medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

An older post revised:

Anastasia of Sirmium (d. ca. 304, supposedly). Anastasia is a martyr of Sirmium in Pannonia (today's Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia) about whom we have many texts but nonetheless are very poorly informed. In Latin she has a complicated, romance-like, and highly legendary late antique Passio (BHL 401). A lengthy and successful attempt to provide a narrative for the presumed dedicatee of what would become known as Rome's titular and stational church of Sant'Anastasia on the Palatine, its dating is uncertain: although in 499 the church was still officially the _titulus Anastasiae_ (a name form typically honoring an early donor), Leo V's delivery of a sermon there on 25. December, the day given in the Passio as Anastasia's _dies natalis_, suggests that the association between the building and the saint may already have been current in the 450s. Anastasia's liturgical prominence in early medieval Rome is reflected by her presence in the _Nobis quoque_ of the Roman canon of the Mass and by her commemoration in the second Mass on Christmas (the Mass at dawn), a vestige of what was once her proper feast on this day. A noteworthy, albeit no longer quite so recent contribution to the study of Anastasia's cult is Paola Francesca Moretti's _La Passio Anastasiae. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione_ (Roma: Herder, 2006). An English-language review of that is at <http://tinyurl.com/y9pjwmu>.

For those who wish to practice their Latin, herewith an unsourced text of Anastasia's legend as presented in the _Legenda aurea_ of Bl. Jacopo da Varazze:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/voragine/anast.shtml

Anastasia's hagiographical presence in medieval Greek and medieval Slavic texts is also legendary and richly complicated. For that, a rewarding place to begin is Jane Baun, _Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha_ (Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2007). In a brief overview at pp. 117-120 (for those with access to Google Books, this will be found at <http://tinyurl.com/24zpb7k>) Baun distinguishes among three Anastasias: Anastasia the Roman (12. October), Anastasia the Virgin (28./29. October), and Anastasia the Healer or A. _Pharmakolytria_ ('poison-curer'; 22. December). But in practice the identity of the Anastasia celebrated on one or another of these days has not always accorded with this scheme and the hagiographies of all three are interpenetrating. For the purposes of this notice they are treated as differing constructions of the same saint (but, as Anastasia the Healer has a sometimes distinctive iconography, links to images of her representative of that tradition are reserved for a special section at the end of this notice).

At Zadar in Croatia, Anastasia is a principal patron saint (feast day: 15. January), a distinction she shares with the traditionally Aquileian martyr Chrysogonus (a recurring personage in A.'s hagiography). The city's cathedral of Sv. Stošija (St. Anastasia) houses what are believed to be her relics, translated from her martyrial church in Sirmium to Constantinople at some point in the years 458-471 (so Theodore the Reader as quoted by Theophanes) and from Constantinople to Zadar at some point between 808 and 811 (cf. the rather later _Translatio Anastasiae Constantinopoli Iaderam_ [BHL 402]). A marble sarcophagus bearing inscriptions recording the relics' donation by bishop Donatus (St. Donatus of Zadar) is on display in Zadar's Archaeological Museum:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59198268@N03/6105404205/
http://www.zadar.travel/images/original/ZADAR_Arheoloski_muzej_2_1337099207.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/olj69z5
In bright light for a clearer view of the inscriptions:
http://www.zadar.travel/images/original/sarkofag_stosija_1323816944.jpg
A copy is kept in the cathedral.

The abbey church of Santa Maria in Sylvis, an eighth-century foundation at today's Sesto al Règhena (PN) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, shelters in its crypt a so-called sarcophagus of St. Anastasia (first documented from 1339 but utilizing carved slabs that clearly are much older). Herewith a distance view, followed by a detail view in close-up:
http://tinyurl.com/9mwaz5
https://www.flickr.com/photos/renzodionigi/2930600389/sizes/l/
Considered a masterpiece of Lombard sculpture, this object has been thought probably a reworked abbatial throne. The brief video here (an extract from a longer documentary), showing laser scanning and a 3D model in gesso, suggests a different origin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XflCOaVl_lw

A cranium venerated as that of Anastasia is kept in a chapel of the abbey church at Benediktbeuern. According to its translation account (BHL 403; edited in MGH, SS, vol. 9, pp. 224-229, as part of the so-called _Breviarium Gotscalchi_), it was brought thither in 1053 from the abbey of Santa Maria in Organo in Verona, a dependency of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. Whereas this account is quite believable when it associates Anastasia's cult in Aquileia with that of the locally venerated martyr Chrysogonus, its narrative of how her relics came from her resting place on Palmaria (in A.'s hagiography, one of the traditional locales of her martyrdom) to Aquileia is pure fantasy.

The originally fourteenth-century Gregoriou monastery on Mt. Athos keeps what are claimed to be major relics of Anastasia the Roman, including a complete skull and most of the body, a vial of her blood, and smallish pieces of skin. Herewith a view of some of these displayed in a case used for traveling expositions:
http://pemptousia-4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2014/10/02-IN1.jpg 

Until late April 2012, when they were reported stolen, relics believed to be those of Anastasia the Healer (most notably, part of a skull) were kept in the seemingly originally earlier sixteenth-century Patriarchal Monastery of Saint Anastasia the Healer at Vassilika (Thessaloniki prefecture) in northern Greece:
http://tinyurl.com/73lxjh5
Another view of the skull relic, this time on a visit to Kyiv / Kiev in May 2011:
https://mospat.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IMG_0464_36.jpg


Some medieval images of Anastasia of Sirmium:

a) Anastasia (at far left) as depicted in the heavily restored later sixth-century mosaics of Ravenna's basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (photograph courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/ApNNorth5.jpg

b) Anastasia (at right, after St. Chrysogonus and St. Rufinus of Rome) as depicted in a degraded earlier eighth-century fresco in the lower church of Rome's basilica di San Crisogono:
http://tinyurl.com/72f68zg

c) Anastasia's martyrdom by the sword (and that of a companion) as depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 49):
http://tinyurl.com/colzquw

d) Anastasia as depicted in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:
http://tinyurl.com/pf4wz62

e) Anastasia as portrayed on one of the seemingly late eleventh- or early twelfth-century silvered bronze plaques on the Porta di San Clemente of the basilica cattedrale di San Marco in Venice:
http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/160000/140800/140736.jpg 

f) Anastasia (or a figure so identified) as depicted in the twelfth-century frescoes of the Cripta degli Affreschi in the patriarchal basilica in Aquileia:
http://s.anastasia.wedge.ru/Pix/Photo/image_large_184.jpg

g) Anastasia as depicted in the recently cleaned twelfth-century mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo:
http://s.anastasia.wedge.ru/Pix/Photo/image_large_177.jpg

h) Anastasia as portrayed in a later twelfth- or early thirteenth-century relief said to have come from her cathedral in Zadar and now in the Permanent Ecclesiastical Art Exhibition in the same city:
http://tinyurl.com/nsdtesv

i) Anastasia as depicted in a later thirteenth-century Book of Hours from Liège (Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms. 76 G 17, fol. 213r):
http://tinyurl.com/38fs4tw

j) Anastasia (at right, after Sts. Barbara and Marina) as depicted in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (1280) of the church of the Panagia in Moutoullas (Nicosia prefecture), Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/mtetdrw

k) Anastasia's martyrdom by fire as depicted in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 8r [image greatly expandable]):
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ds/huntington/images//000854A.jpg

l) Anastasia (at left; at right, St. Chrysogonus) as portrayed in relief on the tympanum of the main portal of the late fourteenth century church of St. Michael in Zadar:
http://zarocroatia.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stmichael-14th-century.jpg

m) Anastasia (at far right, after Sts. Florus, Nicholas of Myra, and Blasius / Blaise of Sebaste) as depicted on a wing of a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century Novgorod School wooden triptych now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=en&type=1&id=513

n) Anastasia (at far right, after the prophet Elijah and St. Nicholas of Myra) as depicted on an early fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/hires.php?lng=en&type=1&id=565

o) Anastasia in prison (at left) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 95v):
http://tinyurl.com/2e6oqa5

p) Anastasia (at center, between St. Roch and St. Thomas of Canterbury) as depicted in a late fifteenth-century fresco (1493; restored in 1990) in the cappella di Sant'Anastasia in Sale San Giovanni (CN) in Piedmont:
http://tinyurl.com/km6cr3c

q) Anastasia (at right; at left, St. Euphrosyne) as depicted in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:
http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/116/216/index.shtml

r) Anastasia's martyrdom by fire as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1546/1547) by George / Tzortzis the Cretan in the katholikon of the Dionysiou monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://pemptousia.com/files/2013/12/Anastasia-Farmacolitria-Dionisiou-1547.jpg

s) Anastasia of Rome spewing blood under torture as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1546/1547) by George / Tzortzis the Cretan in the katholikon of the Dionysiou monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://pemptousia.com/files/2012/10/Anastasia-Romana-dionysiou-1547-IN.jpg


Typical images of Anastasia the Healer:

Anastasia has been venerated since the early Middle Ages as a healer of the effects of poison. In that role, for which she has a separate Passio (BHG 81; earliest witness is of the ninth century), she is widely shown holding a medicine bottle, as in these examples:

t) as depicted (at center, between St. Cataldus and St. Zosimus / Zosimas giving communion to St. Mary of Egypt) in a later medieval fresco in the crypt of Taranto's cattedrale di San Cataldo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanaudino/4903624211/lightbox/

u) as depicted (at right; at left, a donor) in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou near Nikitari (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/1/15/Asinou_Anastasia.jpg

v) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć 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/2ccv8bb

w) as depicted in a later fourteenth- or earlier fifteenth-century icon from Thessaloniki, now in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg:
http://tinyurl.com/2cz9zws

A happy second day of Christmas to all,
John Dillon

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