medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, April 6, is the feast of:
Brychan (?) is a rather legendary Welsh saint. The legends say he was a Welsh king associated with the region of Brecknock. He had eleven sons and twenty-four daughters, who created a clan of saints (including several saints in later generations).
Martyrs of Persia (d345) 120 Christians were executed on this day in Seleucia at the order of the anti-Christian King Shapur II. The majority of those martyred appear to have been consecrated virgins, priests, and deacons. During the six months of imprisonment that preceded their execution, the rich lady Yasondocht supported the group, then before their execution gave them all long white robes; after their beheading, she claimed their bodies, burying them where their bodies would be unmolested.
Marcellinus (d413) Flavius Marcellinus was a high-ranking imperial official sent in 411 to Africa, where his older brother Apringius was governor, to settle the Donatist controversy. He became good friends with St. Augustine, who dedicated to him Books 1-3 of The City of God. Marcellinus was Emperor Honorius' secretary. The emperor sent him to Carthage to adjudicate the dispute between Catholic and Donatist bishops. Marcellinus decided against the Donatists and ordered them to shut up and rejoin the catholic fold; he and his brother then enforced this decree with more rigor than charity. The Donatists got their revenge by accusing both brothers of involvement in a rebellion; the general in charge of stopping the rebels had the two summarily arrested and, notwithstanding an appeal on their behalf from Augustine, convicted and swiftly executed - earning himself a reprimand from the Emperor. Marcellinus is considered a martyr.
Celestine I, pope (d432) is said to have been a native of the Roman Campagna. A deacon of the Roman church, he is addressed with great respect in a letter from St. Augustine of 418. In 422 he succeeded pope St. Boniface I. At Rome Celestine suppressed the remaining Novatianists, taking away their churches and forcing them to meet in private homes. He restored the basilica that became Santa Maria in Trastevere (this had suffered damage in Alaric's sack in 410). During his pontificate the basilica that replaced the original titulus Sabinae was built on the Aventine; we know it now as Santa Sabina. Elsewhere, he was unsuccessful in getting the church of Africa to recognize his primacy. In 429 he sent St. Germanus of Auxerre to Britain in a campaign to suppress Pelagianism; the deacon Palladius, the first recorded Christian missionary to Ireland, accompanied Germanus. Celestine used an appeal from St. Cyril of Alexandria to condemn Nestorius in 430 and, through emissaries, successfully pursued this course in the following year at the First Council of Ephesus.
Eutychius of Constantinople (d. 582) We know about Eutychius chiefly from his Bios by his student, the priest. A Phrygian from a well-placed military family, he was educated at Constantinople, became a monk, and rose at Amasea in Pontus to be supervisor of all its monks. In 552 Eutychius succeeded St. Menas as patriarch of Constantinople and in 553 he presided at the fifth ecumenical council (II Constantinople). Doctrinal disagreements and his connections to Belisarius, of whom his father had been a trusted lieutenant, led to a falling out with his former backer the emperor Justinian I. The latter had Eutychius deposed and exiled internally (but only back to Amasea). Justin II, who succeeded to the purple late in 565, restored him.
In this frescoe (betw. 1335-1350) of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć, Eutychius is at the emperor's immediate right: http://tinyurl.com/yc2cos8
In this (1502) fresco of the same council, by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast, Eutychius is probably again the figure at the emperor's immediate right: http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/124/349/index.shtml
Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) Prudentius was a Spaniard who fled to Francia to escape Muslim persecution. He served as a court chaplain to Louis the Pious before becoming bishop of Troyes in c843. He was summoned by Hincmar of Reims to consider the case of the monk Gottschalk who had been condemned for teaching that Christ had died only for the elect, while the greater part of humanity had been irredeemably doomed by God from all eternity to sin and Hell. Gottschalk had been tortured and imprisoned - Prudentius thought the punishment excessive but his views did not please Hincmar of Reims or (St.) Rbanus Maurus. He is reported to have subscribed the anti-Gottschalkian articles of the synod of Quierzy in 853. He also wrote against John Scotus Eriugena's views on the predestination issue. He wrote several other works, was an active reformer, and founded two monasteries.
Today is Peter's dies natalis. His cult in Troyes only appears to have started in the 13th century. Some of his relics stayed at Troyes but others wound up at the monastery of Saint-Savin sur Gartempe in Poitou, where he is said to be figured in a twelfth-century mural painting in a crypt. We know about Peter from his own surviving writings, from two Vitae (BHL 6981b and 6981), from references to him by contemporaries, and from various documentary appearances.
Notker Balbulus ("the stammerer")(Blessed) (d912) Notker was born in c840, probably in the canton of St. Gallen (Switzerland). He was a child oblate to the monastery of St. Gall, where he remained his entire life. He is recorded as librarian (briefly) and as master of guests (over a period of several years). A prolific writer, he is the author of a Martyrology, a three-book metrical Vita of St. Gall, and the probable author of the Gesta Caroli Magni. He is best known for his influence on liturgical music. He seems to have invented the sequence hymn and he composed a considerable number of them, besides collecting others in his Liber Hymnorum. The entertaining Ekkehard IV offers anecdotes of him in his Casus s. Galli. Notker has an early thirteenth-century Vita (BHL 6251; c1214) arising out of an unsuccessful canonization campaign. He was beatified in 1512 with a cult authorized for his monastery. In the following year his cult was extended to the diocese of Konstanz. Here's a portrait (c1070; St. Gallen) of Notker as author: http://www.abcsvatych.com/images/n/notker.jpg
Celsus, archbishop of Armagh (A.D. 1129) Celsus, whose real name was Ceallach, was a grandson of archbishop Moeliosa of Armagh, the predecessor of Donald MacAmalgaidh. The insertion of S. Celsus in the Roman martyrology on the 6th April instead of the 4th, is due to an oversight of Baronius, who mistook a IV for a VI.
Bertha Bardi (d1197) founded the women's branch of the Vallombrosan order in c1150. She herself was abbess of Cauriglia, and later of Mantignano. She was beatified in 1731.
William of Eskill/Eskilsoe (d1203) William was a Frenchman who was a canon of the collegiate church of St. Genevieve in Paris, then a monk at S. Denis. In 1148 he transferred to a newly established house of canons regular and, in 1170, when Bishop Absalom of Roskilde sent asking for someone to reform the monastic life in his diocese, he travelled there. His canonry became a reform center for the whole country. William became abbot of Eskilsoe and succeeded, over much opposition, in his work of reform. He founded the monastery of Aebelholt. His personal life of extreme asceticism attracted wide attention, and he won a reputation fighting for ecclesiastical independence. Philip Augustus of France imprisoned him for two year for criticizing him. He was canonized in 1224, and his cult remained very popular until the Reformation.
Peter Martyr/-of Verona (d. 1252) The Dominican Peter was an effective preacher and a tireless inquisitor in northern Italy. He was ambushed and murdered by enemies who lodged a harvesting blade of some form in his skull. His cult was virtually immediate; canonization came swiftly in 1253.
Peter's tomb is in Milan's church of Sant'Eustorgio. Created in 1335-39 by Giovanni di Balduccio, it has moved around a bit but now is housed in the church's Cappella Portinari: http://tinyurl.com/44689y , http://tinyurl.com/bclkm
Detail (martyrdom of Peter and a companion): http://tinyurl.com/3pu7zd
Many detail views of the monument are here (this page also has views of a cycle of frescoes by Vincenzo Foppa dealing with Peter's miracles): http://tinyurl.com/4jt5cr
The recently uncovered fresco of Peter in the cathedral of Cremona is thought to have been painted not long after the saint's canonization:
http://www.vascellocr.it/art1.htm
Two views of a thirteenth-century miniature depicting Peter's martyrdom, in a psalter now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (MS M.72 fol. 140r): http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/icaimages/7/m72.140r.jpg , http://tinyurl.com/yd236uw
Peter's martyrdom as depicted in the (c1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 93r): http://tinyurl.com/ylfo3wn
In this fresco (c1290; attributed to Giotto) on the soffit of the entrance arch of the upper church of the basilica do San Francesco at Assisi, Peter is the saint at left (the other is St. Dominic of Caleruega): http://tinyurl.com/cfmc9b
Some views of Peter in the Thornham Parva retable (c1335; almost certainly from Thetford priory in Norfolk): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/528584471/sizes/l/ , http://tinyurl.com/cggqqh
The retable as a whole (Peter at far right): http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/244975
In Beato Angelico's St. Peter Martyr Altarpiece (c1428) Peter is second from right in the major figures and above his full-length portrait is a scene depicting his martyrdom. An expandable view of this work (now in the Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence) is here:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/angelico/12/index.html
Beato Angelico is thought to have painted this miniature of Peter's martyrdom at about the same time as he executed his St. Peter Martyr Altarpiece: http://tinyurl.com/cux7yv
Catherine of Pallanza (d1478) became a hermit at the age of 14, moving to the mountains near Milan. There she attracted disciples and formed an Augustinian community.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
--
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. ~Sydney J. Harris
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