medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 01/14/12, I wrote:
> Herewith a link to an earlier 'Saints of the day' for 15. January (including Sts. Secundina; Ephysius; John the Calybite; Maurus, abbot in France; and Arsenius of Armo):
> http://tinyurl.com/6s3gpca
<SNIP>
> In that same notice, add to the view of John the Calybite and Alexius / Alexis of Rome as depicted in the earlier twelfth-century frescoes (1230s) of the Mile¨eva monastery near Prijepolje in Serbia this larger view of that panel:
> http://tinyurl.com/7tt5rt6
> and this detail view of its image of John the Calybite:
> http://tinyurl.com/6tavfpg
>
Er, as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1230s)...
15. January is also the feast day of:
Tharsicia (?). Tharsicia (also Tarsicia; in French now usually Tarsice) is a very largely legendary saint of the diocese of Rodez. The earliest account of her occurs in the mid-ninth-century _Carmen de exordio generis Francorum_ (ca. 845-850; MGH Poetae, 2. 141-45), a now disbelieved attempt to provide a Merovingian royal ancestry for the pre-Carolingian Pippinids. In this concocted genealogy both she and St. Ferreolus of Uzès are presented as two of the four children of an Ansbertus and of his wife, a daughter of Chlotar I; another of their offspring, Arnoldus, is made out to be a forefather of Pepin the Short. The poem adds that Tharsicia was a virgin, celebrated in the territory of Rodez, and that after her death she obtained the grace of calling her body up to heaven.
Although it would thus seem that in the earlier ninth century Rodez had no relics of Tharsicia, things had changed by the fourteenth century when, in a legend preserved in an unpublished Vita ascribed to Bernard Gui, is was asserted that in order to preserve her virginity the saint had fled her home and become an hermit at Rodelle (Aveyron) and that after she had died there her body was brought to Rodez and buried in that city's church of St. Vincent.
The RM styles Tharsicia a virgin martyr, though it's hard to see what the evidentiary basis is for the martyrial classification. A cave at Rodelle is visited as the site of her hermitage:
http://tinyurl.com/7vbp2g8
http://www.aurelle-verlac.com/rodelle/rodelle.htm
http://tinyurl.com/7nnnul5
And a seventeenth-century châsse said to be hers now serves as an altar in the église Saint-Blaise du Monastère at Le Monastère (Aveyron):
http://tinyurl.com/8xckzgq
Best,
John Dillon
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