medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Among those commemorated today (2. January) in the Roman Martyrology is pope St. Telesphorus (d. earlier 2d cent.). The immediate successor of pope St. Sixtus I, Telesphorus is said in the _Liber Pontificalis_ to have been both Greek and a former hermit. The same account credits him with ordaining a Lenten fast of seven weeks' duration, with authorizing the celebration of midnight Mass at Christmas, and with directing that the hymn _Gloria in excelsis Deo_ should be sung only at that mass. Modern scholarship tends either to dismiss these latter assertions or else to qualify them severely. A remark by St. Irenaeus of Lyon (_Adversus haereses_, 3. 3. 3) has often been taken to mean that Telesphorus suffered martyrdom. Its repetition in Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 5. 6. 4) gave it broader currency and presumably underlies Telesphorus' continued characterization as a martyr in the revised Roman Martyrology of 2001 (which did cease so to characterize other early popes whose reported martyrdom is suspect). Prior to that revision the Roman Martyrology commemorated Telesphorus on 5. January, the day assigned to him in earlier martyrologies from Florus of Lyon onward and one given in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology for an African martyr of the same name.
Two period-pertinent images of pope St. Telesphorus:
a) as depicted in a modern copy of his originally mid- or later fifth-century fresco portrait (betw. 440 and 461) in Rome's basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura (the original survived the fire of 1823 and is kept in the basilica's museum):
http://www.basilicasanpaolo.org/rcm/foto1/IMG_3085__Page1.JPG
b) as depicted in a late fifteenth-century fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1480 or 1481; variously attributed):
http://tinyurl.com/32dm8d
Best,
John Dillon
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