medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Like his fifth-century namesake, Symeon Stylites the Younger (d. late 6th or early 7th cent.) was an extreme ascetic who spent most of his life in self-denial atop one pillar after another. The last, on a mountain called "Wondrous" near Antioch on the Orontes, became the site of a monastery named for him; thanks to Symeon's great reputation as a thaumaturge, this was a popular pilgrim destination. Symeon has an interesting Bios, edited by P. Van den Ven as _La vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le jeune (521–92)_, Subsidia Hagiographica, 32 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1962–70). Today (24. May) is his feast day in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople and in its successors in modern Byzantine-rite churches. It is also Symeon's day of commemoration in the revised Roman Martyrology of 2001. Prior to that the RM had entered him under 3. September, thanks to a confusion over which Symeon Stylites was entered under today's date in Baronio's source, the so-called menologion of Sirlet, and which was entered in early September (in the Byzantine Rite Symeon Stylites the Elder is routinely celebrated on 1. September).
Some period pertinent images of St. Symeon Stylites the Younger:
a) as portrayed (upper register at center) on a tenth-century mold for making metal pilgrim tokens associated with his cult, now in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (photograph courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/KelseySimeonMold.jpg
b) as portrayed (upper register at center) on a tenth- or eleventh-century pilgrim token of lead in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst in the Bode-Museum in Berlin:
http://tinyurl.com/jp5w7te
A larger image:
http://tinyurl.com/hpe6x32
c) as portrayed (upper register at center) on a tenth- or eleventh-century pilgrim token of lead in The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH:
http://tinyurl.com/gu2a9yv
d) as portrayed (upper register at center) on a twelfth-century pilgrim token of lead in the Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO:
https://maa.missouri.edu/?q=media-gallery/detail/334/1792
Slightly larger image:
http://tinyurl.com/hennl7q
e) as depicted in the late twelfth-century frescoes (1192) of the church of the Panagia tou Arakou in Lagoudera (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://tinyurl.com/3a5wpm7
http://tinyurl.com/2cqhzp4
The frescoes in this church were cleaned and conserved during a campaign on Cyprus by Dumbarton Oaks that ran from 1962 to 1973.
f) as depicted (at upper left in the panel at upper left) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 41r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/41r.jpg
g) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) in the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peæ at Peæ in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija [the image is reproduced at illustration 6, on the 7th page of the document here and on p. 153 of the original publication]:
http://www.kalamus.com.mk/pdf_spisanija/patrimonium_7/011%20=%20009%20Patrimonium%202014%20Andjela%20Gavrilovic.pdf
Best,
John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
|