medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Timothy, Disciple of St. Paul / Timothy the Apostle (d. prob. 1st cent.). The revisions to the general Roman Calendar promulgated in 1969 include a joint feast on 23. January of Paul's disciples Timothy and Titus. Previously the Roman Rite had celebrated Timothy on 24. January and Titus on 6. February; these are still their respective feast days in the Polish National Catholic Church. The Church of England also celebrates them jointly on 26. January. Byzantine-rite churches treat both of these recipients of the Pastoral Epistles as apostles; they celebrate Timothy on 22. January (in the Roman Rite, this was also his feast day in the ninth-century martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard of Saint-Germain) and Titus on 25. August (in the Roman Rite, Titus appears in the Martyrology of St. Ado of Vienne without a fixed feast; he is said to have entered the Roman Martyrology only in 1854).
I) Timothy:
Thanks to Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 3. 4. 5), Timothy has been widely considered the first bishop of Ephesus. A legendary Passio (BHG 1847; early translation into Latin, BHL 8294), supposedly written by a second-century successor there, has him martyred at Ephesus under Domitian (81-96) but later places his death on a 22. January in the principate of Nerva (96-98). In the fourth century Timothy's putative remains were forcibly translated from his martyrion in Ephesus to the basilica of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. They were venerated there until their disappearance during the Unpleasantness of 1204 and following. In 1205 two teeth said to be Timothy's were donated as Eastern relics to a monastery at Soissons. In 1238-39, during a rebuilding of the cathedral of Termoli in today's Campobasso province of Molise, a loculus was created beneath the crypt to house the body of the Blessed Timothy, disciple of Paul the Apostle. Those remains, less a skull whose presence is first recorded from 1592 but whose present reliquary is said to be of thirteenth- or fourteenth-century manufacture, were rediscovered in 1945 some ninety centimeters below the level of the floor as it was then. Herewith a view of Timothy's inscribed tombstone from that loculus:
http://www.primonumero.it/termoli/monumenti/mostramonumenti.php?val=19
Two views of the reliquary:
http://www.primonumero.it/termoli/monumenti/mostramonumenti.php?val=18
http://tinyurl.com/6t7tnz4
Termoli is an Adriatic port but a much smaller one than the more southerly and much more commercially important Bari and Brindisi, which latter boast the remains, respectively, of St. Nicholas of Myra and St. Theodore of Amasea. Whatever extra-regional fame it achieved from the presence of such a potentially major saint as Timothy must have diminished rather quickly (especially after 1258, when, not all that far up the coast from Termoli, Ortona is said to have received its body of St. Thomas the Apostle).
Some medieval images of Timothy the Disciple / the Apostle (Timothy is sometimes distinguishable in groups either through his being portrayed as a relatively young man [cf. 1 Tim 4:12] or from his wearing a vestment usually betokening a bishop):
a) as depicted (at far left) in a seemingly originally early medieval fresco in the transept of Rome's basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura, retouched in the thirteenth century (the identifying inscriptions are unlikely to be early medieval) and damaged by the fire that destroyed most of the basilica in 1823:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/re_teacher/27592687/
Detail view (Timothy):
http://www.christianiconography.info/sanPaoloFLMure/timothyFresco.html
b) as depicted (martyrdom; translation to Constantinople) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 341):
http://tinyurl.com/hpjcorp
c) as depicted (martyrdom; translation to Constantinople) in the earlier eleventh-century "imperial" menologion for January in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (ms. W. 521, fol. 203v):
http://thedigitalwalters.org/Data/WaltersManuscripts/W521/data/W.521/sap/W521_000410_sap.jpg
d) as depicted in a full-page illumination in an eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript of the Epistles (Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 30, fol. 140v):
http://tinyurl.com/yctk4la
e) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Paul) at the beginning of 2 Timothy in the eleventh- or twelfth-century Second Bible of Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, BnF, ms. 8(2), fol. 258r):
http://tinyurl.com/oe9rad5
f) as depicted (at center, between St. Silvanus [Silas] and St. Paul) at the beginning of 1 Thessalonians in the eleventh- or twelfth-century Second Bible of Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, BnF, ms. 8(2), fol. 254v):
http://tinyurl.com/7npue7n
g) as depicted (at center, below St. Paul and above St. Silvanus [Silas]) in a pen-and-ink drawing of an initial "P" in a twelfth-century copy of St. Augustine's _Expositio in Epistolas Pauli_ (Heiligenkreuz [Niederösterreich], Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 33, fol. 79r):
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/3003322.JPG
h) as depicted (at far right, being ordained priest by St. Paul) in an early twelfth-century fresco in the oratorio Mariano of Rome's basilica di Santa Pudenziana:
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery3/var/albums/album_058/Santa%20Pudenziana%20035.jpg?m=1303152586
i) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Paul) at the beginning of Colossians in an early twelfth-century manuscript of the Acts and Epistles (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, ms. W. 533, fol. 247v):
http://tinyurl.com/nk4fjqr
j) as depicted (at right, after St. Silvanus [Silas] and St. Paul) at the beginning of 1 Thessalonians in an early twelfth-century manuscript of the Acts and Epistles (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, ms. W. 533, fol. 255v):
http://tinyurl.com/q3uv363
k) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in an earlier twelfth-century giant bible formerly in the possession of the monastery of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere (ca. 1120-1130; Città del Vaticano, BAV, ms. Barberinianus latinus 587):
http://i33.servimg.com/u/f33/09/04/27/32/saint_20.jpg
l) as depicted in a later twelfth-century glass window (ca. 1160) from the chapel of St. Sebastian in the église abbatiale Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul at Neuwiller-lès-Saverne (Bas-Rhin), now in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny), Paris:
http://tinyurl.com/l5byf98
https://www.flickr.com/photos/29248605@N07/8698884298/
m) as depicted (at right, following St. Paul and St. Silvanus [Silas]) in the late twelfth-century mosaics of the basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale:
http://tinyurl.com/kxu3tos
n) as depicted (at far left, behind St. Silvanus [Silas] and St. Paul) as depicted at the beginning of 1 Thessalonians in a twelfth- or thirteenth-century bible of central Italian origin (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 320, fol. 278v):
http://tinyurl.com/8xwqpeo
o) as depicted (at center, between St. Paul and St. Silvanus [Silas]) at the beginning of 1 Thessalonians in an earlier thirteenth-century bible (ca. 1220; Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 36, fol. 148r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_098029-p.jpg
p) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Anastasius the Persian) in a thirteenth-century January menaion seemingly from Cyprus (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1561, fol. 89v):
http://tinyurl.com/yeehx6a
q) as depicted (at right, shown very young; at left, St. Paul) at the beginning of 1 Timothy in a later thirteenth-century bible (betw. 1251 and 1276; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève; ms. 14, fol. 476v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht15/IRHT_020980-p.jpg
r) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in a later thirteenth-century bible from Bologna (ca. 1276-1300; London, BL, MS. Additional 18720, fol. 479r):
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBig.ASP?size=big&IllID=13652
s) as portrayed by Arnolfo di Cambio in a statue in one of the four niches of his late thirteenth-century ciborium (1285) in Rome's basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura (the others have statues of St. Peter, St. Paul, and either St. Benedict or the donor, a Benedictine abbot):
http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/160000/141600/141481.jpg
A closer view:
http://www.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/160000/141600/141551.jpg
t) as twice depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (betw. 1301 and 1326; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 152):
1) at 1 Timothy (fol. 490r):
http://tinyurl.com/y9qaa36
2) at 2 Timothy (fol. 491v):
http://tinyurl.com/yc7aune
u) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Cyril of Alexandria) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the northwest little dome in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/6gjon9q
v) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (ca. 1330; Troyes, Médiathèque Grand-Troyes, ms. 59, fol. 571v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht1/IRHT_045795-p.jpg
w) as depicted (lower register, martyrdom; above, St. Anastasius the Persian) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/mqp3e57
x) as depicted (martyrdom) in a later fourteenth-century copy of books 11-13 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1370-1380; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 15941, fol. 12r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449688c/f31.item.zoom
y) as depicted (at left, attired as a cardinal; at right, a messenger bearing a copy of 1 Timothy) by the Master of the Hours of Johannette Ravenelle in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century composite bible chiefly drawing on Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (betw. 1395 and 1401; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 159, fol. 503r):
http://tinyurl.com/ycbbjqh
z) as depicted (at right, shown very young; at left, St. Paul) in an early fifteenth-century copy of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 60, fol. 283v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_098250-p.jpg
aa) as depicted (consecration as bishop; martyrdom) in a later fifteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1463; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 365v):
http://tinyurl.com/ylpvs6h
bb) as depicted (left margin at top) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CIXv:
https://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/13%20%28Folio%20CIXv%29.pdf
II) Titus
Ancient tradition, reflected in the Epistle to Titus (now generally not thought genuinely Paul's) and more explicitly in Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 3. 4. 6), makes Titus the first bishop of Crete. He too has legendary Acta. Substantial remains of the originally Justinianic church dedicated to him may still be seen at Gortys (also Gortyn, Gortyna).
The originally late medieval church dedicated to Titus at Heraklion has a skull said to be his:
http://www.wdbydana.com/crete/titushead.JPG
http://tinyurl.com/7arhfv9
An account of this relic's medieval, early modern, and modern travels is here (third paragraph):
http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/titus.htm
Some medieval images of Titus the Disciple / the Apostle:
a) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in a thirteenth-century copy of Peter Lombard's _Commentarius in Epistulas Pauli_ (Troyes, Médiathèque Grand-Troyes, ms. 48, fol. 217r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht1/IRHT_045325-p.jpg
b) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in a later thirteenth-century bible from Bologna (ca. 1276-1300; London, BL, MS. Additional 18720, fol. 480r):
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBig.ASP?size=big&IllID=13653
c) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Paul) in an illumination accompanying the Epistle to Titus in a fourteenth-century copy of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 152, fol. 492v):
http://tinyurl.com/y98hlva
d) as depicted (at left in the upper register in the panel at lower right) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 52v):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/52v.jpg
e) as depicted (at left; at center, a messenger) in a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century copy of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 159, fol. 505v):
http://tinyurl.com/y9ykc5h
f) 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/118/281/index.shtml
Best,
John Dillon
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