medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Cornelius, a Roman soldier stationed at Caesarea in Palestine, is the first gentile recorded as having been baptized in the Christian faith (Acts 10). St. Jerome's friend St. Paula visited a church in Caesarea that was said to have once been Cornelius' house. Cornelius entered the historical martyrologies with St. Ado of Vienne, who (followed by Usuard of Saint-Germain) placed him under 2. February with an elogium derived from the fourth-century _Constitutiones apostolicae_ (7. 46) and making him a bishop of Caesarea where he died peacefully (in Byzantine tradition, Cornelius became bishop of Skepsis in the Troad and was martyred there). 2. February is also where Cornelius was entered in the Roman Martyrology prior to its revision of 2001; his day of commemoration there is now today (20. October). In the Byzantine Rite Cornelius the Centurion has the first entry under 13. September in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople and is the saint of the day for 13. September in the also tenth-century Metaphrastic Menologion; modern Byzantine-Rite churches celebrate him on that day.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Cornelius the Centurion:
a) as portrayed in relief (his baptism by St. Peter) on a late fourth-century sarcophagus at Arles in the Musée de l'Arles antique:
http://tinyurl.com/368xmd5
http://www.lessing-photo.com/p2/150102/15010232.jpg
b) as depicted (left margin, at left in the lower image; at right, God's messenger [Acts 10:30]) in a ninth-century copy of St. John Damascene's _Parallela sacra_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 923, fol. 163v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b525013124/f330.item.zoom
c) as depicted (in prison, praying) in an eleventh-century copy of the September portion of the Metaphrastic Menologion (London, BL, MS Add 11870, fol. 108r):
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_11870_f108r
d) as portrayed in relief (his baptism by St. Peter) on the earlier twelfth-century (betw. 1107 and 1118) baptismal font "of Renier de Huy" (a traditional ascription) in the église Saint-Barthélemy / Sint Barthélemykerk in Liège/Luik:
http://tinyurl.com/2cvpttp
e) as depicted (his baptism by St. Peter) in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Guiard des Moulins' _Bible historiale_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 152, fol. 456r):
http://tinyurl.com/ygfkcpv
f) as depicted the Breviary of Renaud de Bar, a very early fourteenth-century breviary (ca. 1302-1305?) for the Use of Verdun (Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 107, fol. 108v):
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht7/IRHT_103128-p.jpg
g) as depicted (second from left; he and those with him receiving the Holy Spirit as Peter preaches [Acts 10:44]) in an earlier fifteenth-century _Bible historiale_ (ca. 1430; Den Haag, KB, ms. KB, 78 D 38 II, fol. 210r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_78d38%3Adl2_210r_min
h) as depicted (at center in the second scene; his baptism by St. Peter) in one of the later fifteenth-century tapestries of scenes of St. Peter presented to the cathedral of Beauvais by its bishop in 1461 and now preserved in the Galerie nationale de la Tapisserie in that city:
https://inventaire.picardie.fr/img/948bc035-c9de-4958-9fe7-0cfa7aa61f41
Best,
John Dillon
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