medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (6. December) was the feast day of:
1) Nicholas of Myra (and of Bari; d. 4th cent.). With any luck, a fresh notice of this well known thaumaturge, protector of children and of seafarers, and patron saint of Russia, will be forthcoming in the next few days along with a revised set of visuals for him. In the meantime, herewith links to a few depictions of an episode in his Bios by St. Symeon Metaphrastes, the cutting down of a tree that harbored a demon:
a) at lower right on a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century icon of St. Nicholas and scenes of his Bios belonging to St. Catherine's Monastery at St. Catherine in Egypt's South Sinai governorate:
http://tinyurl.com/aear2s2
b) in the later thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of Sofia:
http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0014c.jpg
c) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the altar area of the church of St. George in Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://www.eikonografos.com/album/albums/uploads/servia/30.jpg
2) Asella (d. ca. 405). We know about this Roman virgin from three letters of St. Jerome (_Epp._ 24, 45, 65). Before her birth a premonitory vision informed Asella's father of her holiness. At about the age of twelve she retired to a small cell that she left only to visit the tombs of the martyrs. She received ecstatic visions. Jerome presents her as a model of chastity and self-renunciation. She may well be identical with the beautiful virgin Asella said by Palladius (_Historia lausiaca_, 41) to have grown old in a monastery. Her putative relics are preserved in Rome's basilica dei Santi Bonifacio e Alessio on the Aventine and in Cremona's chiesa di Sant'Abbondio. Here's a grayscale view of Asella's effigy reliquary in the latter church:
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90496/90496.JPG
3) Martyrs cruelly tortured under Huneric, esp. Dionisia and Maioricus (d. ca. 482-484). This commemoration is one of several in the RM drawing upon Victor of Vita's propagandistic _Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae_. It is based upon the latter at 3. 21-24 (olim 5. 1), whose chief example of vicious torment during the Vandal persecution is the beautiful matron Dionisia (in English, also Denise). Her request that her private parts not be exposed to view at the time of her execution is said to have provoked her torturers into stripping her naked and beating her to death with rods in full public view while between blows she encouraged fortitude and resolution in her only son Maioricus (also spelled as Majoricus), who despite his tender years was forced to be present at his mother's execution. Maioricus is then said to have seized for himself the palm of martyrdom. The versions of the same commemoration in the ninth-century martyrologies of Florus of Lyon, St. Ado of Vienne, and Usuard of Saint-Germain include the names of several others mentioned by Victor in these chapters.
4) Obitius of Niardo (d. ca. 1204). Obitius (in Italian, Obizio or Obizzo) was a successful soldier from Niardo in today's Brescia province of Lombardy. During the exceptionally bloody battle of Rudiano (a.k.a. Malamorti; 7. July 1191) between the Brescians and their Milanese allies on one side and the Cremonese and their Bergamasque allies on the other, he was taking part in the massacre of the latter when a temporary bridge on which they had been retreating gave way and caused them and their pursuers to fall into the river Oglio. Obitius narrowly escaped drowning. A subsequent vision of Hell caused him to give up the profession of arms and to become a penitent.
In 1197, having either abandoned his family or won them over to the loss of income and standing his decision had entailed, Obitius entered the great Benedictine monastery of San Salvatore / Santa Giulia at Brescia as an oblate. He died on this day early in the thirteenth century and was buried in the monastery. In the fifteenth century, apparently in consequence of a miraculous eruption of liquid at Obitius' grave, relics said to be his were translated to the main altar of the monastery's basilica of San Salvatore where they remained until 1798, the year following the monastery's suppression. They were then translated to the parish church of San Maurizio at Niardo, in whose modern successor they remain today.
In the 1520s the painter Romanino executed a series of frescoes in and on a chapel in the base of the belltower of Brescia's San Salvatore depicting scenes of Obitius' life. An Italian-language account with expandable views of some of the frescoes is here:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storie_di_sant%27Obizio
In 1900 Obitius' cult was confirmed papally at the level of of Saint. Here's a view of his relics during a recent annual display at Niardo:
http://tinyurl.com/2zdaaw
Best,
John Dillon
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