medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Yesterday (2. June) was the feast day of St. Erasmus (d. 303?), co-patron of this honourable list. The latter was founded on 2. June 1995. Belated birthday wishes to medieval-religion!

In a letter of October 590 pope St. Gregory the Great referred to Erasmus' body reposing at Formiae (today's Formia in today's southernmost Lazio). By the beginning of the seventh century there was a monastery named for Erasmus at Rome and another outside the city at Mt. Soracte. He appears in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as follows: _In Formiis in Campania Herasmi_ ("At Formiae in Campania, Erasmus"). Erasmus' Latin _Passio_ (BHL 2578-2585d) exists in three late antique and early medieval recensions whose texts make him a bishop of Antioch on the Orontes tortured almost to death under Diocletian, guided by an angel to Formiae, and received thence into heaven very shortly thereafter. A Greek version (BHG 602), once thought to be the original text upon which this Latin tradition depended, has been shown instead to be a translation from the Latin. In some Orthodox traditions Erasmus settled rather in today's Ohrid in Macedonia, whence he is known as Erasmus of Ohrid.

Erasmus thus has a form of the standard Campanian legend of a bishop (variant: holy virgin) coming from abroad, usually with angelic assistance, and often dying soon afterwards (variant: already dead en route). Recension B of his Passio includes a sparkling prosimetric version now attributed to the tenth-century Neapolitan hagiographer Peter the Subdeacon; recension C is distinguished by the later eleventh-century work of the Cassinese prose stylist John of Gaeta, later papal chancellor and ultimately pope (as Gelasius II). Texts that make Erasmus bishop _of_ Formiae and combine this with the testimony of (ps.-)HM and its successors to have him martyred there are later and alien to this tradition. Later too, after Erasmus had become a patron of sailors, comes the tale of the winding out of his innards with a windlass.

Since at least the tenth century relics believed to be those of Erasmus have reposed at Gaeta, the south Italian port once the chief town of the early medieval duchy to which Formiae belonged. He and St. Marcian of Syracuse are Gaeta's principal patron saints. On 5. June 2008 their remains and those of others kept under the main altar of the cathedral crypt were accorded a formal recognition and Erasmus' relics were translated from a compartment in a small carved sarcophagus to a stone reliquary container of his own (an apparently ancient, but freshly cleaned, Roman ossuary chest). In this view of the opened sarcophagus Erasmus' relics are in the third compartment from left:
http://i48.tinypic.com/dqgck.jpg

At Gaeta the basilica cattedrale dei Santi Erasmo e Marciano e di Santa Maria Assunta, consecrated in 1106, has been much rebuilt. Herewith a view of its recently restored twelfth-/thirteenth-century belltower:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Gaeta07.jpg
Belltower entrance, with spolia:
http://tinyurl.com/2gpanm
http://tinyurl.com/qbvvgsf
The cathedral has a wonderful late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Paschal candlestick historiated in relief with scenes from Erasmus' Passio as well as from the life of Christ:
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/160000/142000/141617.jpg
http://www.wga.hu/art/zgothic/1romanes/re-1/2i6_1101.jpg
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery3/var/albums/Gaeta/gaeta%20003.jpg?m=1302630993
A few detail views:
http://web.tiscali.it/serasmoformia/passioserasmi.html
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church has a number of detail views of the features indicated above:
http://www.medioevo.org/artemedievale/Pages/Lazio/Gaeta.html

In the early and central Middle Ages Erasmus' cult spread across today's coastal Campania and southern Lazio. It was from ports there that E. became thought of more widely both as a seaman's saint and as a patron of harbor boatmen, often under the name form 'Elmo' (a typically Campanian pronunciation of his hypocorism 'Ermo'; in southern and central Italy he's also called 'Eramo'; by false division he's also known, especially in Spanish, as San Telmo). In addition to forts and fortification towers bearing his name in various seaports there are chapels and other churches dedicated to him around much of the western Mediterranean.

But it would be a mistake to think of Erasmus as purely a maritime saint. He is also the patron and eponym of today's Santeramo in Colle (BA), situated in the Murge of central Apulia and first attested from 1136. Further north, and at a much higher elevation, here's a view of what's thought to be -- or to have been -- the remains of the church dedicated to Erasmus in the now abandoned village of Sant'Eramo (both the church and the village are said to be attested in a papal bull of 1215) in today's Lucoli (AQ) in Abruzzo:
http://www.funghiitaliani.it/uploads/monthly_10_2007/post-4562-1191874794.jpg
A distance view of the village:
http://www.funghiitaliani.it/uploads/monthly_10_2007/post-4562-1191874499.jpg
Those views were posted to the Web in 2007. The _comune_ of Lucoli in which Sant'Eramo is situated lies within a few kilometers of the epicenter of the terrific earthquake of 6. April 2009 in the Aquilano; its inhabited portions were severely damaged in that seismic event. The possibility exists that what had been left standing of the church at Sant'Eramo is now just a heap of stones.

From at least the thirteenth century onward Erasmus was also regarded as a healing saint and hospices were named for him, e.g. the one in Legnago partly endowed by Bonvesin de La Riva in 1313. In the late Middle Ages and beyond Erasmus was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers venerated especially in German-speaking parts of the empire. He was invoked for maladies of the stomach and bowels and to aid women experiencing labor pains.

Here's a rare early medieval image of Erasmus (undergoing flagellation in Diocletian's presence), a dismounted eighth-century fresco from Rome's chiesa di Santa Maria in Via Lata, now in the Museo Nazionale Romano - Crypta Balbi:
http://tinyurl.com/nkfmdf

Shown on this page are a later tenth-century coin from the duchy of Gaeta and another of the late tenth or early eleventh century, both bearing facial representations of Erasmus, as well as an early twelfth-century Gaetan coin bearing his name:
http://www.ristoranteilfollaro.it/Cenni%20di%20Storia/Il%20Follaro%20monete.htm

A few later medieval and early Renaissance images:

a) Church of St. John the Theologian (at) Kaneo, Ohrid, late thirteenth-century fresco:
http://tinyurl.com/qxw2y6r

b) Church of the Holy Ascension, Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija, narthex, earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. 1335 and 1350); May/June calendar composition; Erasmus at far left in the upper register, depicted as a monk:
http://tinyurl.com/36v6sc2

c) Church of Saint Andrew, Hempstead (Norfolk), detail of late fourteenth-century rood screen; Erasmus with windlass and entrails:
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/hempstead/images/hempstead%20%2813%29.JPG

d) Mariakyrkan, Båstad (Skåne län), fifteenth-century wall painting; Erasmus' martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/yp2w24

e) Miniature 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. 53r); Erasmus' martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/388quuf

f) Dieric (Thierry) Bouts, center panel of his Triptych of the Martydrom of St. Erasmus (between 1457 and 1475; kept in Leuven's/Louvain's Sint-Pieterskerk/église Saint-Pierre):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/BoutsErasmus.jpg

g) Jetsmark kirke, Pandrup (Jammerbugt kommune), Nordjylland, later fifteenth-century wall painting (1474); Erasmus' martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/cftozs5

h) full-page miniature in the late fifteenth-century Waldburg Gebetbuch (1486; Stuttgart, WLB, cod. brev. 12, fol. 40v); Erasmus' martyrdom:
http://tinyurl.com/q7aw3sk 

i) Münster St. Marien und Jakobus, Heilsbronn (Lkr. Ansbach), Bavaria, detail of Vierzehn-Nothelfer-Altar (1498); Erasmus at right holding a book and a windlass:
http://tinyurl.com/n5ymk5

j) Matthias Grünewald, _The Meeting of St. Erasmus and St. Maurice_ (ca. 1520-1524), now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Erasmus at left, holding a windlass:
http://latin.bestmoodle.net/media/grunewa4.jpg

Best,
John Dillon
(an older post lightly revised)

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