medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (28. July) is the feast day of:
1) Victor I, pope (d. 198). An African by birth, V. succeeded pope St. Eleuther(i)us as bishop of Rome. He is commonly said, in a phrase of such ambiguous import that one wonders why it continues to be used, to have been "the first Latin pope". Jerome tells us that V. was the author of some smallish writings on matters of religion. One or more of these concerned the Paschal controversy, in which V. attempted to extend to the entire Church the practice, recently adopted in Rome, of observing Easter on the Sunday immediately following 14. Nisan (Passover); when the churches of Asia Minor persisted in observing Easter on 14. Nisan itself he declared them excommunicate. V. dealt sharply with the heretical priest Florinus, against whom St. Irenaeus of Lyon wrote two treatises, and with the wealthy adoptionist Theodotus the leather-seller.
V. is the first pope known to have had dealings with the imperial household: through his relationship with Commodus' mistress Marcia (a Christian) he is said to saved some co-religionists who had been condemned to the mines of Sardinia. His later reputation as a martyr appears to be unfounded.
2) Pantaleon of Nicomedia (d. early 4th cent., supposedly). See this year's Feasts and Saints of the Day, July 27, pt. 1.
3) Nazarius and Celsus (d. before 17. January 395). N. and C. are the names given to two persons whose remains were discovered by St. Ambrose of Milan outside of that city shortly after the death of Theodosius I (whose demise is therefore a reasonable _terminus ante_ for their lifetimes) and who were proclaimed by A. to have been martyrs. According to our sole source for this Invention, Ambrose's biographer Paulinus of Milan, N.'s body was so incorrupt at the time of its discovery that it appeared as though it had just been prepared for burial (a sceptic, then, could argue that N. might even have outlived the aforementioned emperor). N. was translated to the basilica of the Apostles in Milan (later re-named in his honor and now Milan's San Nazaro in Brolo). C., whose Inventio followed shortly upon that of N., stayed in his nearby grave; in the tenth century a monastery dedicated to him was founded at the site.
Ambrose sent a relic of N. to St. Paulinus of Nola. To judge from attested late antique dedications, other relics of this saint traveled widely within the Christian world. According to Paulinus of Milan it had proved impossible to determine when N. and C. had been martyred or indeed anything at all about their lives. Finding such a deplorable state of ignorance unwelcome, someone in about the middle of the fifth century provided them with a legendary Passio that subsequently took numerous forms both in Latin (BHL 6039-6050) and in Greek (BHG 1323-1324). In this account, N. was baptized by St. Linus, evangelized in northern Italy (and at Milan met Sts. Gervasius and Protasius), and then journeyed to Trier, having acquired at Cimiez the youth C. as his companion. Arrested at Trier, N. and C. were sent back to Milan and were martyred there. As early martyrs of Milan, N. and C. are named in the Ambrosian Canon of the Mass.
Some dedications to one or both of these saints:
Three illustrated pages on Milan's Basilica Apostolorum / San Nazaro in Brolo:
http://www.liceoberchet.it/netday/luoghi/nazaro.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_San_Nazaro_Maggiore
http://tinyurl.com/3729bn
Three illustrated, English-language pages on the late antique structure that in the ninth century had become that Ravenna's church dedicated to N. (some may know it better by another name):
http://tinyurl.com/67ekha
http://tinyurl.com/6h5j6l
http://tinyurl.com/5ebszu
An illustrated, Italian-language account of the originally late tenth- or eleventh-century chiesa di San Celso at Comerio (VA) in Lombardy, an Italian national monument, starts about a quarter of the way down this page:
http://www.comune.comerio.va.it/naturaarte.asp
Two illustrated, English-language pages on the originally eleventh-/fourteenth-century basilique Saint-Nazaire et Saint-Celse at Carcassonne (Aude), that city's cathedral until very early in the nineteenth century:
http://www.languedoc-france.info/030301_carcassonne.htm
http://tinyurl.com/5dj59n
A page on this church's nineteenth-century restoration by Viollet-le-Duc:
http://www.carcassonne.culture.fr/en/rt402.htm
Further views:
http://tinyurl.com/557b2c
http://tinyurl.com/5hm3k7
Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally mid-eleventh- to fifteenth-century abbazia dei Santi Nazario e Celso at San Nazzaro Sesia (NO) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/37gnxna
http://tinyurl.com/2u2a42x
A multi-page, illustrated, Italian-language site on this abbey begins here (the menu is near the top, beneath the heading "Abbazia Benedettina dei Santi Nazario e Celso (Sec. X)":
http://www.comune.sannazzarosesia.no.it/Abbazia
The originally later eleventh-century crypt of the now mostly early modern cathedral of Sts. Nazarius, Celsus, and Victor in Trivento (CB) in Molise has been known in recent centuries as the cripta di San Casto. An illustrated, Italian-language discussion, with good views of its later medieval frescoes, is here:
http://www.francovalente.it/?p=731
Other views of the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/2aegdar
http://tinyurl.com/25u29ln
http://tinyurl.com/277zgax
http://tinyurl.com/2ff7g32
An illustrated page on Milan's originally late eleventh-century chiesa di San Celso:
http://tinyurl.com/6mdr9t
Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally eleventh- or twelfth-century chiesa dei Santi Nazario e Celso at Montechiaro d'Asti (AL), once a dependency of the abbey of Fruttuaria:
http://www.valleversa.it/roma/nazario.htm
http://tinyurl.com/28d8tmw
Other views:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacocanker/224580642/
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/116/284900645_449138e31d_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/2604236548_0e3eb0ed17_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2v3t9kk
An expandable view of the entire portal is here:
http://www.lacabalesta.it/galleria/montechiaro.html
An illustrated, Italian-language account of the seemingly originally earlier twelfth-century chiesa dei SS. Nazario e Celso in the _frazione_ of Ovrano in Acqui Terme (AL) in Piedmont begins about a third of the way down this page:
http://www.webalice.it/inforestauro/svito_stile.htm
Two illustrated, Italian-language pages on the originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century chiesa (or oratorio) dei Santi Nazzaro e Celso at Sologno, a _frazione_ of Caltignaga (NO) in Piedmont (externally, a candidate for the "Feast and Saints of the Day" ugliest church award, small church division):
http://tinyurl.com/2bnzndo
http://tinyurl.com/26mfpft
Some portrayals of these saints:
An expandable view of the martyrdom of N. and C. as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 86r):
http://tinyurl.com/27p35bt
The martyrdom of N. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 235v):
http://tinyurl.com/2ahlfhw
The baptism of N. as depicted 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. 177r):
http://tinyurl.com/mpav34
The martyrdom of N. and C., together with Sts. Gervasius and Protasius, as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ 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/yedgwfv
N. and C. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the nave in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
N.:
http://tinyurl.com/24c6amw
C.:
http://tinyurl.com/27qn2cg
N. and C. as depicted as in the late fourteenth-century frescoes (later 1380s?) of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Ravanica monastery near Æuprija in central Serbia:
N.:
http://tinyurl.com/25eohaa
C.:
http://tinyurl.com/2bbye47
N. (with a donor) and C. as depicted by Giovanni de Campo in the later fifteenth-century (1461) apse frescoes in the chiesa dei Santi Nazzaro e Celso at Sologno, a _frazione_ of Caltignaga (NO) in Piedmont:
N.:
http://tinyurl.com/3alvev4
C.:
http://tinyurl.com/38wgtce
N. (at left; at right, St. Bernardino of Siena) as depicted by associates of Giovanni de Campo in the same church:
http://tinyurl.com/36qnwj5
N. on horseback as depicted in a fresco from 1480 in the abbazia dei Santi Nazario e Celso at San Nazzaro Sesia (NO) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/2crtbfz
4) Samson of Dol (d. ca. 565). S. (also Sampson) is unusual among Breton saints in having a Vita that is thought to have been composed within a couple of generations of his death (BHL 7478; the first of several). He appears to have been Welsh and to have been entrusted as a child to St. Illtud, who educated him at his monastery at today's Llantwit Major in Glamorganshire. After having been ordained priest he moved on to a monastery on the isle of Caldey, where in time he became abbot. Later he crossed the channel to the north coast of Brittany and founded there, perhaps in 548, the monastery of Dol near the border with Normandy. S. became a popular saint in Brittany, Wales, and Cornwall. An English translation of his _Vita prima_ is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3hwjyn6
The former cathedral at Dol-de-Bretagne (Ille-et-Vilaine) is dedicated to S. An illustrated, French-language blog post on it will be found here (about a fifth of the way down the page):
http://tinyurl.com/5gjlol
Some views:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/6day84
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48506537@N00/4812831036/
http://tinyurl.com/3k6q2vd
West portal:
http://le.plume.free.fr/img/IMG_4136_porte_dol.jpg
Interior:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yannl/2483924649/
http://tinyurl.com/5gb5lg
Window depicting S.'s crossing of the Channel:
http://tinyurl.com/5e2dcs
S.'s spring on the site:
http://tinyurl.com/5h5fbl
A view of the much rebuilt thirteenth-century St Sampson's church, Cricklade (Wilts):
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/268619
Accounts and views of the originally early sixteenth-century St Samson's church at Golant (Cornwall), restored/rebuilt in 1842:
http://www.golant.net/9128/index.html
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3VEC
http://tinyurl.com/5bjq3a
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3VF6
http://www.golant.net/mediac/400_0/media/nave.jpg
Older bench end (now used decoratively) depicting S.:
http://tinyurl.com/2u32zp2
Other bench ends (on pulpit):
http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/15835
5) Liutius of Aquara (d. after 1037). What little is known of the life of this less well known saint of the Regno comes from the chroniclers of Montecassino. He is said to have been born at today's Aquara (SA) in southern Campania, of which he is now the patron saint, and to have entered religion at the nearby monastery of St. Peter, a dependency of Montecassino.
L. (in Italian, Lucido) was in residence at Montecassino late in 985, when he is named by Leo of Ostia as a leading figure among those who left the abbey rather than remain under its new abbot Manso, elected at the behest of his relatives in the princely house of Capua. He then (again according to Leo) lived for some time as an hermit in the cave near Salerno where later (1011) St. Alferius founded what became the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni and where L. was treated with honor and respect by the then prince of Salerno (Guaimar IV).
After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, L. returned to Montecassino in about the year 1000. Soon he founded a nearby oratory dedicated to the BVM. Later, thanks to the generosity of the next prince of Salerno (Guaimar V), he turned this into a very well furnished priory of about thirty monks, Santa Maria dell'Albaneta, expanding the chapel into a proper church and seeing to it that it received painted decoration unfortunately not further described in our sources. There L. lived very simply, grinding his own meal and singing the psalms of David, until his death on 5. or 6. December of a year in the abbacy of Richerius (1038-55).
With his burial at Albaneta L. passes out of history until 1458, when townspeople of Aquara traveled to his by then decayed monastery, removed what was said to have been L.'s body from its resting place there, transported it all the way back to the Cilento, and interred it in their since much rebuilt church dedicated to St. Nicholas of Bari (i.e. N. of Myra). A cult was instituted in his honor and he was represented by a wooden and copper bust still housed in St. Nicholas:
http://tinyurl.com/25zuals
In 1649 L.'s remains were placed in a silver reliquary statue. This was stolen in 1895 but the relics themselves were found not long afterward and were subsequently placed in a new statue of the same material. The latter was stolen in 1975; when a second replacement statue (the one now in use) was made, L.'s relics were still missing. But in 1999 L.'s head was recovered by the authorities and solemnly returned to his church of St. Nicholas on 28. July of that year. Since at least 1890 (ten years after papal confirmation of his cult), this has been L.'s formally sanctioned feast day, celebrated with a special Office. L. has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
6) Botvid (d. ca. 1120). We know about B. (in Latin, Botvidus, Botwidus, Botwinus) from an originally twelfth-century Vita (BHL 1432) transmitted in lightly revised from in a manuscript of the later thirteenth century. According to this account, B. was a well-off resident of Södermanland who while on a trading trip to England was there converted to Christianity. Back in Sweden, he evangelized among his neighbors.
Still according to the Vita, B. was murdered by a Wendic slave whom he had baptized and whom he was planning to return to his (the slave's) homeland; the miracles reported at his grave over the next nine years led to the conversion of the local pagan population to Christianity. In 1129 a burial church was dedicated to him on family land by bishops St. Henry of Uppsala and Gerder of Strängnäs.
B. is said to have been slain with an axe while fishing (in the Vita, not altogether surprisingly, fishing is employed as a metaphor for evangelization).
B. (at right; at left, St. Eskil) as portrayed in a fifteenth-century altarpiece from Hammarby (Södermanlands län), now in the Statens historiska museum in Stockholm:
http://tinyurl.com/23fjcyu
B. as depicted in a mid-fifteenth-century fresco (unfortunately defaced) in Överselö kyrka in Strängnäs kommun (Södermanlands län):
http://tinyurl.com/nlfpls
B. as depicted in a later (last quarter) fifteenth-century vault painting in Börje kyrka, Börje Tiby (Uppsala län):
http://tinyurl.com/2dtb9ku
B. (at left; St. Eskil at right) as portrayed in the very early sixteenth-century altarpiece in nearby Ytterselö kyrka in Strängnäs kommun (Södermanlands län):
http://tinyurl.com/mcmt2e
Detail (B.):
http://tinyurl.com/lb2cad
B. is the saintly eponym of Botkyrka kommun in Stockholms län.
7) Sancia of Mallorca, in religion Clare (Bl.; d. 1345). This less well known holy person of the Regno was a daughter of James II, king of Majorca. In 1304 she married Robert of Anjou, heir apparent to the Angevin-ruled mostly mainland kingdom of Sicily (_vulgo_, kingdom of Naples), to which latter he succeeded in 1309. S., who prior to her marriage had been a Clarissan novice, was a devout and persistent woman who throughout the remainder of her life supported Franciscan activities in a variety of ways.
One of those ways was the endowing of Franciscan convents both in the kingdom and in Robert's county of Provence. S.'s great surviving monument in this respect is Naples' convent church of Santa Chiara, founded in 1310 and initially paid for out of her dowery. Originally a double convent for men and women, with its church dedicated to the Eucharist, after S./C.'s death it became under papal pressure a house of Poor Clares only and its church assumed the name by which it is known today. Herewith some views of this massive structure (it's nave is larger than that of the cathedral), whose upper portions were rebuilt in the 1950s after a devastating fire caused by Allied bombing in 1943:
http://tinyurl.com/3r4a2l2
http://tinyurl.com/3t7tch4
http://tinyurl.com/3p8v9yo
http://tinyurl.com/34mroy9
For a detailed study of the building of this church see Caroline Bruzelius, _The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266-1343_ (Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 132-153.
After Robert's death in 1343 S. retired to another of her foundations, a smaller convent of Poor Clares whose church was dedicated to the Holy Cross (Santa Croce) and which was situated to the west of the principal royal residence in Naples, Castel Nuovo. Assuming the name of her order's founder, she lived there very simply for the brief remainder of her life. S./C. was buried behind the altar of Santa Croce; in 1352 her reportedly incorrupt remains were transferred to a monumental tomb in that church. In the earlier fifteenth century her remains were translated to Santa Chiara; their present location is unknown.
S./C. has yet to achieve either formal beatification or an entry in the RM. The Franciscan Martyrology commemorates her under today as a Beata.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Sancia of Mallorca)
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