medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
12. November is also, at least in the archdiocese of Munich-Freising, the feast day of:
Arsacius, venerated at Ilmmünster (?). A saint of this name (also Arsatius; in Italian, Arsacio and Arsazio; variously called Arsacius of Rome or Arsacius of Milan) has been venerated in Bavaria since at least the eleventh century, when a funerary inscription was installed at the abbey of Ilmmünster in today's Oberbayern crediting a monk named Uto or Eio with having brought thither the body of Saint Arsacius. Ilmmünster was founded in the later eighth century and by 788 was already noted for its possession of saintly relics. It's thought that Uto / Eio was this house's first abbot. In the late twelfth or thirteenth century the second Passio of the Quirinus venerated at Tegernsee (BHL 7032), with whose abbey Ilmmünster had been closely associated from at least 902 until 1060, asserted that Uto was the nephew of Tegernsee's traditional founders, Blessed Adalbert and Blessed Ottokar, and that he had with the permission of pope St. Zachary brought from Rome the remains of both St. Quirinus the martyr and St. Arsacius the confessor. But in the thirteenth century an alternative tradition begins to emerge in which Arsacius is said to have come not from Rome but rather from Milan, where he will have been an early bishop.
In Bavaria this latter tradition is said to be first observable at the abbey of Scheyern, whose abbot Conrad (1206-1225) entered Arsacius into his house's liturgical calendar specifically as a bishop. Scheyern is relatively close to Ilmmünster (they are both in the western Hallertau near Pfaffenhofen) and Ilmmünster, which since 1060 had been a house of secular canons, had in the early thirteenth century built a new church modeled, it is said, upon that of Sant'Eustorgio in Milan. It's not known when Arsacius' veneration as a saint, let alone as one of its early bishops, began in Milan. There's no mention of it in the that city's eleventh-century _Datiana historia_ (a rather legendary history of Milan's early church) but it certainly existed by the time of the Milanese episcopal chronicle of 1261, which makes Arsacius follow St. Eustorgius in that see. In the next century the Milanese chronicler Galvano Fiamma reported in his _Manipulus florum_ (ca. 1333) that Arsacius was the city's twenty-third archbishop (in fact, Milan's bishops begin to be archbishops only in the earlier eighth century), having succeeded archbishop St. Ausanus (d. 566), and that he was buried in Milan's church of St. Stephen (Santo Stefano Maggiore, a.k.a. Santo Stefano in Brolo).
In the fifteenth century this Milanese construction of Arsacius resulted in the Bavarian creation of a Vita in the form of lections for his feast on 12. November that presented him as having been a pagan student of St. Ambrose who was converted by the latter to Christianity, who then converted his own brother St. Eustorgius and others in their family, and who together with Eustorgius brought the relics of the Magi to Milan from Constantinople (the usual story ascribes this supposed translation to Eustorgius alone). In 1495, when the canons of Ilmmünster had been suppressed and their property was transferred to a new foundation associated with Munich's new principal church, the Frauenkirche, Arsacius' remains were translated to the latter over the violent objections of the people of Ilmmünster. Arsacius then became a secondary patron of the Frauenkirche and his cult was disseminated more broadly within the diocese (at this point, still that of Freising). In 1846 Arsacius' relics were returned to the ex-monastery church dedicated to him at Ilmmünster, where they repose today in the crypt of what is now a chiefly neo-Gothic structure. Here's a view of Arsacius' resting place:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudiahave/5401458175/
In 1581 the learned Milanese archbishop St. Carlo Borromeo determined after inquiry both that there were then no remains of a St. Arsacius in Santo Stefano and that the saint's cult (with a feast day of 12. November, just as in Bavaria) had very dubious foundations. Whereupon he had Arsacius removed from both the Ambrosian missal and the Ambrosian breviary. Modern scholarship tends toward the belief that bishop St. Arsacius is a misunderstanding founded upon the former presence in Santo Stefano (no longer there by 1715) of a funerary inscription for a probably fifth- or sixth-century Arsacius who in this text is said, without any indication of his having been a bishop, to have been dedicated to the church, to have given his wealth to the poor upon his death, and to have gone happily to his eternal reward. Today's Arsacius (as opposed to the martyr Arsacius of Nicomedia) has yet to grace the pages of the RM. Antonio Rimoldi, writing for the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_ (vol. 2, cols. 473-474) in the 1950s or the very early 1960s, averred that Arsacius is venerated [present tense] on 12. November in Milan's Santo Stefano Maggiore. The website of the archdiocese of Milan appears not to mention Arsacius.
Best,
John Dillon
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