medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (6. December) is the feast day of:
1) Nicholas of Myra (d. 4th cent.). Phyllis Jestice's excellent introduction of 2005 to this well known thaumaturge and saint of the Regno is here:
http://tinyurl.com/24fcyju
An illustrated page on N.'s relics:
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=946
An illustrated, English-language page on the examinations in the 1950s of the relics believed to be N.'s at Bari:
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=943
Some dedications:
a) N.'s eleventh-century church at Myra (now Demre in Turkey):
http://www.aysen.net/sonresims/demre.jpg
http://www.fethiyeyachting.com/st.nicholasdemrechurch.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ygjsae
http://tinyurl.com/ygrakyn
http://tinyurl.com/2bwg5nq
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3075/3198031197_187f03d888_b.jpg
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/stnic/images/bari-2.jpg
Mosaic floor panels:
http://www.fethiyeyachting.com/st.nicholasmosaic.jpg
http://www.fethiyeyachting.com/st.nicholasmosaics.jpg
N.'s former tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/ykv7rnl
http://tinyurl.com/35zp4g4
b) An illustrated, Italian-language account (more views at bottom) of the tenth- through thirteenth-century rupestrian chiesa di San Nicola at Casalrotto, a locality of Mottola (TA) in Apulia:
http://tinyurl.com/5g8wqw
A differently illustrated account begins about 4/5 of the way down this page:
http://www.terredelmediterraneo.org/itinerari/mottola.htm
c) Some other rupestrian dedications to N.:
San Nicola all'Ofra, outside of Matera (MT) in Basilicata:
http://www.ilvicinato.com/data/ofra-1.jpg
http://flickr.com/photos/somebodysavedme/1114395/sizes/o/
San Nicola dell'Annunziata at Matera:
http://www.lacittadelluomo.it/pagina_sez03_04a.htm
San Nicola dei Greci at Matera:
http://tinyurl.com/6apxrj
d) The basilica di San Nicola in Bari, begun in 1089 and consecrated in 1197.
Exterior:
http://www.athenaeum.ch/voyages/puglia/Bari_DSCN0076.jpg
http://www.arturocovitti.it/SNicola.htm
http://tinyurl.com/6dvtau
Interior:
http://www.pbase.com/querido/image/50660487
http://tinyurl.com/69y48r
http://www.pbase.com/querido/image/50660478
http://www.pbase.com/querido/image/50660480
http://www.pbase.com/querido/image/50660484
Crypt:
http://www.pbase.com/querido/image/50660486
http://tinyurl.com/5fzkys
N.'s tomb:
http://tinyurl.com/3yv24ld
Virtual tour:
http://www.basilicasannicola.it/home/tour.php?lingua_id=1
Medieval reliquaries in the Treasury:
http://tinyurl.com/65frv3
http://tinyurl.com/5nefn7
N. crowning Roger II:
http://tinyurl.com/69b58g
e) Two views of the originally eleventh-century church of San Nicola at Castiglione di Sicilia (ME) in Sicily:
http://tinyurl.com/yhd7sdj
http://tinyurl.com/y6pr2r
f) Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally eleventh- and twelfth-century abbazia di San Nicolò at San Gemini (TR) in Umbria:
http://www.sangeminiarte.it/abbazia_san_nicolo.php
http://www.bellaumbria.net/San_Gemini/
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/29c3z8n
http://tinyurl.com/24wp75x
The pertinent Italia nell'Arte Medievale page (but the site is, alas, still off-line):
http://tinyurl.com/3amb2cl
Its eleventh- or twelfth-century portal assembled from recent spolia and now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (after many years the restored church now has a copy):
http://tinyurl.com/2vykg65
http://www.metmuseum.org/Imageshare/md/large/DP212404.jpg
http://www.metmuseum.org/Imageshare/md/large/DP212405.jpg
g) The originally eleventh-/twelfth-century crkva sv. Nikole at Prahulje in Nin (Zadar) in coastal Coatia:
http://tinyurl.com/2b2e4ko
http://tinyurl.com/263jw2d
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cycomarc/4170336860/
http://tinyurl.com/2dahucp
h) The originally early twelfth-century (ca. 1114) ex-monastic church of San Nicola (Nicolò) di Trullas, near today's Semestene (SS) in Sardinia:
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria6/pages/12San_Nicola.html
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria6/pages/13san_nicola.html
http://www.ignaziogrecu.com/images/foto/Romanico_sardo/trullas2.jpg
http://web.tiscali.it/romanico/c173.htm
i) At Ottana (NU), in the former Sardinian judicate of Torres (or Logudoro; dissolved in 1259), is another noteworthy dedication to N. The cathedral of a diocese suppressed in 1501, this is an originally twelfth-century structure replacing an earlier church on the same site and consecrated to N. and to the BVM in 1160. Severely damaged by an earthquake, it was rebuilt towards the end of the century. The facade and the front end of the south side are from the building's earlier phase. An illustrated, Italian-language account of this church is here:
http://www.ilportalesardo.it/monumenti/nuottana.htm
and some expandable views are here (second set in this gallery):
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria4/
j) At Villaputzu (CA), in the former Sardinian judicate of Cagliari, is the originally late twelfth-century church of San Nicola di Quirra (Quirra is the name of the locality). Considerably less attractive than either San Nicola di Trullas or San Nicola di Ottana, this building is notable chiefly for its being Sardinia's only "romanesque" church in brick. An illustrated, Italian-language account of it is here:
http://www.ilportalesardo.it/monumenti/cavillaputzu.htm
and some further views (left-click expandable) are here:
http://web.tiscali.it/romanico/c65.htm
k) Some views of surviving medieval elements of the originally late twelfth- (perhaps) or thirteenth-century church of San Nicola at Pisa (rebuilt in the seventeenth century):
http://www.stilepisano.it/immagini21/index3.htm
Some medieval decor in this church:
http://tinyurl.com/3xpaa5
l) An illustrated, Italian-language page on the recently restored, originally twelfth-/thirteenth-century chiesa di San Nicola at Capalbio (GR) in southern Tuscany, reworked in the fifteenth and and the eighteenth century and still preserving considerable frescoing from the fifteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/ygr822a
m) The originally early thirteenth-century (ca. 1205) church of St. Nicholas in the Kintsvisi monastery at Kareli (Shida Kartli) in Georgia:
http://tinyurl.com/2469twp
http://expo.khi.fi.it/gallery/georgia/katli/kintsvisi
n) Some views of the ruined earlier thirteenth-century S:t Nikolai kyrka in Visby (Gotland):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreweick/333215028/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24736216@N07/3769069044/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28668451@N00/319103550
http://tinyurl.com/25gf7m8
http://tinyurl.com/26mua5w
http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/ME010147.html
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/3726de/
o) The originally early thirteenth-century Sint-Nikolaaskerk at Gent/Ghent/Gand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas%27_Church,_Ghent
http://tinyurl.com/64smtu
http://www.trabel.com/gent/images/gent08-15.jpg
Marjorie Greene's medrelart album on this church:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/belgium/211
p) The originally late thirteenth-century (1292) church of St. Nicholas on Lipnya in Veliky Novgorod, very badly damaged in World War II and since rebuilt:
http://visualrian.com/images/item/719372
q) The originally earlier fourteenth-century (1300-1340; later modifications) cathedral of San Nicolò at Nicosia (EN) in Sicily has a belltower whose base is a reworked Norman military structure (a number of churches on the island have similar belltowers) showing an ogive seemingly of Sicilian Arabic inspiration, while the part of the tower immediately above it is a "gothic" addition from sometime during the period 1393-1455:
http://tinyurl.com/3eyez3
In the background, one can see the main portal of this much rebuilt church. An illustrated, Italian language discussion of this portal is here:
http://tinyurl.com/8rabl
Most noteworthy about this church (an Italian national monument since 1940) are the recently restored paintings, dated to the middle of the fifteenth century, that cover the interior of its wooden roof. Some detail views follow:
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-37-39-6532.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-37-10-9227.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-36-51-3256.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-36-25-4871.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-36-10-2819.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-35-55-6291.jpg
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/458/458-01-35-20-7018.jpg
An Italian-language site on this roof is here:
http://www.cormorano.net/nicosia/tettoligneo/index.html
Click on "Le Immagini" for a series of isolated views of (mostly) single details, many of which are not among the ones reproduced above.
r) The mostly early fifteenth-century Niguliste kirik in Tallinn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nicholas%27_Church,_Tallinn
http://tinyurl.com/5kmww8
s) An illustrated, French-language page on, and other views of, the mostly late fifteenth- and earlier sixteenth-century basilique de Saint-Nicolas at Saint-Nicolas-de-Port (Meurthe-et-Moselle):
http://tinyurl.com/2bvqm3k
http://tinyurl.com/22m3g6w
http://tinyurl.com/36ufplf
http://tinyurl.com/39lsbxb
Its arm reliquary of N., donated in 1471 by duke René I of Lorraine (René of Anjou) and his (second) wife Jeanne de Laval:
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/stnic/images/golden-arm-lg.jpg
http://www.introibo.fr/IMG/jpg/1206bras.jpg
Some portrayals:
a) N. (image at right; at left, the Theotokos) as portrayed on an eleventh-century Byzantine lead seal offered for sale by CoinArchives.com:
http://tinyurl.com/36n7yjg
b) N. as depicted in the later twelfth-century frescoes of the originally eleventh-century church of Ag. Anargyroi in Kastoria (Kastoria prefecture) in northwestern Greece:
http://tinyurl.com/35q6wod
c) The earlier thirteenth-century Life of St. Nicholas window (ca. 1225-1235?) in the cathedral of Chartres:
English-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/29vkq8b
Views (photographs by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/2b77yj7
d) N. as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1230s) in the narthex of the church of the Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/28jzv3r
Detail view (N.):
http://tinyurl.com/2e3v3nx
e) N. as depicted in a mid-thirteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=446
f) N. giving alms as depicted in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 90v):
http://tinyurl.com/262f2jt
g) N. as depicted (with Christ holding a Gospels, the Theotokos holding an omophorion, and saints) in a late thirteenth-century icon (1294) from the church of St. Nicholas on Lipnya in Veliky Novgorod, now in the Novgorod State United Museum:
http://tinyurl.com/28wxm65
h) N. as depicted in a late thirteenth or very early fourteenth-century fresco, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the bema of the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/2878om4
i) N. as depicted in a late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century fresco in 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/y8wqrl7
j) N. as depicted on an icon (detail view) donated to the church of St. Nicholas in Bari by the Serbian tsar Stefan Uroš IV Dušan in 1327:
http://tinyurl.com/246z6sb
k) N. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) in the apse 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:
http://tinyurl.com/yzb6xly
l) N. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the nave in 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/2a4j82d
Detail view (N.):
http://tinyurl.com/2bcl6qc
m) Three pages of views of the Life of St. Nicholas cycle in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the parecclesion of St. Nicholas in 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, begin here:
http://tinyurl.com/39ajslh
n) N.'s birth as depicted by the Fauvel Master (attrib.) in an earlier fourteenth-century collection of French-language saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 141v):
http://tinyurl.com/2fnf2zx
o) N. giving alms as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (betw. 1326 and 1350) collection of French-language saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 143r):
http://tinyurl.com/2bovzh4
p) N. and scenes from his Life as portrayed on a fourteenth century relief mounted on the exterior of the basilica di San Nicola in Bari:
http://tinyurl.com/387dxpj
q) N. with scenes from his Life as depicted in a later fourteenth-century Moscow School icon now in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=443
r) N. (second from left) as depicted in a panel, now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, from his dismembered earlier fifteenth-century Quaratesi polyptych (ca. 1425):
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gentile/quarate.jpg
Four predella panels from the same altarpiece now in the Pinacoteca, Musei Vaticani, Città del Vaticano:
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/PIN/PIN_Sala02_02.html
Larger views of two of those predella panels:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gentile/quarate1.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gentile/quarate2.jpg
Another predella panel from this altarpiece (supplicants at N.'s tomb in Bari), this one now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gentile/quarate0.jpg
s) N. with the three boys as depicted in the earlier fifteenth-century Hours of Marguerite d'Orléans (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1156 B, fol. 172r):
http://tinyurl.com/3322ur8
t) N. as depicted in a fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the Karelian Fine Arts Museum in Petrozavodsk:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=2770
u) Scenes from N.'s Life 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, fols. 117v, 118r, 119r, 121r, 122r):
http://tinyurl.com/36fgjjt
http://tinyurl.com/37wdb45
http://tinyurl.com/2vbe4gt
http://tinyurl.com/3y37c7a
http://tinyurl.com/32v9g3b
v) N. with the three boys as portrayed in a late fifteenth or very early sixteenth-century wooden statue of southern Netherlandish origin now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/3xawexg
w) The dome portrait of N. and scenes from his Life as depicted in 1502 by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast will be found on these pages:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/1195/
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/1214/?frag
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/1278/?frag
x) N. as depicted (with Christ holding a Gospels and the Theotokos holding an omophorion) in an earlier sixteenth-century Ukrainian icon from the village of Sushystya the Great (Lviv region):
http://tinyurl.com/2c9jhfy
y) The earlier sixteenth-century St Nicholas window in the Church of All Saints, Hillesden (Bucks; photographs by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/368krjo
Another view of the window as a whole:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/erichardyuk/413775089/
Another set of views:
http://www.therosewindow.com/pilot/Hillesden/Sa-Ew.htm
2) Asella (d. ca. 405). We know about the Roman virgin A. from three letters of St. Jerome (_Epp._ 24, 45, 65). Before her birth a premonitory vision informed her father of her holiness. At about the age of twelve A. retired to a small cell that she left only to visit the tombs of the martyrs. She received ecstatic visions. Jerome considered A. a model of chastity and self-renunciation. She may well be the beautiful virgin A. said by Palladius (_Historia lausiaca_, 41) to have grown old in a monastery. Her putative relics are preserved in Rome's basilica dei Santi Bonifacio e Alessio on the Aventine and in Cremona's chiesa di Sant'Abbondio. Here's a black-and-white view of A.'s effigy reliquary in the latter church:
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90496/90496.JPG
3) Obitius of Niardo (d. ca. 1204). O. (in Italian, Obizio or Obizzo) was a successful soldier from Niardo in today's Brescia province of Lombardy. During the exceptionally bloody battle of Rudiano (a.k.a. Malamorti; 7. July 1191) between the Brescians and their Milanese allies on one side and the Cremonese and their Bergamasque allies on the other, he was taking part in the massacre of the latter when a temporary bridge on which they had been retreating gave way and caused them and their pursuers to fall into the river Oglio. O. narrowly escaped drowning. A subsequent vision of Hell caused him to give up the profession of arms and to become a penitent.
In 1197, having either abandoned his family or won them over to the loss of income and standing his decision had entailed, O. entered the great Benedictine monastery of San Salvatore / Santa Giulia at Brescia as an oblate, where he died on this day early in the thirteenth century. O. was buried in the monastery. In the fifteenth century, apparently in consequence of a miraculous eruption of liquid at his grave, relics said to be his were translated to the main altar of the monastery's basilica of San Salvatore where they remained until 1798, the year following the monastery's suppression. They were then translated to the parish church of San Maurizio at Niardo, in whose modern successor they remain today.
In the 1520s the painter Romanino executed a series of frescoes in and on a chapel in the base of the belltower of Brescia's San Salvatore depicting scenes of O.'s life. A brief, illustrated, Italian-language account of that church is here (the chapel is at left after the two columns):
http://tinyurl.com/29cez6m
Views from other angles:
http://tinyurl.com/yhtm7xm
http://tinyurl.com/26euzsh
In 1900 O.'s cult was confirmed with the designation of Saint. Here's a view of O.'s relics during a recent annual display at Niardo:
http://tinyurl.com/2zdaaw
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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