medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. August) is the feast day of:
1) Tiburtius of Rome (?). T. is a fairly shadowy saint of the cemetery _Ad duas lauros_ on the Via Labicana, where a martyr's church in his honor is recorded in the seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome. Assuming that these are actually two distinct people, either he or his homonym of the group Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus (14. April; brought together in the Passio of St. Cecilia) may be the subject of pope St. Damasus I's uninformative epitaph on a saint of this name preserved textually in the _Epigrammata Damasiana_ (ed. Ferrua, no. 31).
T.'s feast today is recorded in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the so-called Calendar of St. Willibrord, where it is treated, probably erroneously, as that of Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus ([ps.-]HM) or of T., V., and Cecilia (Calendar of Willibrord), in the martyrology of St. Ado of Vienne, where the feast is that of T. and of his companions (Chromatius et al.) from the legendary Passio of St. Sebastian of Rome (BHL 7543), and in the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries and the martyrology of Usuard, in all of which latter the feast is for T. alone. According to the aforementioned Passio, T., said to have been the son of the prefect Chromatius, whom he converted and baptized, was martyred in the pontificate of pope St. Gaius (d. 296). A connection with Gaius occurs in the legend of St. Susanna of Rome, also celebrated today (see next).
A page of views of the the originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century chiesa dei santi Tiburzio e Susanna at Gargonza di Monte San Savino (AR) in Tuscany, recorded from 1304 as dedicated to T. alone (joint dedications to T. and S. appear to begin only in the Early Modern period) and restored in 1928:
http://www.ipernity.com/doc/geo8/421550
T.'s martyrdom as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1335) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 218r):
http://tinyurl.com/3sjyved
T. and Susanna of Rome as depicted in a later fourteenth-century (ca. 1370) Roman Missal of north Italian origin (Avignon, Bibliothèque-Médiathèque Municipale Ceccano, ms. 136, fol. 262v):
http://tinyurl.com/3z9y329
T. and Susanna of Rome as depicted a late fifteenth-century Roman Breviary (Clermont-Ferrand, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 69, fol. 511r):
http://tinyurl.com/3hgv5bq
2) Susanna of Rome (?). S. is the saint of Rome's church of Santa Susanna, first recorded in 595 as the _titulus sanctae Susannae_ but already existing in 499 as the _titulus Gaii_. She has a legendary Passio (BHL 7937) explaining the transition in nomenclature by making her the niece of pope St. Gaius and a cousin of the emperor Diocletian under whom she and her father St. Gabinus are said to have been martyred.
S.'s present resting place in the crypt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsax/147964549/
Marjorie Greene's views of Rome's chiesa di Santa Susanna are here:
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/407
Some views of the originally twelfth-century église Sainte-Suzanne at Sainte-Suzanne (Ariège), modified in the early sixteenth-century:
http://tinyurl.com/2cnjuy3
http://isaisons.free.fr/Sainte%20Suzanne%20%20eglise.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2auqtj6
http://isaisons.free.fr/Sainte%20Suzanne%20eglise%20int2.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2efsbpr
Views, etc. of the originally mid-fifteenth-century église Sainte-Suzanne in Sainte-Suzanne-sur-Vire (Manche):
http://ste-suzanne-sur-vire.pagesperso-orange.fr/tourisme.htm
http://sainte-suzanne-sur-vire.sitbook.com/Eglise.htm
http://tinyurl.com/n6e28a
Two later medieval depictions of S. together with St. Tiburtius of Rome are linked to in the latter's notice above.
3) Rufinus of Assisi (?). A congeries of related texts makes R. a bishop of Amasea in Pontus who together with his son Caesidius migrated to central Italy, where they consecrated a church in what later became the diocese of the Marsi (today's diocese of Avezzano). Leaving Caesidius in charge there (where he met his own martyrdom, celebrated on 31. August), R. proceeded northward to Umbria, where he evangelized Assisi, suffered martyrdom, and lives on as the city's legendary protobishop. For a detailed study of the hagiographic traditions, see Francesco Scorza Barcellona, "Rufino e Cesidio, santi della Marsica," in Gennaro Luongo, ed., _La Terra dei Marsi: cristianesimo, cultura, istituzioni. Atti del Convegno di Avezzano 24-26 settembre 1998_ (Roma: Viella, 2002), pp. 265-85.
R.'s two chief architectural monuments are his cathedral at Assisi and the church at Trasacco (AQ) in Abruzzo whose dedication he shares with Caesidius. On the latter, herewith the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page and another set (three pages) of detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/ypk3tx
http://tinyurl.com/3pktvkd
Exterior views of the chiesa dei Santi Cesidio e Rufino at Trasacco, first recorded from 1096 and variously augmented and modified over the centuries:
http://www.immagini2.terremarsicane.it/ing2trasacco/im63.htm
Main (Men's) portal (fifteenth-century ?):
http://flickr.com/photos/53366513@N00/2214555519/
Details:
http://tinyurl.com/c8e4c
http://tinyurl.com/9nhs5
Women's portal:
http://www.immagini2.terremarsicane.it/ing2trasacco/im64.htm
http://tinyurl.com/e2k2c
Interior views of the chiesa dei Santi Cesidio e Rufino at Trasacco:
http://tinyurl.com/chagr
http://tinyurl.com/bopwm
Ambo (late twelfth-century), sculptural details:
http://tinyurl.com/7s79v
http://tinyurl.com/8xmrp
http://tinyurl.com/7qd4x
Baptismal font (w/"Corinthian" capital):
http://tinyurl.com/9vh4l
Statue of the BVM:
http://www.immagini2.terremarsicane.it/ima2trasacco/fp7.jpg
Views, etc. of the cattedrale di San Rufino at Assisi (begun, 1135-40; interior drastically renovated, 1571):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisi_Cathedral
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattedrale_di_San_Rufino
http://www.terrainvisibile.it/assisi/doc/ita/cruf.htm
The Sacred Destinations pages on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/2ah3wus
http://tinyurl.com/2bnjdnv
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/25r59y9
Facade and belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/7aslg
http://www.umbria.org/assisi/assisi/SRufino.htm
Facade (details and Italian-language interpretation):
http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep6/ep6-papi.htm
West portal (for detail views, go back to the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page and the Sacred Destinations photo gallery page):
http://tinyurl.com/28dk6qf
The customary interpretation of the figures in the lunette is that these represent the Madonna and Child, Christ Enthroned, and R. On this page, though, <http://www.umilta.net/pilgrim.html> one can read a rather different interpretation (The Woman Clothed With the Sun, God Enthroned, St. John writing his Apocalypse).
Ground Plan:
http://tinyurl.com/67kfqs
Interior overview and thumbnails:
http://www.umbria.org/assisi/assisi/SRufinointr.htm
http://tinyurl.com/24p97te
Niccolò Alunno's (Niccolò di Liberatore's) San Rufino polyptych of 1462 in the Museo diocesano:
http://www.terrainvisibile.it/assisi/foto/tritt.jpg
R. as depicted thereon:
http://tinyurl.com/29dg8td
The crypt, with a third-century Roman sarcophagus said to have contained R.'s remains:
http://tinyurl.com/28ebc65
4) Digna of Todi (?). D. is a local saint of Todi in Umbria whose putative remains were translated in 1301 along with those of St. Romana (23. February) to that city's then newly constructed church of St. Fortunatus, begun in 1292. Her connection with Romana (dubiously said to have been a virgin hermit of the early fourth century) has led to the supposition that she too was a virgin hermit of late antiquity. Todi's statutes of 1335 made D.'s feast day a public holiday. D.'s cult was once widespread in Umbria. One visible remainder of that is the thirteenth-century apse of a church dedicated to her (Santa Degna) at today's Montignano di Massa Martana (PG). Still venerated in Todi, D. was dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001.
Some views of Todi's Tempio di San Fortunato:
http://www.todi.net/fortunato.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2ffkq75
http://tinyurl.com/kl6uj
http://tinyurl.com/25gykqk
http://tinyurl.com/onxkt
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/345.htm
http://www.thais.it/architettura/Gotica/HR/346.htm
5) Cassian of Benevento (d. 4th cent., supposedly). This less well known saint of the Regno is traditionally the fourth bishop of Benevento. He is said to have been buried in that city's eighth-century monastic church of Santa Sofia. In the twelfth century one of Santa Sofia's dependencies was a now vanished parish church dedicated to C. Elsewhere in Campania C. is the probable eponym of an also now vanished monastery at today's San Cassiano di San Potito Sannitico (CE). Though today is C.'s day of commemoration in the RM, his traditional _dies natalis_ and feast day is tomorrow, 12. August. The proximity of that date to the feast of the better known St. Cassian of Imola (13. August) has led some to suppose that today's C. is really the latter re-imagined locally as an early bishop.
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on Benevento's Santa Sofia (completed, 762):
http://tinyurl.com/62p3n3
6) Taurinus of Évreux (d. 5th or early 6th cent.?). Our documentation for this legendary protobishop of Évreux appears to begin in the ninth century with his entry under today in the martyrology of Usuard. Preserved in manuscripts of tenth century and later are an Inventio (BHL 7992, etc.) and a Vita (BHL 7990). The Inventio, which shows no awareness of details in the Vita, was dated by Duchesne to the reign of Charles the Bald (823-877); it recounts 1) the miraculous discovery of T.'s remains in the time of a king Chlotar (often presumed to have been the second of this name) and of an otherwise unknown bishop Viator, 2) the exhumation of those remains under Viator's successor Landulfus and the latter's erection of a basilica to house them, 3) numerous subsequent miracles, and 4) the translation of the remains at some later time to a place in Auvergne called Laudosum (sometimes identified as today's Lezeux [Puy-de-Dôme]), where they continued to work miracles.
The seemingly ninth-century Vita (implausibly dated by Claude Boillon to the fourth or early fifth century) presents T. as a Greek-descended Christian living in Rome whom pope St. Clement I sends to Gaul as a missionary companion of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and who there becomes bishop of Évreux, performs miracles, overcomes the hostility of local officials who had persecuted him, and converts many, including the Vita's supposed author Deodatus (whom T. elevates to the priesthood), before dying as a confessor on some unspecified day. T. is entered under this day in the later ninth-century martyrology of Usuard as a bishop of Évreux.
By about the middle of the eleventh century T. was the titular of a monastery at Évreux that had become a dependency of the abbey of Fécamp. His cult spread widely in France, though the historicity of some of the translations by which this is said to have taken place is open to question.
T. as depicted in an earlier twelfth-century (betw. 1101-1133) _Vitae sanctorum_ from Cîteaux (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 641, fol. 4v):
http://tinyurl.com/3zlzw3e
The originally twelfth- to fifteenth-century église Saint-Taurin at Évreux (Eure) preserves an originally mid-thirteenth-century reliquary châsse for T. that was extensively re-worked in an earlier nineteenth-century restoration. Herewith some expandable views of this object:
http://tinyurl.com/38fsfnu
An illustrated, French-language account of that church (and some other views of it):
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Taurin
http://tinyurl.com/2c5tjh6
http://tinyurl.com/mkuh3v
http://tinyurl.com/2eah6ho
http://photoenligne2.free.fr/Eure/Evreux/D5981.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/francoiskun/2892294816/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/3az29sk
http://photoenligne2.free.fr/Eure/Evreux/D5975.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/27hctf8
The fifteenth-century windows in the choir depict scenes from T.'s life and miracles:
http://tinyurl.com/26f74tr
http://tinyurl.com/2d5n98u
http://tinyurl.com/28wuvjx
Scenes from T.'s Vita as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1335) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fols. 113v, 133r):
http://tinyurl.com/3jgh949
http://tinyurl.com/3w4l2kr
http://tinyurl.com/3uw5rcx
Scenes from T.'s Vita as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 364v, 378r):
http://tinyurl.com/4xlhc3k
http://tinyurl.com/3gnt7m9
7) Equitius of Valeria (d. by 571). Our meager information about this less well known saint of the Regno comes from pope St. Gregory the Great's _Dialogues_ (1. 4). A contemporary of St. Benedict of Nursia and Montecassino, he was active as a founder and supervisor of monasteries in the Roman province of Valeria (parts of today's Lazio and Abruzzo) and was himself abbot at a place that seems to have been near ancient Amiternum. One may read about his exorcisms and miracles here:
http://tinyurl.com/2sgutt
According to Gregory, E. was buried at an oratory of St. Lawrence. A monastery dedicated to L. at today's Marruci di Pizzoli (AQ), not far from the remains of Amiternum, was in existence by the ninth century; E.'s putative remains were venerated in in the crypt of its church, now Pizzoli's much rebuilt chiesa di San Lorenzo. Some views of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/3e4v6or
http://tinyurl.com/3kseb3u
http://tinyurl.com/3kevc6n
Quarters of the nearby city of L'Aquila were settled from outlying towns in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century and had churches dedicated to those towns' patron saints, including Marruci's St. Lawrence. Over time these churches reclaimed from the towns of origin what were now also these quarters' patron saints. E.'s turn came in 1461, when his relics were "discovered" at San Lorenzo in Marruci and translated to the homonymous church in L'Aquila. In the eighteenth century these were removed to L'Aquila's chiesa di Santa Margherita della Forcella. Very recently they have been returned to Marruci, where a new case containing them is displayed under a separate altar of E. that was consecrated last month (photo from earlier this year before all was readied at the altar):
http://tinyurl.com/3laofw4
At L'Aquila, where he is one of the city's patron saints, and at Marruci di Pizzoli E. has been celebrated on 12. August since at least the fifteenth century. Today is his day of commemoration in the new RM (2001, rev. 2004).
8) Rusticula (d. 632 or 633). We know about the Provençal abbess R. solely from a closely posthumous Vita (BHL 7405) by Florentius, a priest of what is now Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (Drôme). In his telling, R., who lost her father on the day of her birth, was a native of the territory of Vaison. Her birth name was Marcia and Rusticola was her baptismal name. At the age of five she was seized by a noble who intended through this action to establish his right to marry her later. Freed on the orders of king Guntram, R. was delivered against her mother's wishes to Arles' abbey of St. John, whose then abbess had, operating through the bishop of Autun, had sought the king's aid in obtaining R.'s release. When that abbess died R., now eighteen years of age, was elected to succeed her.
R. was a successful abbess who attracted many virgins and widows to her community and who built two of its several churches. But in 613 she was imprisoned by king Chlotar, who suspected her of aiding a survivor of the Burgundian royal family (which latter Chlotar had recently overthrown and largely killed). Impressed by R.'s miracles, after the passage of some time Chlotar had her returned to her abbey, where she lived out her days in peace, dying on this day some ten years later. She was buried in the abbey's funerary church of St. Mary, where saints Caesaria and Caesarius also reposed. Thus far R.'s Vita.
9) Clare of Assisi (d. 1253). This early disciple of St. Francis of Assisi and founder of the order that after her death became known as the (Poor) Clares needs no introduction to this list. Herewith the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on the chiesa di Santa Chiara at Assisi (built between 1257 and 1265; C. was canonized in 1255):
http://tinyurl.com/2r6hcf
An illustrated, English-language page (images expandable) on this church and on its late thirteenth-century panel painting of C.:
http://www.terrainvisibile.it/assisi/doc/ing/cchiara.htm
C.'s portrait (ca. 1312-1320) by Simone Martini in the lower basilica of St. Francis at Assisi:
http://tinyurl.com/59qjhq
An aerial view of (right of center), and the Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on, Naples' earlier fourteenth-century chiesa di Santa Chiara:
http://tinyurl.com/2uqtys6
http://tinyurl.com/34mroy9
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the addition of Rusticula)
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