medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Pamphilus of Corfinium has been venerated in Abruzzo since at least the tenth century. According to his probably eleventh-century Vita (BHL 6418-6419), he was bishop of Valva (today's diocese of Sulmona and Valva) during a time of dissension between Catholics and Arians. His seat was at Corfinium (in Roman times the chief town of the area in question) and he is said to have incurred papal suspicion for his practice of celebrating Sunday mass at midnight and of devoting the time at daybreak to providing a large meal for the poor. An investigation confirmed his doctrinal orthodoxy and his pastoral practices subsequently received papal approval. After Pamphilus' death his body was removed to the town that had been ancient Sulmo and is now Sulmona (AQ) in Abruzzo. Thus far Pamphilus' Vita.
Corfinium suffered badly from Muslim raids in the ninth century and again from Magyar raids in the tenth. By the eleventh century its ancient cathedral church of St. Pelinus had come to occupy a semi-rural location. In Sulmona, by then the diocese's chief center of habitation, there had been a church dedicated to Pamphilus since at least 1042. In 1075 abbot Transmundus of San Clemente a Casauria, who was also bishop of Valva, undertook to rebuild both this church and that of St. Pelinus, maintaining both of them as cathedrals of the one diocese (as they still are today). It would seem that Pamphilus' Vita was initially created, either then or earlier in the same century, in order to reinforce Sulmona's newly acquired episcopal dignity.
Sulmona's cathedral of San Panfilo has been rebuilt several times but still retains some of its medieval character. There's a brief, English-language account at the bottom of this page:
http://tinyurl.com/5eaelg
Much more detailed accounts in Italian, with expandable views, are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6c5v5l
http://tinyurl.com/26zr6ne
An Italian-language Wikipedia page on this church with two expandable views of its originally late fourteenth-century portal (in the first view, the portal at left):
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattedrale_di_San_Panfilo
Some period-pertinent images of St. Pamphilus of Sulmona:
a) as portrayed (in the niche at right; in the niche at left, St. Pelinus, co-patron of this honourable list) in a late fourteenth-century statue (1391) on the monumental portal of Sulmona's basilica cattedrale di San Panfilo:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/96646156
http://tinyurl.com/jtnsuw4
Detail views (Pamphilus):
http://tinyurl.com/gr8wjj4
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/96646241
b) as portrayed (fifth from left, after four doctors of the church) in the late fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century statues on pilasters placed along the facade of the palazzo dell'Annunziata in Sulmona:
http://tinyurl.com/z3ws3bu
http://tinyurl.com/zudlpoq
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/78018141.jpg
Detail views (Pamphilus; in the first view, the figure at left):
http://tinyurl.com/hysrwkx
http://tinyurl.com/jcnu9am
Best,
John Dillon
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