medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (10. October) is the feast day of:
1) Eulampius and Eulampia (d. 303, supposedly). According to their legendary, perhaps sixth-century Passio (BHG 616), E. and E., brother and sister, were martyrs under Maximian at Nicomedia (today's İzmit in Turkey) during the Great Persecution. Eulampius is said to have survived various horrific tortures and then to have been beheaded, while his sister is said to have died of her mistreatment before a sentence of decapitation could be carried out upon her. They have an expanded, tenth-century Passio by Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 617) in which they are executed together. E. and E. are fixtures under this day in Byzantine synaxaries.
The martyrdom of Eulampius (Eulampia looking on) as depicted in the so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613; later tenth- or very early eleventh-century):
http://tinyurl.com/36gh34w
The martyrdom of E. and E. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/yz2kx6y [NB: This usually accessible site has been off-line yesterday and today.]
The martyrdom of E., E., and two hundred soldiers as depicted in an October calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć 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/33uytmp [NB: This usually accessible site has been off-line yesterday and today.]
2a) Gereon and companions, martyrs of Köln;
2b) Cassius and Florentius, martyrs of Bonn;
2c) Victor and Mallosus, martyrs of Xanten (all d. ca. 304, supposedly). These are saints of Germania Inferior with cults that were already well established in the seventh century and with churches originating in the central Middle Ages that replaced late antique martyria located in or next to early Christian cemeteries (Xanten's very name, an equivalent of "Saints", is thought to have referred initially to the place as a locus for _ad sanctos_ burials). The tale grew up that they were all members of the Theban Legion. Consequently, they are customarily represented as soldier-saints. Though the three towns did indeed house Roman garrisons, civilians of course lived there as well. Whether these saints' later memory as soldiers is factually correct is unknown.
VISUALS FOR 2a):
Gereon has a wonderful church in Köln not far from the cathedral. An aerial view:
http://www.stgereon.de/Basilika/allgemein/13kl.jpg
The Sacred Destinations page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/3kvb5v
A virtual tour:
http://www.stgereon.de/Basilika/allgemein/Ueberblick_Rundgang.html
(NB: the individual sections are more than one page deep. Clicking at lower right -- also sometimes on the images themselves -- will bring up more.)
According to the late-eleventh or very early twelfth-century _Vita sancti Annonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis_, St. Helena had founded this church. Here's a view of an uncovered fresco from 1190/1191 over the entrance to the Confessio with G. at left and H. at right (holding the earliest known representation of the church's polygonal nave, the Dekagon, completed in 1227):
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Gereon_von_Koeln2.jpg
Context in the church:
http://www.stgereon.de/Basilika/allgemein/Confessio2.html
G. and companions, panel painting (ca. 1440) by Stefan Lochner on his Dreikönigsaltar in the cathedral of Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/3jlxqx
G., detail of a painting (ca. 1480) of Sts. Anne, Christopher, G., and Peter by the Master of the Assumption, now in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/459ghz
VISUALS FOR 2b):
An illustrated, German-language account of the mostly eleventh- to thirteenth-century Münster at Bonn (dedicated to Cassius and Florentius):
http://tinyurl.com/3x8npm
The Sacred Destinations page on this church:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/bonn-munster
C. standing before the Bonner Münster as seen in a cast of the city's thirteenth-century great seal (created betw. 1244 and 1280):
http://tinyurl.com/5r6ejb5
Putative relics of C. and F. are displayed in the Münster in these restored, eighteenth-century processional reliquaries:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/BOMUE8.jpg
A different view of one of these for human scale:
http://tinyurl.com/3kn9amw
VISUALS FOR 2c):
Xanten's present cathedral of St. Victor was begun in 1190. Prior to February 1945 most of it was of the later thirteenth to early sixteenth centuries; much of it still is. Herewith some illustrated, German-language sites on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/9b92v
http://tinyurl.com/yhctwe7
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xantener_Dom
http://www.xanten-web.de/DomGalerieOrd11/000DomStart.html
A German-language timeline of stages in the cathedral's construction:
http://tinyurl.com/yj9h5bz
Some views of the church shortly after the bombings in 1945:
http://www.exulanten.com/xan.html
Eleven individual views of different aspects of the destruction begin here (to continue, click on "weiter 'Zerstörung' " in the menu bar below each photo):
http://tinyurl.com/4yuycof
Exterior views of the cathedral of Xanten:
http://reunion-2000.de/2008/Programm/Xanten__1.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yfdjjdx
http://tinyurl.com/yf7gwjm
http://www.xanten.de/img/bigimg/domstviktorkirmes.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/ylcfokj
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407481366075068468gytexD
http://tinyurl.com/ygoyymf
Cloister:
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407481194075068468wuQoeO
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/1407480749075068468ZWcGVa
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/348104881_e0ac829ea7_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/yh7uac3
Interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/yhvvjlo
http://tinyurl.com/yh74prv
Clerestory sculptures ("romanesque"; to continue, click on "weiter 'Galerie' " on each page):
http://tinyurl.com/3fojatj
Other sculptures ("gothic"):
http://www.xanten-web.de/DomGalerieOrd11/5Steinplastik.html
A statue of V. inside the cathedral:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ana_sudani/3246551265/sizes/l/
A statue of V. (1468, by Meister Blankenbyl) behind the cathedral, depicting him both as a soldier and as a pilgrim:
http://tinyurl.com/yj7mota
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3758673453/sizes/l/
http://tinyurl.com/yghuhq5
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Viktor_von_Xanten.jpg
V.'s shrine (said to date from 1128 or 1129):
http://tinyurl.com/yjrfyhx
Views of the earlier sixteenth-century main altar in which the shrine is housed:
http://tinyurl.com/2rzlnm
http://tinyurl.com/2vlky6
http://tinyurl.com/2zu8z5
http://tinyurl.com/yzhtrum
In 1933 a grave with two skeletons was discovered beneath the cathedral in a context that indicated late antique veneration. If, as is thought, these are the remains of of V. and M., then whose remains are in V.'s shrine? A view of the two skeletons shortly after their discovery is here:
http://tinyurl.com/3tvqshh
3) Cerbonius (d. ca. 575). We know about C. from St. Gregory the Great's _Dialogi_, 3. 11. According to Gregory, C. was a bishop of Populonia -- now part of today's Piombino (LI) in Tuscany -- who during Justinian's war of reconquest in Italy harbored East Roman troops in an area controlled by the Gothic king Totila. The latter worthy condemned C. to execution by wild beasts and when that failed in the way in which it often does in these stories (in this case, a ravenous bear humbled itself before the man of God and no other animal dared approach) he exiled C. to the nearby island of Elba. C. died on Elba; when his body was being returned to Populonia for burial a squall raged on both sides of the boat but not on it. Few will fail to observe the parallel with the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea as they returned from exile to the Promised Land.
Employing a familiar form of a trope common in Italian hagiography ("the saint who has come to us from afar"), the legendary eleventh-century Vitae of St. Regulus venerated at Lucca (BHL 7102) and of C. himself (BHL 728, 1729) make C. an exile from the Vandal kingdom in Africa.
Populonia's medieval successor as the bishop's seat, Massa Marittima, was a thriving town in the central Middle Ages and a backwater for centuries thereafter. This turn of Fortune's wheel (together with the fact that the town was sufficiently far away from population centers to discourage large-scale looting and reclaiming) preserved the cathedral of San Cerbone and some of its more striking appointments intact into the modern period, when the town began to grow again. Today San Cerbone is a co-cathedral of the diocese of Massa Marittima - Piombino. Its earlier fourteenth-century (1324) Arca di San Cerbone / di San Cerbonio (Tomb of Saint Cerbonius) by Goro di Gregorio is a sculptural highlight. Herewith some illustrated, English-language accounts of this church:
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomouk.htm
http://tinyurl.com/4bkobv
Exterior views, etc.:
http://tinyurl.com/36lhkex
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/7070962.jpg
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/24683106.jpg
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo_esterni.htm
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo_esterni2.htm
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page, with that site's usual attention to sculptural details (incl. views of the scenes from C.'s Passio carved on the front portal):
http://tinyurl.com/2vzdd4w
Other views of the portal:
http://tinyurl.com/2cgtnvx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22443621@N00/67581957
C. exposed to the beasts (lions and bears):
http://tinyurl.com/28u3jzy
Interior views:
http://tinyurl.com/2b4fmwr
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/duomo.htm
Interior, baptistery:
http://www.massamarittima.info/arte/battistero.htm
The baptismal font, with a later thirteenth-century (third quarter) carved basin and a carved tabernacle from 1447:
http://tinyurl.com/285or78
Three very good views of the Arca di San Cerbone / di San Cerbonio:
http://tinyurl.com/2u2yaco
Three very good views from Thais (but the panel described as C.'s arrival at Rome is more likely to depict C.'s exposure to the beasts):
http://www.thais.it/scultura/masdu.htm
Italian-language accounts of this monument and other views of it:
http://tinyurl.com/3uhnfd
http://www.massamarittima.info/storia/san_cerbone2.htm
http://www.massamarittima.info/images/duomo_arte/san_cerbone_dona_oche_al_pa.jpg
The last image on this page shows C. as portrayed on a fourteenth-century coin issued by Massa Marittima:
http://www.massamarittima.info/storia/moneta.htm
C. as depicted in an early fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 372v):
http://tinyurl.com/32rsvc9
4) Paulinus of York (d. 644). P. was one of the Roman monks sent in 601 to support St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission in what now is England. The principal source for him is St. Bede the Venerable's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ (2. 9–20; 3. 14). P.'s activities are unknown before before 625 (following Bede's reckoning), when he was consecrated bishop by archbishop St. Justus of Canterbury and traveled to Northumbria in the company of Æthelburh, the Christian royal from Kent who was betrothed to the then still pagan Northumbrian king Eadwine. In less than two years P. converted E.'s pagan high priest and then E. himself, whom he baptized at York on Easter day, 627 (the early ninth-century _Historia Brittonum_ has a Briton named Rhun do this).
P. established his seat at York, erecting there a stone church dedicated to St. Peter whose remains, if any, have thus far eluded archaeological discovery. He evangelized throughout the kingdom (one of his converts was St. Hild) and in its southern dependency of Lindsey, where at Lincoln he erected a stone church at what is thought to have been the site of the now demolished church of St Paul in the Bail. P. also consecrated St. Justus' successor as archbishop, St. Honorius of Canterbury. Eadwine's death in battle in 633 was followed by a pagan reaction and the end of P.'s northern mission. P. and Æthelburh returned to Kent, where P. was given the vacant see of Rochester. He received the pallium from pope Honorius I but never returned to the North.
P. (at left, with Sts. Gregory the Great and Wilfrid) as depicted in John Thornton's early fifteenth-century East Window (betw. 1405 and 1408) in York Minster (photograph by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3103907289/
P. (at right) as depicted in an early fifteenth-century clerestory window (CVMA no.: NXI) in the choir of York Minster (photograph by Gordon Plumb):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5019926413/
Detail (P.):
http://tinyurl.com/2f7ercs
5) John of Bridlington (d. 1379). The Oxford-educated Yorkshireman J. (also John Thwing or Thwenge, after the village of his birth) was a canon regular at Bridlington Priory in the coastal section of his native Yorkshire Wolds, where he rose to be cellarer and then prior. He was recognized locally for his holiness and after his death miracles were reported at his tomb. His first Vita (BHL 4355) was written before his canonization in 1401. There is also an early account in Middle English, the _Verse Life of John of Bridlington_. A rhymed Latin poem of perhaps contemporary political import, the _Vaticinium Roberti Bridlington_, circulated under J.'s name and could conceivably be his (George Rigg thought so in _Speculum_ 63 [1988]; Michael Curley in the _ODNB_ seems less willing to entertain the possibility).
J. (at left; holding a fish; at right, St. Giles) as depicted on the fourteenth-century rood screen in St Andrew, Hempstead (Norfolk):
http://tinyurl.com/52hc8p
J. as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century miniature (betw. 1401 and 1415) in the added prayers to saints in the Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours (London, British Library, MS Royal 2 A XVIII, fol. 7v):
http://tinyurl.com/3lx8rfd
J. as depicted in a fifteenth-century copy of _The Vision of William of Stranton_, an account of a vision of Purgatory in which J. serves as one of William's guides (London, British Library, MS 17 B XLIII, fol. 132v):
http://molcat1.bl.uk/IllImages/Original%5Cbig/image5.jpg
J. as depicted in the mid-fifteenth-century east window (betw. 1447 and 1464) of the Beauchamp Chapel, Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5066701655/
A few views of the mostly fifteenth-century priory church of St Mary, Bridlington (East Riding of Yorkshire), a.k.a. Bridlington Priory (of whose buildings it is a survivor), restored in the nineteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/4o9v6r
http://flickr.com/photos/67611923@N00/1810697506
http://tinyurl.com/3ko53e
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2470764
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2470771
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2470776
More views here:
http://www.bridlingtonpriory.co.uk/
The priory's originally twelfth-century former gatehouse, the Bayle Gate:
http://tinyurl.com/4tuyfm
http://tinyurl.com/3j8c9z
http://tinyurl.com/3zr44d
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|
