medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about Aura (d. ca. 666; also Aurea; in French, Aure, Aurée, Aurore) from brief references in Jonas of Bobbio's Vita of St. Columban (BHL 1898) and from St. Audoenus' Vita of St. Eligius of Noyon (BHL 2474). In 663 Eligius placed her in charge of the women's monastery of St. Martial that he had founded at Paris (it became a men's house in 1107). Aurea is said to have died of a pestilence that nearly put paid to her house. She is one of Paris' patron saints. Several commemorative sermons on her survive (BHL 814-816); these and a related Vita (BHL 817) make her a Syrian of noble birth who had come to Paris from afar and add other legendary details that crop up in later medieval accounts of her. Today (4. October) is her feast day in Paris and her day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
The upper cover of the ninth-century so-called Gospels of St. Aure, venerated medievally as a relic of Aura (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 1171) :
http://tinyurl.com/j5pj7gx
The cover itself is later; its ivory plaque has been dated to the tenth century. The ms. itself has been digitized:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55000807v
Some period-pertinent images of St. Aura of Paris:
a) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Eligius of Noyon) in the mid- to later fourteenth-century Breviary of Charles V (betw. 1347 and 1380; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1052, fol. 527v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84525491/f1064.image.zoom
b) as depicted in the early fifteenth-century Châteauroux Breviary (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 362r):
http://tinyurl.com/yaolees
Best,
John Dillon
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