medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, January 25, is the feast day of:
Ananias of Damascus (d. 1st century) is the Christian of Damascus who healed St. Paul of his physical blindness and who baptized him (Acts 9:10-18). Byzantine tradition considers Ananias to have been one of the Seventy or Seventy-Two disciples (in Orthodox churches, apostles), as well as the first bishop of Damascus, and the evangelist of Eleutheropolis in Palestine. He was beaten and then stoned to death on October 1, 70.
Ananias curing Paul's blindness as depicted in a twelfth-century bible from Chartres (Troyes, Médiathèque de l'agglomération troyenne, ms. 2391, fol. 214v; image expandable): http://tinyurl.com/b7qlxn
Ananias's martyrdom as depicted in the (1335-1350) frescoes 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/ybte9zf
Ananias baptizing Paul in a panel of the Retable of St. Paul (late fourteenth-/very early fifteenth-century) at the cathedral museum, Mdina, Malta: http://www.joannalace.org.uk/pics/fig5.png
A view of the retable as a whole: http://www.maltavista.net/img/photo/images4/st_171-15.jpg
Ananias baptizing Paul (upper register) as depicted in a (1463) copy of Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 242r): http://tinyurl.com/ybr7orx
Apollo, abbot (c395) - as he stressed that cheerfulness of heart was necessary to bear the fruit of charity, strangers could recognize him by his joyful countenance (despite his many acts of penance).
Publius, abbot (c380) - his asceticism was fed by his adding a new exercise of penance and devotion every day.
Dwyn/Donwen/Donwenna/Dwynwen (5th/6th century) was a popular saint in Wales for centuries, where her name still survives in the place names Llanddwyn and Porthddwyn. She was a virgin; according to legend she prayed to be delivered from her would-be husband, Maelon, who was turned to ice. Dwyn then made three requests of God: that her suitor be unfrozen, that all true lovers either succeed in their desire or be cured of their passion, and that she herself would never want to be married. She became a nun in Anglesey. She is the patron saint of lovers in Wales, where her day is celebrated much as St. Valentine’s Day is elsewhere.
Poppo of Stablo (d. 1048) One of the great monastic figures of the eleventh century, Poppo was born to a noble Belgian family in 978. At first he followed a military course, but after several pilgrimages entered the monastery of St-Thierry (Rheims) in 1006. He quickly became a favored protégé of Richard of St. Vanne and an advisor to Henry II. In 1020 Emperor Henry named Poppo abbot of the great monasteries of Stablo and Malmedy. This began nearly thirty years of intensive and sometimes controversial monastic reform through much of Germany and what is now Belgium.
Heinrich/Henry Suso (Blessed) (d. 1366) The Rhineland mystic Suso was born in c1300 to a knightly family near Lake Constance, a noble family of the lords of Berg. His Latin surname 'Suso' and its German equivalent 'Seuse' both reflect a decision to honor rather his mother, a von Seusen of Überlingen on Lake Constance. At the age of thirteen he entered the Order of Preachers at Konstanz, where at the age of eighteen he received his first mystical experience. Sent to the order's Studium Generale at Köln, Suso studied under Meister Eckhart, in accordance with some of whose teachings he wrote his polemical Buch der Wahrheit and his manual of meditation Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit (later expanded in its Latin version Horologium Sapientiae). After defending his orthodoxy to his superiors, he returned to the upper Rhine and later was transferred to Ulm, where he spent the remainder of his life.
A popular preacher and personally very ascetic, Suso practiced mortification of the flesh into his middle years, including wrapping iron chains around his body and branding himself with the name of Jesus. His poetically charged writings in German and in Latin were translated widely. He was beatified in 1831. Today is his dies natalis. Dominicans celebrate him liturgically on the Roman Calendar's nearest feria, January 23. His Vita is variously said to have been written by Suso in the third person or by his spiritual advisee Elsbeth Stägel, a nun at Töss. An English-language translation of it is here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/suso/susolife.html
A late fifteenth-century illuminated copy the Vita (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 710 [322]) is accessible here (it's the last item on the page; the male and female Dominicans in the illuminations are sometimes said to be depictions of Suso and of Elsbeth Stägel):
http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/sbe
The Suso-Haus (also Susohaus) in Überlingen, a museum and cultural center devoted to Suso, occupies one of the city's oldest originally medieval dwellings. A renovation is planned for this year. Herewith a German-language account and some views: http://tinyurl.com/dc8aev , http://www.marion-merkelbach.de/Suso.htm
happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
"Nobility depends not on parentage or place of birth, but on breadth of compassion and depth of loving kindness. If we would be noble, let us be greathearted." - anon [log in to unmask]
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