medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. December) is the feast day of:
1) Maurus of Rome (?). A Roman saint of the cemetery of Thraso on the Via Salaria Nova, the young M. has a verse memorial by pope St. Damasus I (_Epigrammata Damasiana_, ed. Ferrua, no. 44). Legend made him a son of Chrysanthus and Daria (25. October in today's RM; medievally, 29. November or 1. December) and gave him a brother named Jason. Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM commemorated M. and Jason on 3. December as the martyred sons of the tribune Claudius and his wife Hilaria.
2) Eulalia of Mérida (d. 304, supposedly). According to Prudentius, whose very stylized and probably largely fictional hymn celebrating her (_Peristephanon_, 3) is our earliest documentation of her cult, E. was a girl of twelve whose savage martyrdom culminated in her being burned to death. Following her late antique Passio (BHL 2700, 2700b), the late ninth-century _Cantilène de sainte Eulalie_ has her burned and then decapitated, with her soul flying to heaven in the form of a dove.
A text of Prudentius' poem is here:
http://meta.montclair.edu/latintexts/prudentius/crowns3.html
and an English-language translation is here:
http://tinyurl.com/y54jl6
In the heavily restored sixth-century procession of the virgins in Ravenna's Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, E. follows St. Agnes:
http://flickr.com/photos/copetan/2248803911/sizes/l/
A text of the _Cantilène de sainte Eulalie_ ("Buona pulcella fut Eulalia"), with a facsimile of the original manuscript text (Bibliothèque de Valenciennes, ms. 150, fol.141v) and a translation into modern French, is here:
http://www.restena.lu/cul/BABEL/T_CANTILENE.html
Another text, accompanied by notes on grammar and vocabulary:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/ofrol-4-X.html
Some views of E.'s church at Mérida in Spain's Badajoz province (1230, with remains of fifth- and ninth-century predecessors and built over part of a fourth-century necropolis):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertrd/2071345507/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/turq8
http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/staeulaliamerida.jpg
The fourteenth-century Eulalia altarpiece belonging to the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca:
http://tinyurl.com/y2qahx
Scenes from E.'s Passio as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 82v):
http://tinyurl.com/ycjel8n
3) Valeria of Limoges (?). V. (n French, Valérie) is a presumed martyr of Limoges whose cult first comes to light in the early Vitae of that city's seemingly third-century protobishop St. Martial (earliest witnesses from perhaps the late ninth century and certainly the tenth). These say that she was a young virgin who was betrothed to the duke of Aquitaine, who was converted to Christianity by M., and who then made a vow of chastity; the enraged duke had her decapitated and M. built a martyrial church over her grave. A probably late tenth-century sermon on V.'s life and miracles (BHL 8475-8477) documents a translation of her remains in 985 by the nuns of Saint-Martial at Limoges to their priory at today's Chambon-sur-Voueize (Creuse). V. is also the subject of a legendary Passio (BHL 8478-8480) whose earliest witnesses are said to be of the twelfth century.
Prior to its revision of 2001, when she ceased to grace its pages, the RM commemorated V. on 9. December. Today is her feast day in the diocese of Limoges. It was also her feast day there in at least the later fifteenth century. See this calendar in a Book of Hours for the Use of Limoges put up on the Web by Erik Drigsdahl:
http://www.chd.dk/cals/limogeskal.html
A view of a later twelfth-century (ca. 1175-1185) reliquary châsse for V., now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg:
http://tinyurl.com/ye3lqv2
A French-language page on, and other views of, the eleventh-/thirteenth-century abbatiale Sainte Valérie at Chambon-sur-Voueize:
http://tinyurl.com/yc8qfs8
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13430595.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13430578.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/y8o9d83
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2135526.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13430538.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13430521.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yjhj7q9
V.'s later fourteenth-century reliquary bust at this church:
http://tinyurl.com/yca7ao2
The bust as described by Patrimoine de France:
http://tinyurl.com/6bjlkf
M. consecrating V. a virgin as depicted in an illuminated earlier fourteenth-century French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 134r):
http://tinyurl.com/yhqogug
V.'s relics are enshrined in a modern reliquary (inspired by the medieval one at Chambon-sur-Voueize) at Limoges' church of Saint-Michel-des-Lions:
http://site.voila.fr/confrerie.st.martial/valeriecpe.htm
4) Gemellus (d. 362, supposedly). G. is a saint of Galatia whose cult at Sykeon is attested in George Eleusius' Bios of his master St. Theodore the Sykeote (d. 613). He had a now lost, seemingly rather legendary Passio from which his Byzantine synaxary notices derive. According to these, he was arrested at the provincial capital of Ancyra (now Ankara) during the Julianic persecution and at the very moment when Julian arrived in that city. Still according to these notices, G. was subjected to various tortures and finally was taken in the emperor's train to Edessa, where he was put to death by crucifixion. Historians have found Julian's supposed presence in Edessa in 362 very difficult to square with what else is known of the emperor's movements in that year.
A reduced, black-and-white image of G.'s martyrdom as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, fol. 235r):
http://tinyurl.com/2bn5nml
5) Thomas of Farfa (d. ca. 720?). T. (also Thomas of Maurienne) is probable actual founder and the traditional second founder of the Benedictine great abbey of Farfa in what is now Fara in Sabina (RI) in easternmost Lazio. That house is documented from the early years of eighth century and was then seemingly rather new. A subsequently influential papal charter of 704 incorporates language from an undated charter of duke Faroald II of Spoleto claiming to have restored through T. an earlier foundation on the site by a bishop Laurentius. The latter's historicity, though now considered by many to be doubtful, seemingly was unquestioned in the Middle Ages.
In the later eighth century St. Ambrose Autpert, abbot of San Vincenzo al Volturno, writing the Vita of those less well known saints of the Regno Paldo, Tato, and Taso (BHL 6415), presents them as having founded San Vincenzo from Farfa under T.'s direction. According to the probably originally later ninth-century _Libellus constructionis Farfensis_ (an early history of the abbey surviving in a fragmentary, eleventh-century form), T. came from Gaul and, in the view of some, had been born in Maurienne.
T.'s Vita (BHL 8250) forms part of Gregory of Catino's earlier twelfth-century _Chronicon Farfense_. Building upon earlier tradition as indicated above, it presents T. as a Benedictine monk of Maurienne who when on pilgrimage in the Holy Land was inspired by a vision received in Jerusalem's church of the Holy Sepulchre in which the BVM enjoined him to re-open in Italy a neglected basilica of which she was the titular and which had been founded by Laurentius, here described as a saint of Syrian origin, and who then did that very thing at the site so miraculously determined. The abbey, which was built on the premises of an ancient villa, is still dedicated to the BVM; it takes its common name from the adjacent river Farfa. T.'s feast on this day is recorded in Farfa calendars from the eleventh century onward. In the twelfth century the lections for his office were revised to give T. a scope of activity closely approximating the abbey's territorial claims.
Like his fellow founders Sts. Paldo, Tato and Taso of San Vincenzo al Volturno and St. Petronax, the also eighth-century second founder of the abbey of St. Benedict at Montecassino, T. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Illustrated, English-language and Italian-language pages on the abbey of Farfa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farfa_Abbey
http://tinyurl.com/3457pgf
The abbey's own sets of views:
http://www.abbaziadifarfa.it/immagini-di-farfa/
6) Gregory III, pope (d. 741). A Roman priest of Syrian origin, G. acceded to the papacy by acclaim in 731 following the death of Gregory II. According to the _Liber Pontificalis_, he was adequately educated in Holy Writ, was well instructed in Latin and in Greek, and had memorized the Psalms and was skilled in their explication. G. was the last pope to seek confirmation of his election from the exarch in Ravenna. His intense opposition to the imperially promoted policy prohibiting the display of icons led to the transfer from papal jurisdiction to that of the patriarch of Constantinople of the official church in imperially controlled southern Italy, Sicily, and Illyricum and to the papacy's loss of its estates in these territories.
With very mixed results, G. devoted much of his pontificate to the defense of the duchy of Rome against Lombard aggression. He was of material assistance in the recovery of Ravenna for the exarchate after its capture by king Liutprand in 733, he strengthened the walls of Rome and of the port of Civitavecchia, he allied Rome with the southern Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento (then seeking to maintain autonomy vis-a-vis Pavia) and suffered the loss of several fortresses when Liutprand asserted his authority in Spoleto, and he unsuccessfully sought from Charles Martel the sort of Frankish intervention that later was provided by Pepin the Short and by Charlemagne.
G. actively supported St. Boniface's mission in Germany. In Rome he restored and/or beautified numerous churches, one being Santa Maria ad Martyres (a.k.a. the Pantheon), whose roof he shielded with lead tiles replacing the copper ones removed by Constans II in 663. G. was buried in an oratory he had constructed in St. Peter's on the Vatican. Our first evidence of his receiving a cult comes from his inclusion in the ninth-century martyrology of St. Ado of Vienne.
Another of the churches renewed by G. was the _titulus Chrysogoni_, now San Crisogono in Trastevere. Rebuilt in the twelfth century and again in the seventeenth, it preserves in its lower church (the old church, abandoned and filled in with rubble for the twelfth-century rebuilding) fragmentary frescoes dating from the sixth century to the eleventh. Some from the eighth century may very well be survivors of those referred to by the _Liber Pontificalis_ in its account of G.'s benefactions to this church. Marjorie Greene's views of San Crisogono on her Medieval Religion site at Shutterfly are here:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/31
While we're here, a few views of San Crisogono's splendid cosmatesque floor (thirteenth-century, slightly restored):
http://tinyurl.com/5kbstz
http://tinyurl.com/6e5b65
http://tinyurl.com/2x52vt
http://tinyurl.com/5gdgxt
7) Luke of Melicuccà (d. 1114). L. (also L. of Isola [di] Capo Rizzuto) was born around the middle of the eleventh century at today's Melicuccà (RC) in Calabria, when that region, then largely populated by people of Greek language and culture, had just ceased to be part of the (Eastern) Roman Empire. He became a monk, was raised to the priesthood for his merits, and by 1092 was bishop of what's now Isola [di] Capo Rizzuto (KR). His Bios (BHG 2237), thought to have been written shortly after his death, makes him out to have been a peripatetic preacher of note among the Greek communities of eastern and southern Calabria. Charter evidence puts him in Sicily as well, preaching and ordaining Greek-rite priests.
L. founded a monastery dedicated to St. Nicholas at Viotorito near Rossano (CS) in northeastern Calabria, retired there toward the end of his life, and died surrounded by his region's bishops and abbots and by other monks and priests. Miracles both lifetime and immediately posthumous soon led to his acclamation as a saint and he has been so considered by the Greek-rite church in Italy ever since. In the latter he is also sometimes known as Luke the Grammarian. The Roman-rite church in the dioceses of Oppido-Palmi and Crotone-Santa Severina considers 9. December to be his _dies natalis_ and celebrates him on that day.
L.'s Bios -- also an interesting document for what it says about the uneasy relations between the Greek church in southern Italy and its new Frankish overlords ("Frankish" in the Byzantine sense, of course) -- survives thanks to its inclusion in the great menologion written for Santissimo Salvatore at Messina in the early fourteenth century. It has been edited, annotated, and translated into Italian by Giuseppe Schirò as _Vita di s. Luca, vescovo di Isola Capo Rizzuto_ (Palermo: Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neogreci, 1954). Another annotated Italian translation will be found on the Web at:
http://digilander.libero.it/ortodossia/Luca%20il%20grammatico.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Thomas of Farfa)
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