medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (31. December) is also the feast day of:
1) Columba of Sens (d. 274, supposedly). The virgin martyr C. (in French, Colombe and Colome; in Spanish, Coloma and Comba) is a poorly documented saint with a cult that seems at least as old as the seventh century both in Gaul, where her great abbey at Sens is said to have been founded by Chlotar II in around 620 and where a basilica dedicated to her is said to have existed at Paris in the time of St. Eligius (so E.'s Vita BHL 2474, an eighth(?)-century reworking of one by his contemporary St. Audoenus), and in Iberia, where the church of Santa Comba at Bande (Orense) has been dated on the wording of a ninth-century charter to ca. 675.
C. has a legendary, originally seventh- or early eighth-century Passio (BHL 1892) that makes her a martyr at Sens under emperor Aurelian; expansions of this from the ninth century onward make her a pagan prince's daughter at Zaragoza who, desiring to become a Christian, flees to Gaul and is baptized at Vienne before going on to Sens. There she is soon arrested in a persecution, endures a lengthy colloquy with Aurelian, rejects his offer of marriage to his own son, is placed among prostitutes at the amphitheatre, is assaulted by a miscreant, is saved miraculously by a she-bear who then obeys C.'s command to release the scoundrel, converts him to Christianity, is protected from soldiers by the she-bear, reaffirms her Christianity to a very irritated Aurelian, and finally is executed by decapitation.
C.'s feast on this day is attested in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the historical martyrologies of the ninth century. C.'s medieval cult, which in France seems to have been strongest in today's Bourgogne and Île-de-France, extended across Francia from the Rhineland and from southern Belgium to the Pyrenees as well as in many places in today's Spain and Portugal. In Italy she is the subject of a sermon by St. Peter Damian (BHL 1896m) and the titular of the cathedral of Rimini, whose predecessor, also dedicated to her, was consecrated in 1154.
A few visuals:
a) Two illustrated, Spanish-language pages on the originally seventh(?)-century iglesia de Santa Comba at Bande:
http://tinyurl.com/ydet5tv
Further views:
http://tinyurl.com/ycrnz72
b) A brief, illustrated, French-language account of the much rebuilt, originally eighth(?)-century église Saint-Sylvestre-et-Sainte-Colombe at Colombiers (Hérault) in Languedoc:
http://tinyurl.com/2v7yrnk
Further views:
http://tinyurl.com/ygnqd47
http://tinyurl.com/y9eh7zo
The church's Visigothic altar:
http://tinyurl.com/3426tq9
c) An illustrated, French-language page on the much rebuilt, originally ninth-to-early-eleventh-century église Sainte-Colombe at Chevilly-Larue (Val-de-Marne) in Île-de-France:
http://tinyurl.com/yccmk2l
d) The originally tenth- to fifteenth-century Kirche St. Kolumba in Köln, bombed out in 1943. Herewith two views of the ruins some decades after the bombing, showing a later twentieth-century wedding chapel built into the remains of the medieval church:
http://tinyurl.com/2ahlcqn
http://tinyurl.com/27elslz
Remnants of the church have since been incorporated into Köln's new diocesan museum (opened, 2007). See this illustrated, French-language page:
http://tinyurl.com/27npaa2
Other exterior views of the museum showing remnants of the church:
http://www.architravel.com/architravel/building/495
http://tinyurl.com/24p56lg
http://tinyurl.com/39pq7kl
http://tinyurl.com/38z4cek
http://tinyurl.com/3aa8rps
http://tinyurl.com/3xvjxdd
Other interior views showing remnants of the medieval church:
http://tinyurl.com/33ea5jp
http://tinyurl.com/2aew9cx
http://tinyurl.com/2v7wtll
http://tinyurl.com/2nse8m
Remains of church's originally eleventh-century baptistery:
http://www.bilderbuch-koeln.de/Fotos/119804
e) An illustrated, English-language page on the much rebuilt, originally tenth-century església de Santa Coloma in Andorra La Vella, Andorra:
http://tinyurl.com/ygmd25v
f) A page of views of the originally later twelfth-century église Sainte-Colombe at Sainte-Colombe (Charente) in Poitou-Charentes:
http://www.romanes.com/Sainte-Colombe/
g) Some French-language pages on the originally twelfth-century église Sainte-Colombe at Gréville-Hague (Manche) in Normandy with its thirteenth-century wall paintings and its fifteenth-century statues:
http://tinyurl.com/yc366jb
http://www.greville-hague.fr/patrimoine-eglise.htm
http://www.greville-hague.fr/patrimoine-eglise-2.htm
Other views of this church:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2650/3829128543_b8a8da281f.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3482/4007807306_a112faf4b0.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2564/4007798024_14e22bd0be.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2487/4007028955_cf80d80c34.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2520/4007816998_c62f36b4ce.jpg
h) An illustrated, French-language page on the originally thirteenth-/sixteenth-century église Sainte-Colombe at Servon (Seine-et-Marne) in Île-de-France:
http://fr.topic-topos.com/eglise-sainte-colombe-servon
i) A page of views of the much rebuilt, originally thirteenth-century église Sainte Colombe (with an eleventh[?]-century tower) at the locality of Soulme in Doische (prov. de Namur)
http://tinyurl.com/y8wpd9z
j) Expandable views of panel paintings from the 1340s or early 1350s by Giovanni Baronzio depicting scenes from C.'s Passio; formerly in the cathedral of Rimini, these are now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/b/baronzio/index.html
k) English-language and Italian-language pages on, and some other views, of the basilica cattedrale di Santa Colomba at Rimini (1447-1466, restored after heavy damage in World War II; the belltower is a survivor from the church's central medieval predecessor), better known as the Tempio Malatestiano:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempio_Malatestiano
http://tinyurl.com/28onwpt
Further views:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/8886851.jpg
http://www.tuttiarimini.com/riviera/monumenti-rimini/
http://tinyurl.com/26hjdj3
http://img1.photographersdirect.com/img/14507/wm/pd479091.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3331/3455444088_81007cdf13.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y8nan8h
2) Donata, Paulina, Rogata, Dominanda, Serotina, Saturnina, and Hilaria (?). Also known as the Septem Virgines, D. et socc. are Roman martyrs of the cemetery of the Jordani on the Via Salaria. Entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, they are also included in at least one of the earlier seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome, the _Liber de locis sanctis martyrum_. An inventio of their relics under pope St. Hadrian I led to a late eighth-century renewal of their cult.
3) Zoticus of Constantinople (d. probably mid-fourth cent.). We know about Z. chiefly from his Bios (BHG 2479), preserved in the earlier eleventh-century Imperial Menologion, where he is said to have been a Roman priest who moved to Constantinople once the capital had been transferred there. He directed a hospital in that city, was noted for his personal devotion to the poor and to lepers, and operated miracles. Z.'s notice in the Synaxary of Constantinople elevates him anachronistically to the important civil service post of Orphanotrophos and makes him a martyr under the Arian-leaning emperor Constantius II. His earlier thirteenth-century Bios by Constantine Acropolites (BHG 2480) adds further miracles.
4) Melania the Younger (d. 439). Our chief sources for the life of this very wealthy Roman aristocrat and monastic founder in Africa and Palestine are the surviving Greek-language and Latin-language versions of her earlier fifth-century Bios by her associate and successor at Jerusalem, Gerontius (BHG 1241; BL 5885). A granddaughter of St. Melanmia the Elder, she was married at a young age to the also highly aristocratic St. Pinianus and bore him two children. After these had died young M. and her husband converted to Christianity and are said to have maintained a celibate union.
M., who inherited her parents' great wealth, and the likewise wealthy Pinianus had estates in various parts of the empire through which they traveled and where they lived ascetically. After two years in Nola in the company of St. Paulinus of Nola, another two at Messina, and seven or so in Africa (where they befriended St. Augustine of Hippo and where M. founded a monastery) they moved on to Jerusalem, where Melania founded a religious community for women at the Mount of Olives and later, after Pinian's death, a men's monastery which she directed with Gerontius' assistance.
5) Marius of Avenches (d. 596). We know about M., a late sixth-century bishop of Aventicum (today's Avenches in Switzerland) chiefly from his metrical epitaph in the church of St. Thyrsus (later, St. Marius) in Lausanne, to which latter he had moved his see. He is said to have been both a goldsmith who made sacred vessels for his church and a farmer who ploughed his own land (it's not clear whether these descriptions are purely metaphorical) as well as a man of learning, the founder from his own funds of a church on his own land, and a protector of the poor. Surviving from M.'s pen is a brief chronicle covering the years 455 to 581. Today is his _dies natalis_.
Aventicum, once the largest Roman town in what now is Switzerland, seems to have been considerably decayed by M.'s time. Herewith an illustrated, English-page dealing in large part with its Roman remains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventicum
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the additions of Zoticus of Constantinople, Melania the Younger, and Marius of Avenches)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|