medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, March 25 is the feast of:
Melchizedek (c2000 BCE?) The "priest of Salem" who appears in Genesis, in
the story of Abraham.
Dismas (d. c29) is the name given to the Good Thief crucified with Jesus. An
Infancy gospel includes the story, popular in the Middle Ages, that Dismas
and Gestas (the Bad Thief) were highwaymen and robbed the holy family on the
way to Egypt. Gestas wanted to kill them; Dismas bought him off with 40
drachmae; the infant Jesus then predicted that the two would be crucified
with him and that D. would go to paradise. The unnamed gospel figure may
have been gifted with the name "Dismas" because in early art the two thieves
(especially in Syria) were depicted with sun and moon above them, sometimes
with the words for "east" and "west" inscribed. "Dismas" is close to the
Greek word for "east," so somebody may have mistaken the word for the good
thief's name. In the Middle Ages Dismas was, not surprisingly, the patron of
prisoners and thieves. There is a delightful 'Victorian' gothic church
dedicated to him next door to the prison in Kingston, Ontario, Canada which
was built by the inmates themselves. Santa Croce in Gerusalemme at Rome
appears to have at least two fragments of his cross. His cult is strong in
Cyprus and Bologna.
His feast represents a very early belief that the historical date of the
crucifixion was 25th March. In some churches the crucifixion of Christ was
therefore celebrated on this day. It's an interesting problem that Dismas'
death is celebrated according to the Gregorian calendar, but Jesus' is based
on a lunar calendar, so they are rarely commemorated on the same day.
Matrona of Thessalonica (?) We know about Matrona from Byzantine synaxary
notices deriving from a legendary Greek Passio, now lost, and from a Latin
version of the latter. These present her as a Christian girl of Thessalonica
who served as a handmaiden to the Jewish wife of a high military official
and who after accompanying her mistress to Jewish services would sneak out
and attend Christian ones instead. Her mistress discovered this and punished
her by locking her up for four days and starving her to death. Thinking to
conceal her crime, the woman then took Matrona’s body outside the city and
threw it from a cliff in order to make her death appear to have been an
accident. Matrona’s body was found, it was somehow determined (miraculously
revealed?) that she had been a Christian martyr, and she received a burial
church at Thessalonica. The (pseudo-) Hieronymian Martyrology enters her
under today's date. The synaxaries have Matrona at March 27 or 28, Florus of
Lyon, who knew her Latin Passio, entered her in his martyrology under March
15, which is where she stayed in the Latin West until the RM's revision of
2001.
The Annunciation. Already in the 2nd century, Tertullian referred to the
belief that the crucifixion took place on this day, and apparently it was a
traditional belief in Africa that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the
same day. Also known as Lady Day, the first known commemoration of this
feast is to be found in the statutes of Sonnatius, bishop of Reims (c. 625).
In years when the Annunciation falls on Good Friday a jubilee is declared
at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame at Le Puy, when a plenary indulgence can be
gained. The oldest attested jubilee at Le Puy was in 1407 when seven deaths
were reported in the crush of the crowds (inflated to 200 in some accounts).
Quirinus (A.D. 269) We know of Quirinus only that he was a roman executed
with the sword in prison in 269, and the body was thrown into the Tiber, but
was recovered by a priest named Pastor, who buried it in the Pontiani
cemetery, whence it was removed in the pontificate of Pope S. Zacharias.
When the monastery of Tengernsee, in Bavaria was founded, his remains were
translated there and placed in a shrine. Legend reports that during the
translatio the case containing the relics was set on the ground between
Gmund and Tegernsee - and a spring if Naphtha suddenly sprang up, which goes
by the name of Quirinus-oil. An important spring-based pilgrimage developed
to the site.
A 12th/13th century account makes Quirinus the murdered son of the
supposedly Christian emperor Philip the Arab and so provides the abbey with
an imperial cachet.
Humbert of Marolles (d. c680) Humbert was born at Maizières, on the river
Oise. Humbert was a disciple of St. Amand and co-founder and first abbot of
Marolles in Flanders. He seldom left his monastery, except to meet S.
Aldegunda, abbess of Maubeuge, with whom he had contracted an intimate union
of charity and prayers. In art he is sometimes shown with a bear carrying
his baggage.
Walter of Pontoise (d. 1095 or 1099) Walter was from Andainville (France).
He entered the Benedictine monastery of Rebais in northern France and a few
years later became first abbot of the newly founded monastery of Pontoise
near Paris. He had such great difficulties that he asked the pope to permit
his resignation. When the pope refused, Walter left Pontoise secretly and
hid himself at Cluny. The pope ordered him back to Pontoise. Walter's relics
were raised in 1153.
Thomasius (1337) - a Camaldolese hermit, he found the life too easy for him,
so he got permission to live in a cave (once supposedly inhabited by
Jerome).
Margaret Clitherow (1586) Margaret was a native of York, the daughter of a
prosperous candle maker, who married the butcher John Clitherow in 1571. A
few years after the marriage, Margaret converted to Catholicism. She was
notorious. Her husband was repeatedly fined because Margaret wouldn't attend
the services of the Church of England; she was even imprisoned for two
years, and on her release set up a Catholic school. She even sent her oldest
son to Douai to study, for which she was put under house arrest for over a
year. M was also a prominent hider of fugitive priests. In 1586 her house
was searched, and a missal and mass vessels were discovered. So she was
arrested and put on trial, but she refused to plead to protect those she had
helped. She refused to enter a plea, so was pressed (laid on the ground with
a door over her and then weights added to the door until she should finally
answer the courts with a plea.) and died, refusing to speak.
Not only that, no plea meant no trial at all. She was also saving her
children, her stepchildren and her neighbour’s children from being hauled
into the witness box and being bullied into giving the evidence to condemn
her. (There was no minimum age for giving evidence and no protection for
minors) Also this evidence would have fingered other Catholics in York. By
keeping silent she sabotaged the entire anti-Catholic clampdown and gained
the moral high ground in popular opinion - even among the extreme
Protestants in the neighbourhood. This was of course not only at the price
of her own life but the life of her unborn - and unbaptised - child. Has she
pleaded (guilty or not guilty would have made no odds) and been found guilty
then her execution would have been deferred until after the child's birth.
It was an even harder choice that it looked at first.
Visitors to York can see the house in the Little Shambles where she lived
for some time, and the dormer window at the Black Swan, which she hired as a
mass-house. You can also see her hand at the Bar Convent Museum in York -
it's in a cabinet, so you have to ask for someone to show you.
James Bird (1593) - died as a nineteen-year-old layman, hanged, drawn and
quartered in Winchester.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much
you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what
you don't."
Anatole France
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