medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to his unreliable mid-twelfth-century Vita by Stephen of Liciac / Lissac, the fourth prior of Grandmont (BHL 7906-7907), Stephen came from a noble family of Thiers in Auvergne (whence he is sometimes called Stephen of Thiers). Taken, it is said, with the life of some Calabrian hermits he encountered while staying for some time in the care of an archbishop of Benevento who ultimately ordained him deacon, he settled at Muret in a mountainous part of the Limousin and there founded a community of hermit monks. Still according to Stephen of Liciac / Lissac, shortly after Stephen of Muret's death these moved to Grandmont in today's Saint-Sylvestre (Haute-Vienne), forming the nucleus of what became the Grandmontine order. We have no authentic writings of Stephen's: both the _Liber sententiarum_ that goes under his name and the Grandmontine Rule are later productions.
Stephen died in 1124. He was canonized by the bishop of Limoges in about 1167 and by pope Clement III in 1189. A late twelfth-century Limousin reliquary châsse (ca. 1180-1200) on display in the église Saint-Antoine at Ambazac (Haute-Vienne) comes from the treasury of Grandmont and is said to contain one of his tibias. Views of it, of a later thirteenth-century dalmatic traditionally said to have been Stephen's, and of the church itself (originally late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/cou98y
That page lacks a view of the choir. Here's one:
http://tinyurl.com/da3c77
More on the châsse:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/emolimo/parement.htm
and here (near the bottom of the page):
http://www.limousin-medieval.com/#!chasses-reliquaires/c1zcm
More on the dalmatic, with expandable views of this vestment before and after restoration:
http://tinyurl.com/bblm2h
http://www.tourisme-limousin.net/photos/190/190001608_8.jpg
A few period-pertinent images of, or possibly of, Stephen of Muret:
a) as depicted (at right) in a later twelfth-century plaque (1181; from a retable for the main altar of the abbey church of Grandmont) in the Musée National du Moyen Âge in Paris (a.k.a. Musée de Cluny):
http://tinyurl.com/d6b877
b) as portrayed (perhaps; the image could represent Stephen in his role as a tutelar of the abbey of Grandmont) as a deacon holding a book-shaped reliquary for a piece of the True Cross in an earlier thirteenth-century statuette in the église paroissiale de la Nativité-de-Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Les Billanges (Haute-Vienne):
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/image/memoire/0725/ivr74_93870667xa_p.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/zaoz249
At left here:
http://www.tourisme-limousin.net/photos/190/190001608_5.jpg
c) as portrayed in a late fifteenth-century reliquary bust, its head of silver and silver gilt, in the église Saint-Sylvestre at Saint-Sylvestre (Haute-Vienne):
http://tinyurl.com/h7jvxay
Presented to abbey of Grandmont in 1496, this object once had an outer vestment of silver and some enamel work that are said to have been removed during the French Revolution.
Best,
John Dillon
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