medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (25. July) is the feast day of:
1) James the Great (d. ca. 42). J. and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee, were Galilean fisherman along with Simon Peter. They are prominent in gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry and are always given early in lists of the Twelve Apostles. According to Acts 12:1-2, J. was martyred on the orders of Herod Agrippa I (reigned, 41-44). The legend that he had evangelized parts of Spain is at least as old as the seventh century. In the early ninth century J.'s sepulchre was "discovered" in Galicia at what is now Santiago de Compostela. As is evidenced by its mention in the martyrology of Florus of Lyon (808-830), word of this event spread quickly. By the tenth century people from abroad were making pilgrimages to his shrine and J. was on his way to becoming a patron saint of pilgrims. He is frequently represented in art with a pilgrim's hat and staff, often too with the seashell that was the special badge of those returning from Compostela.
J.'s cathedral at Compostela was begun in 1075. Behind its baroque facade is a very impressive late twelfth-century main entrance, the Portico de la Gloria, whose numerous statues are the work of Santiago de Compostela's famous Maestro Mateo:
http://tinyurl.com/6ayf9y
http://tinyurl.com/lhfeld
On the south side of the cathedral is another twelfth-century onamental entrance, the Puerta de las Platerias ('Goldsmiths' Entrance'):
http://tinyurl.com/n3gd3b
Inside, Maestro Mateo's stone choir for the cathedral is said to have followed in around 1200. Demolished in the seventeenth century, it has been partly re-created in the cathedral museum using surviving pieces. See:
http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue11/reviews/gerrard.htm
J.'s putative resting place in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/md65e9
http://tinyurl.com/27o9kd7
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8096/dibujooe3.png
Many expandable views of the cathedral are here:
http://www.foroxerbar.com/viewtopic.php?t=7297
The Paradoxplace main page on the cathedral has some good views of its surviving medieval sculptures:
http://tinyurl.com/lupc76
Marjorie Greene's Medrelart album of views of this church:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/2333
In 1084 a donation was made to a hospital at today's Altopascio (LU) in Tuscany and on a major pilgrim route to Rome. It is not known whether the hospital were then already named for J., but it certainly was in the twelfth century, when it became the headquarters of a group of hospitalers of St. James who founded dependencies along major pilgrim routes (including one in Paris founded in 1180 whose modern successor church is still known as Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas [= Altopascio]). In 1239 Gregory IX recognized them as a protective order, the Brothers of St. James of Altopascio, guided by the rule of the parallel order of St. John of Jerusalem. Because some were sword-bearing and because their chief symbol was a tau cross, they became known as the Knights of the Tau. Their order was suppressed in 1587. Their church of San Jacopo Maggiore at Altopascio, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, preserves its twelfth-century facade and late thirteenth-century belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/hybqu
http://www.mondimedievali.net/pre-testi/images/guerz01b.jpg
Another Italian dedication to J. from the twelfth century is the much rebuilt church of San Giacomo Maggiore at Gavi (AL) in Piedmont, whose portal is worth a look:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/8/84/Gavi_2.JPG
A view of the originally late eleventh- or twelfth-century église Saint-Jacques at Le Pouget (Hérault):
http://tinyurl.com/5dsl7w
English- and Italian-language accounts (the latter not illustrated) of the originally earlier thirteenth- to earlier sixteenth-century chiesa di San Giacomo dall'Orio in Venice:
http://tinyurl.com/3g7mwoh
http://tinyurl.com/4xvu9on
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/l3357u
http://tinyurl.com/kocz2p
http://tinyurl.com/nfs9py
http://tinyurl.com/l8vubw
http://tinyurl.com/44bzya9
Better known, perhaps, is the church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna, an Augustinian foundation begun in 1267 and restored in 1915.
An Italian-language account of it is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/agostiniani/chiesa.html
San Giacomo Maggiore's late thirteenth-century facade (porch altered, sixteenth century):
http://www.bolognatourguide.com/foto/san-giacomo.jpg
http://www.gagliardino.it/gallery/bologna/dsc03141
Rear view, with attached chiesetta di Santa Cecilia backed up onto a portion of the twelfth-century city wall:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vince_nick/26553897/sizes/o/
The interior is largely baroque (with Renaissance chapels). But here's a late medieval fresco of J. in the chapel of Sts. Cosmas and Damian:
http://web.tiscali.it/agostiniani/giacomo.jpg
Some views of the thirteenth- to fifteenth-century church of St James the Great at Westerleigh (South Glos):
http://www.john.wilkes.dial.pipex.com/wester.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6xlo6h
http://tinyurl.com/m3slj8
Some portrayals of J.:
a) in mosaic in the Capella Arcivescovile at Ravenna (betw. 494 - 519):
http://tinyurl.com/4ykq5s5
b) at right (at left, St. Paul) in the mosaics (c1143) of the chiesa di Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (a.k.a. chiesa della Martorana) in Palermo:
http://tinyurl.com/3sod9dv
http://tinyurl.com/44ko4p8
c) in the Ascension fresco (betw. 1176 and 1200) in St. George's Church, Staraya Ladoga (Leningrad oblast):
http://tinyurl.com/3wbbxq6
d) in a late twelfth-century sculpture on the west portal of the basilique Saint-Trophime at Arles:
http://tinyurl.com/3u59z6z
e) in sculpture on the thirteenth-century châsse of St. Eleutherius in the cathedral of Tournai/Doornik:
http://tinyurl.com/2bxwr64
f) in a perhaps thirteenth-century fresco in Matera's rupestrian church of San Giovanni in Monterrone:
http://www.wikimatera.it/home/operation/foto/378.jpg
http://www.byherinet.it/ita/img/Figura32.jpg
g) in a later thirteenth-century fresco in the circle of the apostles on the ceiling of the baptistery of Parma:
http://www.cattedrale.parma.it/Img/voltabatt/61-giacomoM_Z.jpg
h) as depicted (at right) in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 66r):
http://tinyurl.com/3fmowqv
i) in an expandable view of his martyrdom as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of Jacopo da Varazze's _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 81v):
http://tinyurl.com/3nfjmzl
j) at right in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348) of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 169v):
http://tinyurl.com/43evesr
k) in a panel painting (betw. 1355 and 1360) by Andrea di Vanni d'Andrea, now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples:
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/andrea/vanni/s_james.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/a/andrea/vanni/s_james1.jpg
l) in Hans Memling's St. John Altarpiece (1479) in the Memlingmuseum, Sint-Janshospitaal, Bruges:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/memling/2middle2/13john41.jpg
m) in two late fifteenth-century sculptures, one French and the other Spanish, both in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://tinyurl.com/5s9cmu
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/08/eusi/ho_69.88.htm
2) Cucufas (?). We first hear about C. (also Cucuphas; in French, Cucufa, Cucuphat; in Spanish, Cucufate; in Catalan, Cugat or Cougat; in Occitan, Couat) at Prudentius, _Peristephanon_, 4.33-34, where in a catalogue of martyrs he follows a lengthier treatment of St. Felix of Gerona and shares a strophe with Sts. Paul of Narbonne and Genesius of Arles. All Prudentius says of him is _Barchinon claro Cucufate freta / surget_ ('Barcelona, trusting to famous Cucufas, rises up'; line 33 is alluded to in the phrasing of the first line of C.'s Mozarabic hymn _Barchinon laeto Cucufate vernans_). C.'s cult in pre-conquest Iberia is attested by his inclusion in a late seventh- or early eighth-century prayer book from Tarragona now in Verona (Biblioteca capitolare, ms. LXXXIX).
In the eighth century St. Fulrad had relics believed to be C.'s brought to his abbey at Lièpvre (Haut-Rhin) in Alsace. In the earlier ninth century these were at the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris where a legendary Passio (BHL 1997, 1998) was written making C. an African from Scili who accompanied St. Felix of Gerona to Spain, who was martyred at Barcelona during the Great Persecution, and who was laid to rest on this day. The notice of C.'s translation at the end of the Passio has F. bring them directly to Saint-Denis, of which he was also abbot; scholars from the early Bollandists onward tend to think that they only reached Saint-Denis under abbot Hilduin (r. 814-841), when a full monastic Office was written for him there. C. enjoyed a cult in greater Paris throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages and beyond, as he did also until the late eighteenth century at Lièpvre.
Seemingly in the ninth century a monastery dedicated to C. was founded on the the reputed site of his martyrdom at today's Sant Cugat del Vallès (in Spanish, San Cugat del Vallés) near Barcelona. The buildings there now are mostly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some views:
Church:
http://tinyurl.com/knjmop
http://tinyurl.com/nvyfeh
http://tinyurl.com/mbnfwu
http://tinyurl.com/nae8a4
http://tinyurl.com/neh6kl
http://tinyurl.com/mtnwm5
http://tinyurl.com/lt8luo
http://tinyurl.com/mc27dd
http://tinyurl.com/m9m439
http://tinyurl.com/kmr8wo
Marjorie Greene's Medrelart album on the church and cloister:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/2881
A page of expandable views of the twelfth-century cloister, with carvings by Arnau Gatell:
http://tinyurl.com/l8dfgs
In the view of the monastery, only C.'s head had been translated to Francia; the monastery was in possession of the remainder. Here's his thirteenth-century reliquary shrine from the monastery, now in Barcelona's Museu Diocesà:
http://tinyurl.com/lf3jbx
C.'s martyrdom as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 72v):
http://tinyurl.com/yd3ud6n
3) Christopher of Lycia (?). A saint of this name is recorded for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as a martyr of a place called Samon in Lycia. Beyond that, we know nothing about him. An inscription from Nicomedia testifies to the presence there of a monastery dedicated to a St. C. in 452. In the later sixth century a monastery of the same dedication at Taormina is mentioned in the correspondence of pope St. Gregory the Great. C.'s legendary Passio in Latin is at least as old as the eighth century (BHL 1766, 1768). In the Greek and in other "eastern" churches his feast day is 9. May. C. was removed from the general Roman Calendar in its revision promulgated in 1969 but remains in the RM among today's commemorations.
Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally ninth- and tenth-century chiesa di San Cristoforo at Lammari, a _frazione_ of Capannori (SI) in Tuscany:
http://www.luccaterre.it/scheda.php?id=2795〈=it
http://www.piccolapenna.it/San%20Cristoforo.htm
An illustrated, Spanish-language page on the iglesia de San Cristóbal / Sant Cristòfol at Tavertet (Osona) in Catalunya, first documented from the eleventh century and rebuilt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
http://tinyurl.com/25qtfs9
C. as portrayed in an earlier thirteenth-century statue on the south facade of the cathedral of Amiens:
http://tinyurl.com/32rcfl2
C. as depicted in the late thirteenth-century (ca. 1285-1290) Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 85r):
http://tinyurl.com/2w4t6va
An expandable view of C. as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of Jacopo da Varazze's _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 84r):
http://tinyurl.com/448lsm2
Some views of the originally thirteenth- and fourteenth-century St. Christophskirche in Mainz, destroyed by aerial bombing in World War II:
http://tinyurl.com/3lpuvya
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2031240-churches-Mainz.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/39b7vyk
A view of the church from shortly after the bombing:
http://www.mainz1933-1945.de/index.php?id=6316
This was Johann Gutenberg's parish church.
A few illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally late thirteenth-century chiesa dei Santi Leonardo e Cristoforo in Monticchiello (SI) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/25ret9s
http://tinyurl.com/2fpqxlp
http://www.abbazie.com/chiese/slc_monticchiello_it.html
Scenes from C.'s legend as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fols. 81r and 111r):
http://tinyurl.com/2docj84
http://tinyurl.com/2cmfyge
C. as depicted in a mid-fourteenth-century apse fresco in the chiesa dei Santi Leonardo e Cristoforo in Monticchiello (SI) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/2dglpw5
http://tinyurl.com/2ed5k2q
C. (at right) as depicted in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes of the monastery church of St. Michael the Archangel at Lesnovo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/25or5ul
Views of numerous depictions of C. in late medieval English parish churches are accessible from the menu here:
http://www.paintedchurch.org/contensc.htm
C. as depicted in a window from from ca. 1470 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York (photo by Gordon Plumb):
http://tinyurl.com/25zxm6t
Detail views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/23usb26
C. as depicted by Dieric (Thierry) Bouts the Younger in a panel painting from ca. 1470 forming part of the Pearl of Brabant retable in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich:
http://www.wga.hu/art/b/bouts/dirk_y/pearl3.jpg
C. (at right; at left, St. Anthony of Egypt) as depicted in a Seville School panel painting from ca. 1480 (restored, 2003) now in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla:
http://tinyurl.com/2ufajsa
C. as depicted by Cosmè Tura in a panel painting from ca. 1484 now in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin:
http://www.wga.hu/art/t/tura/polyptyc/saints_2.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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