jpg
http://www.silencioblanco.org/MARTIRES%20URNA.JPG

An illustrated, Spanish-language page on the rupestrian church dedicated to A. and V. at Arroyuelos (Cantabria):
http://tinyurl.com/64cv8e

Views, etc. of the originally twelfth-century ermita Sant Iscle y Santa Victòria de les Feixes at Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), which replaced a church of the dame dedication attested from 995:
http://tinyurl.com/6rcup7
http://tinyurl.com/yh5xr3n
http://tinyurl.com/6o3wse
http://tinyurl.com/yzyb8jz
http://www.salillas.net/cerdanyola/sant_iscle.htm

A view of the originally thirteenth-century iglesia de San Acisclo y Santa Victoria (Sant Iscle y Santa Victòria) at Surp in Rialp (Lérida):
http://tinyurl.com/6hj7fb


2)  Alphaeus and Zacchaeus (d. 303).  According to Eusebius (_De martyribus Palaestinae_, 1. 5), A. and Z. were the only martyrs from among the many who at Caesarea in Palestine resisted the Diocletianic persecution at its outset.  After undergoing a series of brutal tortures they were executed by decapitation.  The longer, Syriac-language version of Eusebius' work makes Z. a deacon at Gadara and A. a lector and exorcist at Caesarea.  Today is their _dies natalis_.


3)  Gregory the Thaumaturge (d. ca. 273).  Today's well known saint of the Regno (also G. of Neocaesarea) was a well-to-do student named Theodore when in about the year 232 he and his younger brother St. Athenodorus of Pontus met Origen at Caesarea in Palestine.  Under the latter's influence they converted from paganism to Christianity and then studied under the new master for about five years.  In about 238 they returned to their native and almost entirely pagan Neocaesarea in Pontus (now Niksar in Turkey), where the young T. soon became G. its bishop and where over the course of the next thirty-five years he wrote treatises and letters, some of which have survived, and became famous for miracles.  Stories of the latter circulated widely over the next several centuries and were repeated or alluded to by other church fathers.  According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, G. is the first person known to have seen the Theotokos in a vision.

It is not known when the southern Calabrian relics said to be G.'s arrived there.  Guesses range from the sixth century (implausible) to the eighth (possible, but not every cult will have been brought by refugees from iconoclastic persecution) to the the eleventh, when the now Franciscan monastery of San Gregorio Taumaturgo at Stalettì (CZ) probably was founded.  G. is Stalettì's patron saint and his putative relics there (less a cranium that has been in Lisbon since the late sixteenth century) are kept in the rebuilt monastery church.  There's a view of them on this page, underneath that of G.'s church in Moscow:
http://www.sangregoriotaumaturgo.it/index_file/Page440.htm

G. (at right; at left, St. Basil the Great) as depicted flanking the Theotokos on a tenth-century cross from Constantinople now in the British Museum, London:
http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/WF001733.html

G. as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/365wfzm

G. as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/33pgbpm

G. as depicted in a mid-eleventh-century mosaic in the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv/Kiev:
http://www.pravenc.ru/data/461/475/1234/i400.jpg

G. as depicted in an icon variously dated to the twelfth century (probably) and to the fourteenth, now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg:
http://tinyurl.com/22t8wzz

G. (second from left in this panel) as depicted in the later thirteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1260 and 1263) in the altar area of the church of the Holy Apostles 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:
http://tinyurl.com/2d468pz

G. as depicted in a late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century fresco, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/269etzr
http://tinyurl.com/23l2oxl

G. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century mosaic (ca. 1312) in the parecclesion (now a museum) of the former church of the Pammakaristos (Fethiye camii) in Istanbul:
http://tinyurl.com/2c8f4wx

G. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1313 and 1320) of the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/25n3lyt

G. 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/yl2cr76

G. as the student T. listening to Origen along with his brother St. Athenodorus and, at right, as bishop G. operating a miracle as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 27v):
http://tinyurl.com/y9dzc3k


4)  Anianus of Orléans (d. 453).  According to his early Vita (BHL 473; first attested from the late eighth or early ninth century), the Gallo-Roman noble A. (in French, Aignan) was born at Vienne but spent most of his life at Orléans, where in 382 he was ordained priest by St. Evurtius and where by general acclamation he succeeded as bishop in 388.  He is best known for organizing the defense of his city against the Huns in 451 (Sidonius Apollinaris, _Epistulae_, 8. 15; Gregory of Tours, _Historia Francorum_, 2. 7).   Today is his _dies natalis_.

By the sixth century there was a monastery at A.'s tomb at Orléans.  Early in the eleventh century Robert II le Pieux refounded this house as a canonry and rebuilt its church.  A plan of this rebuilt, newly collegiate church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2wfjwy
Though most of the eleventh-century church was pulled down in 1359 in anticipation of the English siege, its crypt survives.  A French-language account of this monument is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3cyuvo
Two views:
http://tinyurl.com/2ftu4l
http://www.coeur-de-france.com/orleans-souterrain14.jpg
The martyrium in the crypt:
http://cdvorleans.free.fr/Aignan_martyrium.htm
The church was rebuilt from 1439 to 1509 (date of its new consecration).  An illustrated account is here:
http://morgann.moussier.free.fr/orleans/BatRelig/StAignan.html
And another (multi-page) is here:
http://cdvorleans.free.fr/Aignan.htm
A satellite view:
http://tinyurl.com/27pnwkx
Other exterior views:
http://orleans.canalblog.com/images/Eglise_St_Aignan_2.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/39y8oo
http://tinyurl.com/3yyccmq
http://tinyurl.com/34lwl8k
http://www.frankreich-sued.de/Orleans/bilder-2/saint-paterne-025.jpg
http://www.francebalade.com/orleans/orlstaignan1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/37arwux
This display reliquary in the church is said to preserve a bone from one of A.'s arms:
http://cdvorleans.free.fr/Aignan_invasion_fichiers/003.gif

Two illustrated, French-language pages on the early twelfth-century chapelle Saint-Aignan in Paris, founded by Stephen of Garland, Louis VI's chancellor and dean of Saint-Aignan at Orléans:
http://www.pierre-abelard.com/itin-Saint%20Aignan.htm
http://tinyurl.com/5z7dam

The eleventh- / twelfth-century église Saint-Aignan at Brinay (Cher) is known for its later twelfth-century frescoes:
Four pages of views (mostly details of the frescoes):
http://www.art-roman.net/brinay/brinay.htm
Other views:
http://www.handinaute.org/roman.img/Brinay01.jpg
http://www.handinaute.org/roman.img/Brinay02.jpg
http://www.handinaute.org/roman.img/Brinay03.jpg

An illustrated, French-language page on the originally twelfth-century église Saint-Aignan et Sainte-Apolline at Chalou-Moulineux (Essonne):
http://catholique-evry.cef.fr/Chalou-Moulineux-Saint-Aignan-et
Views of this church's belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/2nzv3o
Interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/2yaxj5

Views of the eleventh-/twelfth-century église collégiale Saint-Aignan at Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher (Loiret), built over an earlier crypt:
http://www.lesaulnaies.ovh.org/envir02.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yolmdk
http://ruessel.in-chemnitz.de/2006fr/img/fr41-l.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yrqd4u
http://tinyurl.com/ysmjxv
Frescoing:
http://tinyurl.com/yp8gsn
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~truffe/image/st-aignan.jpg

Views of the much rebuilt late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century église Saint-Aignan at Jars (Cher), replacing earlier churches of the same dedication.  Some views, starting with an older and a more recent view of the south flank:
http://tinyurl.com/2badxre
http://tinyurl.com/2335kft
Porch:
http://tinyurl.com/2bzf93j
Choir:
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/22267360.jpg


5)  Namatius of Vienne (d. 559/560).  N. is the traditional twenty-second bishop of Vienne.  The little that we know about him comes from his epitaph in thirty-three hexameters preserved in a mid-ninth-century epigraphic sylloge (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 2832, fol. 112v; incipit: _Humanos quicumque tremens sub pectore casus_), from a much briefer epitaph by St. Venantius Fortunatus (_Carmina_, 4. 27), and from his notices in St. Ado of Vienne's ninth-century _Chronicon_  and the eleventh-century _Liber episcopalis Viennensis ecclesiae_ of archbishop Leodegarius.  A Gallo-Roman noble, N. had been a senior lay official with the rank of patricius before succeeding as archbishop the recently commemorated St. Hesychius II (d. after 552).  He was noted for his eloquence and for works of mercy and was survived by his pious wife Euphrasia whose works of charity were also noteworthy.

Leodegarius gives today as N.'s _dies natalis_.  N.'s cult is recorded in a fifteenth-century liturgical calendar from Vienne.  It was confirmed papally, at the level of Saint, in 1903.


6)  Gregory of Tours (d. 594).  The historian and hagiographer G., who had been baptized Georgius Florentius, chose to call himself by the given name of his maternal great-grandfather, St. Gregory of Langres.  A scion of Gallo-Roman nobility with numerous bishops on both sides of his family, he was destined from youth for the church and became bishop of Tours in 573.  As bishop he defended Tours' interests before Frankish kings.  G.'s relations with Chilperic I (r. 561-584) were particularly strained.  At one point the king, hearing a false report that his wife had been slandered by G., had the bishop arrested and charged with treason.  At his trial G. swore an oath of innocence and was acquitted. 

Most of what is known about G. comes from his own writings, especially the _Decem libri historiarum_, commonly known by its traditional title _Historia Francorum_.  His tenth-century Vita by St. Odo of Cluny (BHL 3682) adds anecdotes that are generally thought to be apocryphal.

The opening page of the _Historia Francorum_ in a late seventh-century copy of Books 1-6 formerly in the possession of the abbey of St. Peter in Corbie (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 17655, fol. 2r) and the oldest major manuscript of this work:
http://tinyurl.com/36gzn2p

G. with bishop St. Salvus of Albi before Chilperic I as depicted in a later fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1375-1380) of the _Grandes chroniques de France de Charles V_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 2813, fol. 41v):
http://tinyurl.com/2ww8ulx 

Scenes of G.'s miracles as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 450v):
http://tinyurl.com/3778qph


7)  Florin (d. later 7th cent.?).  F. is a poorly documented saint of eastern Switzerland.  Our first testimony to his existence comes from the early ninth-century Vita of yesterday's St. Otmar of Sankt Gallen: according to this text, before taking over the monastery at Sankt Gallen O. had been in charge of a church at Chur dedicated to F.  A charter of Henry I from 930 records that king's donation to the bishop of Chur of a church dedicated to F. at  today's Remüs (canton Graubünden) in the Engadin.  Two legendary Vitae of F. (BHL 3063, 3064; no witness earlier than the thirteenth century) tell us nothing useful about the historical person and rather little about his cult.

By the beginning of the twelfth century F.'s cult had spread not only into other Alpine dioceses but also to the German Rhineland, where he was venerated in the diocese of Trier.  His chief monument there is the originally late eleventh- or early twelfth- to sixteenth-century Florinskirche in Koblenz.  An English-language account of that church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5tt4nh
and an illustrated, German-language one is here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florinskirche_(Koblenz)
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/5jc6fz
http://tinyurl.com/6cktx8
http://tinyurl.com/5bjh4j
http://www.kbvv.de/images/florin/flor1.jpg
http://www.kbvv.de/images/florin/flor2.jpg

Also dedicated to F. is the church of the former Benedictine double monastery of Schönau in today's Strüth (Lkr. Rhein-Lahn-Kreis) on the western edge the Taunus in Rheinland-Pfalz, home of St. Elisabeth of Schönau (18. June).  Herewith exterior and interior views, showing the church's fifteenth-century choir:
http://www.strueth.de/kloster_schoenau.htm
http://tinyurl.com/66d7nl

F. is the titular of the neo-gothic cathedral of Vaduz (a nineteenth-century replacement for an originally medieval chapel of the same dedication).  Together with Lucius of Chur he is one of Liechtenstein's patron saints.

Best,
John Dillon
(matter from last year's post revised and with the additions of Namatius of Vienne and Gregory of Tours)

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