medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

 
Further to Hypatius of Bithynia:

Hypatius (upper register, far right) as depicted in a June calendar composition in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/7dupa63


Further to Rayner of Pisa:

Pisan influence in (later, outright control of) the judicate of Cagliari in the central Middle Ages extended Rayner's cult to southern Sardinia. Herewith a fairly detailed Italian-language account of the church formerly dedicated to him at Villamassargia (CI) but more recently dedicated to Our Lady of the Pillar (an originally Spanish cult that will have reached the judicate after the latter's conquest by Aragon in the 1320s);
http://tinyurl.com/86ltxff 
Views of this church's "romanesque" facade (bearing an inscription from 1318 naming Arzocco de Garnas as the church's builder, i.e. its re-builder at that time):
http://tinyurl.com/89javje
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40981296@N03/3906179467/lightbox
http://tinyurl.com/79jzm3g
Views of the originally fourteenth-century interior (recently restored):
http://tinyurl.com/6lvkrc9 


On 06/17/12, I wrote:
> Today (17. June) is also the feast day of:
> 
> 1) Isaurus, Innocentius, Felix, Hermias, Peregrinus, and Basil (d. 283 or 284, supposedly). ...

> Although our texts do not specify which Apollonia is meant (in the Greek-speaking world there were over thirty of these), the existence of the anciently important port of this name on the Adriatic in what is now Albania probably underlies their medieval construction as regional saints of the southwestern Balkans (it certainly underlies their modern one) and their consequent presence in later medieval iconographic programs in that area.
> 

Better put (since this is the start of a new paragraph) :
Although our texts do not specify which Apollonia is meant (in the Greek-speaking world there were over thirty of these), the existence of the anciently important port of this name on the Adriatic in what is now Albania probably informed the medieval construction of Isaurus and his companions as regional saints of the southwestern Balkans (it certainly informs their modern one) and their consequent presence in later medieval iconographic programs in that area. 


> 2) Manuel, Sabel (also Isabel), and Ismael (d. 362, supposedly). ...
> 
> ... In Constantinople their feast on this day was celebrated in their martyrial church near that of St. Elias at the Petrion. According to local tradition their church had been founded in the late fourth century by Theodosius I. 
> 

Better put (since the church of St. Elias at the Petrion was hardly a martyrial one):
In Constantinople their feast on this day was celebrated in their martyrial church situated near the church of St. Elias at the Petrion and said in the city's _Patria_ (not an unimpeachable source) to have been founded by Theodosius I (379-395).

 
17. June is also the feast day of:

3) Botwulf (d. 670s?). Botwulf (also Botulf, Botulph, Botolph; in Old Norse, Bótulfr) was an East Anglian abbot who, drawing upon royal connections, established in 654 a minster at a place that the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ calls Icanho (seemingly today's Iken in Suffolk). His fame was such that in about 670 St. Ceolfrith, the future abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, visited Icanho to observe the arrangements; our source for this, the anonymous early eighth-century _Historia abbatum_ transmitted with the similar work by St. Bede the Venerable calls Botwulf a man of unmatched life and learning (_singularis uitae et doctrinae_, where _uita_ presumably signifies 'manner of life') and one filled with the Holy Spirit. Bede himself never mentions Botwulf. Botwulf's lightly regarded later eleventh-century Vita (BHL 1428) by Folcard of St.-Bertin, abbot of Thorney (one of the places claiming to have some of B.'s relics) gives him a brother named Adulphus who became bishop of Utrecht, tells us about his humility and other virtues, says that he was noted for miracles, and has him buried on 17. June in the church of his monastery. The by modern scholarly standards even less credible readings for his feast in a late medieval breviary from Schleswig (printed in 1512; BHL 1430) make him the son of an Irish king and present him, once he had come into England, as an hermit at several places who at one point visited Rome and came back with many relics; they also offer a miracle story in which, when Botwulf was living near the Thames at church he had built in honor of St. Martin and was keeping chickens, an eagle that had been taking chicks made the mistake of taking Botwulf's rooster. The saint threatened this avian thief, whereupon the eagle brought the still living rooster to before Botwulf's feet and then itself fell dead.
 
Botwulf's monastery seems to have been destroyed by Norse raiders. It had at least one early daughter house, a minster at Much Wenlock (Shrops) founded in the later seventh century. The spread of his supposed relics to Ely, Thorney, and elsewhere led to his adoption as a monastic saint with numerous church dedications in eastern England from East Anglia north into Yorkshire. Probably in the eleventh century English missionaries brought his cult to Scandinavia, where it took root and lasted until the Reformation. Among the many there who had Botwulf for a name saint were Botulf Botulfsson (d. 1311), the only person known to have been burned in Sweden for heresy, and his father. Botwulf's reputation as a patron saint of travelers resulted in the establishment of churches dedicated to him near city gates, including several in London.

Botwulf has yet to grace the pages of the RM. That absence and my inability some years ago quickly to find a standing commemoration for him in the Church of England caused me to keep him out of the annual rotation of 'Saints of the day', limited as that ordinarily is to feasts currently observed. I should have looked harder. Botwulf has been in the Benedictine Martyrology all along. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America commemorates him on 17. June (some Orthodox churches commemorate pre-schism saints of western Europe who are not to be found, or are no longer to be found, in the RM). And in the Church of England, St Botolphs in Helpston (Cambs) celebrates him on the Sunday closest to 17. June. 

Botwulf (at left; at right, St. Brendan) as depicted in the later fifteenth-century vault paintings of the porch of Täby kyrka in Täby kommune (Stockholms län):
http://www.formonline.se/kyrkor/Taby/Taby_VapenBotulf.html

Some pages on St Botolph's Church at Iken (the nave is from ca. 1300; the chancel is fifteenth-century; a large block from a ninth- or tenth-century Saxon cross was found on the site and is displayed in the church):
http://www.wuffings.co.uk/WuffSites/Iken.html
http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/iken.html
http://www.eimagesite.net/s4/gst/run.cgi?page=s4_gb_0032_342;sh=1

Other dedications to Botwulf:

St Botoph's Priory, Colchester (Essex):
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/priories/st_botolphs%20priory.htm
http://tinyurl.com/7pwgeo8
http://tinyurl.com/7py3kgm

St Botolph's Church, Swyncombe (Oxon):
http://tinyurl.com/78sg4zd
http://photodelusions.wordpress.com/2006/09/26/st-botulph-swynbrook/
http://www.st-botolphs.com/botolph/st_b_other_files/swyncombe.htm
http://www.geofftaylorphotography.com/st-botolph-swyncombe
http://tinyurl.com/77n86xb

St Botolph's Church, Skidbrooke (Lincs):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Botolph%27s_Church,_Skidbrooke
http://www.wparkinson.com/Saltfleet/church.htm
http://www.st-botolphs.com/botolph/st_b_other_files/skidbrooke.htm

St. Botolph's Church, Helpston (Cambs):
http://www.robschurches.moonfruit.com/#/helpston/4520266961
http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/search/county/site/ed-nh-helps.html

St Botolph's Church, Cambridge (Cambs):
http://www.cambridge2000.com/cambridge2000/html/0004/P4240779.html
http://www.stbotolphs.net/
http://www.cugcr.org.uk/botolph.shtml
http://www.druidic.org/camchurch/churches/cambotolph.htm
http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/crsbi/search/county/site/ed-ca-casbo.html

St Botolph's Church, Boston (Lincs):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Botolph%27s_Church,_Boston
http://www.parish-of-boston.org.uk/aboutbostonstump.html
http://tinyurl.com/7ktkmws
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4116/4853132048_f374c5a0c3_z.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/7r8zmok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13082778@N06/6345107315/
http://tinyurl.com/73ny4db
http://tinyurl.com/7gjz48m

Others:
http://www.st-botolphs.com/botolph/st_b_other.htm


4) Moling (d. 697). Next to nothing is known about the historical Moling (also Mo Ling, Mo Ling Lúachra, Moling Lúachra, Tairchell, Daircell), the eponymous founder of the abbey of St Mullins in southern Leinster. But, as Elva Johnston puts it in her entry for him on the _Oxford Dictionary of National Biography_, 'While the historical person is indistinct, there is a great deal of material concerning the imaginary Mo Ling.' Phyllis Jestice's notice of him in 'Saints of the day' for 17. June 2002 <http://tinyurl.com/88t8avx> dealt with that aspect rather nicely:

'Moling ... is one of the outstanding seventh-century saints of
Ireland. His fame reached throughout Ireland, but his cult was especially
strong in the Kilkenny area of Leinster. At first a monk at Glendalough,
Moling left to found his own monastery, later known as St. Mullin's on the
Barrow (Tech Moling). Later he is said to have become a bishop at the
monastery of Ferns, where according to report he obtained remission of a
heavy tribute of oxen that the Leinstermen had to pay to their local king.
The extant Lives of Moling have a strongly mythological content. One can
see this from the very beginning of the saint's life: Moling's father had
seduced his wife's sister. The pregnant woman fled in shame, and gave
birth to Moling in heavy snow at night. Fortunately the infant was
protected by angels, and a dove kept the mother from killing herself.
Mother and child then lived for seven years in a cave. According to these
legends, when Moling came to adulthood, his first church was built for him
by a mythological mason, the Gobán Saor, who constructed the building with
wood from the Yew of Ross, one of Ireland's great mythological trees. The
price the craftsman demanded was as much rye as the church would hold, so
the saint told the Gobán to turn the church mouth upward and then produced
a miracle to fill it with the grain. Besides mythical elements, tales of
Moling also emphasize the common Christian theme of the saint who does not
want to draw public attention to his holiness through humility. In a
particularly notable incident, a woman brought her dead child to Moling,
who refused to touch it since he did not want a reputation for raising the
dead. The woman then threw the child's corpse at Moling, who let the body
fall into a river-at which the child came to life, despite the saint's
efforts.'

One can read more about the legendary Moling both in the aforementioned entry in the _ODNB_ and in his lengthy entry in Pádraig Ó Riain, ed., _A Dictionary of Irish Saints_ (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), pp. 487-490. In addition to his vernacular Lives he has a Vita in two versions (BHL 5988, 5988b); this is thought to have originated in the later twelfth century and while not closely related to the vernacular Lives does draw on material also transmitted in various Old Irish texts. Moling's feast on this day is recorded both in the Martyrology of Tallaght and in that of St. Oengus the Culdee. 


5) Ramwold (Bl.; d. 1000). Ramwold (also Ramwod; in the _AA.SS._, Ramuoldus) is remembered as the first non-commendatory abbot of the monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg. According to the earlier eleventh-century Bavarian history of Arnold of St. Emmeram, when bishop St. Wolfgang decided to separate this abbacy from his episcopal duties and brought in Ramwold to take charge first as prior and then as abbot, the latter, a monk of St. Maximinus in Trier, was already an old man who had been chaplain to Trier's archbishop Heinrich I (956-964). Ramwold reformed the abbey and led it for some twenty-five years, during which time this previously neglected institution began to flourish in important ways some of which can still be seen in its surviving artistic production of the late tenth and early eleventh century. His brief Vita by prior Arnulf of St. Emmeram pays tribute both to his monastic and other virtues (late in life he became blind but bore this affliction cheerfully) and to his administrative capacity and credits him with several postmortem healing miracles, one of which Arnulf had experienced himself.

Entered in the Benedictine Martyrology as a Saint and so designated in his notice at the diocese of Münster's kirchensite.de, Ramwold is called Blessed by the diocese of Regensburg. He has yet to grace the pages of the RM.

Ramwold's sarcophagus in the crypt of St. Emmeram in Regensburg was opened in 2002 in order to secure the preservation of his relics and was resealed in 2003 after a formal recognition had taken place. See this illustrated, German-language account:
http://tinyurl.com/8yxvv7g
 
Ramwold (at center) as depicted in a full-page illumination in the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram (Munich, BSB, Clm 14000):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Adalpertus_001.jpg

Best,
John Dillon

**********************************************************************
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