medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, February 12, is the feast day of:
Marina (?) A pious fiction tells that Marina was the daughter of a man who
became a monk in Bithynia; he took Marina with him to the monastery dressed
as a boy. When (s)he grew up, Marina was accused of impregnating a local
woman and, still disguising her sex, was dismissed for it. She was
readmitted five years later and put to work at the lowliest tasks as
penance. Marina's sex was only revealed at her death. Most likely this is
just a retelling of the legend of St. Pelagia.
The 10,000 martyrs (d. c300) Two different groups of martyrs have the same
name. The group celebrated today appears in the Martyrium Romanum as a large
group of soldiers executed along with Bishop Anthimos of Nicomedia by being
thrown off a cliff at Diocletian's orders. (There's a great Albrecht Durer
painting on the theme.) The other group, celebrated on 22 June, is a group
of 10,000 soldiers who according to legend were crucified on Mt. Ararat.
Eulalia of Barcelona (d. c304, supposedly) is one of Barcelona's principal
patron saints. Opinions are divided on whether she is a doublet of Eulalia
of Mérida or else an altogether different person whose hagiographic dossier,
which begins in the seventh century, has been strongly colored by
(contaminated by) elements of the legend of her much earlier attested
homonym from Mérida. Not until after Eulalia's invention and translation of
878 (recorded in BHL 2697) did her cult spread outside her northern Iberian
homeland.
Eulalia's sarcophagus in the crypt (1327-1339, by masters from Pisa and
Siena) of Barcelona's late thirteenth- to twentieth-century Catedral de la
Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia: http://tinyurl.com/ytnfdn ,
http://tinyurl.com/2ytyo2
Julianus the Hospitaller (7th century) Legend reports that Julianus was born
sometime in the seventh century in either Belgium or Spain. In a dream, a
deer told Julianus that he would kill his own parents, whereupon Julianus
fled from his parents' house. One day while Julianus was hunting, his
parents turned up at his home. Julianus' wife put her in-laws in her own
bedchamber. Julianus came home, thought he saw his own wife in bed with a
strange man, and killed both his parents. After this, Julianus became a
full-time penitent, travelling with his wife to Rome for absolution. They
wandered until they came to a dangerous river and set up a hospice and ferry
service. One freezing night, the exhausted Julianus heard a voice outside
calling his name and asking for transport. Julianus carried the infirm,
leprous stranger inside, and fearing that he might die, put him in his own
bed. A short while later, the stranger rose in splendour into mid-air and
proclaimed: "Julian, the Lord sent me to tell you that he has accepted your
penance, and that both of you will, in a little time, find rest in the
Lord." Julian and his wife duly died shortly thereafter.
He was important also as a married saint. She (author whose name I erased
by accident) connects the importance of marriage at this time with Philippe
Auguste's repudiation of Ingeborg and Innocent III's subsequent
pronouncements on the sanctity of marriage. She also points out, however,
that although his penance was about the only thing in the vita to merit
canonization, and although his wife, Basilisse, shared in this with him,
washing the feet of the poor and awaiting Christ with a lighted lamp, she is
never represented nimbed and was only occasionally considered as a saint in
her own right. Julian became a patron saint of hospitals and travellers as
well as of Macerata in the Marche. There is a famous wood sculpture of
Julianus and the dogs in a local museum; the cathedral has a copy in it.
Almost certainly mythical, with no country or tomb ever attributed to
him. Thanks to Jacopo della Voragine, Antoninus of Florence, and Gustave
Flaubert, however, his tale is widely known.
Ethelwold/Aethelweald of Lindisfarne (d. c740/50) was a Northumbrian
disciple of St. Cuthbert. In time he became abbot of Melrose and then
bishop/abbot of Lindisfarne. Ethelwold is credited with production of the
Lindisfarne Gospels and was still alive when praised by Bede for his
worthiness. Ethelwold's relics were moved along with Cuthbert's when the
Vikings attacks started, and King Edgar moved them further to Westminster,
an event celebrated with a secondary feast on April 21.
Benedict of Aniane (d. 821). The monastic founder and Benedictine reformer
Benedict was a Goth by birth name (Witiza, latinized as Euticius) and
ancestry; his father was count of Maguelon(n)e, a town in Septimania that at
the time of Benedict's birth (c750) had been retaken from Muslim rule only a
dozen years earlier. He was brought up at the Frankish royal court under
Pepin the Short and then Charlemagne. His inability to prevent the death by
drowning of a brother while they were on campaign in Italy in 773/74
affected Benedict deeply, causing him to withdraw from the world and to
enter religion at a monastery near Dijon. Finding that house's practices too
lax, he became a hermit on inherited property at today's Aniane (Hérault),
where after a while he founded a monastery. This house, which in 792 was
expanded and raised to the dignity of a royal abbey, became a center of
monastic reform first in Aquitaine and later in all Francia.
Benedict became Louis the Pious' spiritual advisor and in 815/16 moved to
a new abbey Louis had built for him on the Inde near Aachen at today's
Kornelimünster (now incorporated within Aachen proper). In the years
immediately following he was heavily involved in the development both of a
Rule for canons and of the imperial Capitulare monasticum regulating
monastic life within Louis' domains.
Benedict has two Vitae: a brief one written not long after his death by a
monk of the abbey on the Inde (BHL 1095) and a longer one by St. Ardo of
Aniane, written in 822 and informed by its predecessor (BHL 1096). The
latter recounts several miracles of Benedict's from his time at Aniane
(saving the abbey from fire on two different occasions, driving off a swarm
of locusts, protecting a brother from bandits by means of his blessing).
Ludan (1202?) - after bells sounded miraculously near Strasbourg, people
found the body of someone who had just died; in his wallet, they found a
note that said, 'My name is Luda: I am the son of the noble Scottish prince
Hiltebold. For the honor of God I have become a pilgrim.' This was enough
for him to be deemed a saint. Later additions to his story were that when
his dad died, L. gave his inheritance to the poor and built a hospice, then
went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his way back home he had a dream near
Strasbourg telling that he was about to die. He was given communion by an
angel, and then died. Then all the bells in neighboring churches pealed
miraculously to mark his death.
Antony of Saxony and companions (d. 1369) (not formally canonized) Antony
and four other Franciscans went on a preaching mission in Bulgaria.
Adherents of the Orthodox Church killed them as heretics.
happy reading,
Terri
--
Math Problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].
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