medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Richard is the name implausibly given by a much later, non-English-speaking tradition to the early eighth-century Anglo-Saxon father of Sts. Wynnebald, Willibald, and Walburg(a). According to Hygeburg (formerly referred to as Huneberc) of Heidenheim in her later eighth-century Vita of Willibald (BHL 8931; commonly known as her _Hodoeporicon_ of Willibald), Wynnebald and Willibald were accompanied by their father -- whom Hygeburg does not name -- on their pilgrimage from England to the Holy Land. Still according to Hygeburg, the father died at Lucca and was laid to rest there in the church of St. Frigidian (now, in a structure mostly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, San Frediano). His cult, under the name Richard and with the added specification of his having been a king in England, is attested from at least the twelfth century onward both in Eichstätt, where Willibald was the first bishop, and in Lucca, where remains said to be his are among San Frediano's relics. A brief Vita (BHL 7207), naming him as _Richardus_ and calling him _in Anglorum gente ... Rex_, is a reworking of the initial paragraphs of Hygeburg's Vita; though ending with his elevatio at Lucca, it clearly belongs to a series of similar re-workings originating in the diocese of Eichstätt. At Lucca miracles were reported at his pre-fifteenth-century tomb in San Frediano, which latter bore the following inscription in leonine hexameters:
Hic rex Richardus requiescit sceptrifer almus.
Rex fuit Anglorum, regnum tenet iste polorum.
Regnum dimisit, pro Christo cuncta reliquit.
Ergo Richardum nobis dedit Anglia Sanctum.
Hic genitor Sanctæ Walburgæ Virginis almæ,
Et Willebaldi Sancti simul & Winibaldi.
Suffragium quorum det nobis regna polorþ. Amen.
(_AA.SS._, Feb. tom. II. [Antwerp, 1658], cols. 79 B and C).
Both the name and the kingship were accepted by Bl. Cesare Baronio in early editions of the Roman Martyrology. In the revision of 2001 the kingship was dropped, with the saint now identified rather as a pilgrim. But the RM still calls him Richard, the name that's embedded in various liturgies and for which there really is no good alternative. Alas, even with the example of Prince, _Sanctus quondam [aliter: _perperam_] Richardus vocatus_ doesn't seem particularly workable.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Richard of England:
a) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century fresco in the Cappella del Soccorso in Lucca's basilica di San Frediano:
http://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/39850/39850D.JPG
b) as portrayed (twice) by Jacopo della Quercia in his early fifteenth-century marble polyptych (1416) honoring Sts. Ursula, Lawrence of Rome (or Vincent of Zaragoza?), Jerome, and Richard in the cappella Trenta in Lucca's basilica di San Frediano:
1) at right in the monument's upper portion (at left, St. Jerome):
http://tinyurl.com/z5mp2fu
2) on the predella panel beneath (at top, on his tomb; miraculously healing the possessed housemaid Gaschola):
http://tinyurl.com/gs3dfuc
The monument as a whole (the chapel was dedicated to Richard and that's Jacopo della Quercia's tomb for him beneath the altar table):
http://tinyurl.com/jc4k9g5
c) as portrayed (at far left) by the Master of the High Altar of Eichstätt's Cathedral in the frequently repainted later fifteenth-century statues (ca. 1470-1480?) now placed in the central shrine of the high altar of the east choir of Eichstätt's Dom St. Salvator, Unserer Lieben Frau, und St. Willibald (from left to right, the other statues are of St. Willibald, the BVM, St. Walburg(a), and Saint Wynnebald):
http://tinyurl.com/pbdsuwq
d) as portrayed (at far right) in the later fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century gilded statues of Walburg(a) and her immediate family in the upper crypt of Eichstätt's Pfarrkirche St. Walburg (the others, from left to right: St. Willibald, St. Walburg[a], St. Wynnebald, St. Wunna):
http://tinyurl.com/neo5qva
Best,
John Dillon
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