medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 11/24/12, I wrote:
> Hermogenes of Agrigento (?):
>
> Under today's date the SynCP has a brief, uninformative commemoration of Macarius and Hermogenes, bishops of Akragas (today's Agrigento in southwestern Sicily). Hermogenes also appears under this day in Greek menaia, where he is said to have died peacefully. Modern conjectures as to his dates have varied from the third century to the ninth. Formerly celebrated on this day in Agrigento, where -- unlike Macarius -- he is considered a saint of the diocese, Hermogenes seems now to be one of the many local saints of Sicily commemorated by Roman Catholics in that ecclesiastical region on 5. November under the rubric of All the Saints of the Churches of Sicily. Numerous Orthodox churches commemorate him today, sometimes as a martyr, sometimes not. Hermogenes of Agrigento has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
>
> In the absence of better candidates (there seems to have been a paucity of medievally venerated bishop-saints of this name), the following two depictions of a saint Hermogenes in episcopal attire may plausibly be assigned to today's saint:
>
> a) Hermogenes (at left; at right, St. Epimachus [of Pelusium?]) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in a little dome in 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/78lbqlc
>
> b) Hermogenes as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
> http://tinyurl.com/3jkckgd
> Detail view:
> http://tinyurl.com/3ewxbfs
A better candidate has since occurred to me: the Hermogenes of Mennas, Hermogenes, and Eugraphus (10. Dec.), who in his legendary Passiones is said to have been made bishop of Alexandria and who in the also earlier fourteenth-century frescoes of church of the Holy Ascension in the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć, in a scene of these three saints' martyrdom, is shown wearing a polystavrion.
Best again,
John Dillon
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