medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Gerland (d. 1100). Gerland (in Italian, Gerlando; in Sicilian, Giullannu) was the first Latin bishop of Agrigento (prior to 1927, Girgenti) in southwestern Sicily after the Norman-led conquest of the island. The few good sources for him tell us very little. Geoffrey Malaterra, Roger I's late eleventh-century biographer writing in Catania, calls Gerland _Gerlandum quendam, natione Allobrogum_ ("a certain Gerland, of the Savoyard nation") but provides no further details. Roger's own diploma of 1093 creating the diocese merely names him as Gerlandus, once just before defining the diocese's territorial scope (_Agrigentina ecclesia cuius episcopus vocatur gerlandus_) and once toward the end (_in proprietate autem domini gerlandi episcopi_). His consecration by Urban II is mentioned in a papal bull of 1099; the actual date of the consecration is unknown. Potted lives of the saints uncritically perpetuate a late medieval claim that he was a relative of the Hautevilles and often repeat an unproven early modern conjecture identifying him with his contemporary Gerland of Besançon, the author of a treatise on the computus. Gerland of Agrigento was canonized in 1159. Today is his _dies natalis_. He is today's saint of the day in the ecclesiastical region of Sicily.
Gerland sited his cathedral on one of the highest spots of the hill that once made Agrigento militarily significant. Built and rebuilt from the late eleventh century to the later fourteenth (with re-dedications in 1315 and 1354) and again in the later seventeenth century and heavily redecorated within during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its exterior has little medieval to show apart from some windows, a seldom-photographed ornamental portal, and the cathedral's unfinished fifteenth-century belltower:
http://tinyurl.com/kpexamr
http://tinyurl.com/qcavc2p
http://tinyurl.com/oapu6bc
http://tinyurl.com/2sx8o9
http://tinyurl.com/n3dk55h
http://tinyurl.com/lz5jto2
The interior was renovated a few years ago. The front part of the nave with its massive polygonal columns dates from the fourteenth century (some of the columns have been rebuilt):
http://tinyurl.com/m3n48dd
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Originally dedicated to the BVM, the cathedral received a new altar, dedicated to Gerland and hallowed by his remains, in 1315 (_aliter_, in 1306). With the erection of the archdiocese of Agrigento in 2000 this church is now the cattedrale metropolitana di San Gerlando.
Roger I's diploma of 1093 naming Gerland as bishop of the newly created diocese of Agrigento is preserved in the cathedral archive.
Some views (note the absence of the initial "E" at the outset):
http://tinyurl.com/lstmcu8
http://tinyurl.com/lmwnjv2
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The complete text may be read in Vito La Mantia, ed., _Antiche consuetudini della città di Girgenti..._ (Palermo: A. Giannitrapani, 1902), pp. 13-14. There's a Google Books instance at <http://tinyurl.com/mwtdgnf>.
Gerland (at right; at left, St. Euprepius the Martyr) as depicted in the late twelfth-century mosaics of the basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16459025@N03/9456675955/
Gerland is easy to find if you remember that he's next to Noah's ark:
http://tinyurl.com/mdaqeyx
Best,
John Dillon
(matter from an older post revised)
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