medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
An early bishop of Padua, Prosdocimus has been venerated there and elsewhere in the Veneto since at least the fifth or sixth century, when his image (later detached) bearing the legend SCS PROSDOCIMVS EPS ET CONFESS ("Holy Prosdocimus, bishop and confessor") was carved on a sarcophagus, this part of which was discovered in 1957 in his tomb in Padua's basilica di Santa Giustina. A seemingly early eleventh-century Vita (BHL 6961a; a dating to the late twelfth century has also been proposed) makes him the evangelist of Padua, sent by St. Peter to the upper Adriatic region along with Sts. Mark the Evangelist (legendarily the evangelist of Aquileia) and Apollinaris (legendarily the evangelist and protobishop of Ravenna). According to the same legendary account, Prosdocimus died in the ninety-fourth year of his episcopacy and not long after St. Justina (whose Passio he is said in this Vita to have written and whose church at Padua he is said to have consecrated) was martyred under Maximian. For those aware of the dates of the Great Persecution, this would place Prosdocimus' death in about the year 304 and put the start of his episcopacy in the early third century, a neat trick for a supposed disciple of the apostles.
BHL 6961 (a preface) and 6961a are edited by Ireneo Daniele, _San Prosdocimo vescovo di Padova nella legenda, nel culto, nella storia_ (Padova: Istituto per la storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1987), pp. 235-428. More recently, there is an extensive volume of conference papers on this saint: Franco Benucci, ed., _Un uomo chiamato Prosdocimo a _Patavium_. Atti del convegno di Santa Giustina, Sala San Luca, Padova, 5 novembre 2011 (Trieste: Editreg, 2013; = _Antichità altoadriatiche_, vol. 75). Today (7. November) is Prosdocimus' feast day in Padua and his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Prosdocimus of Padua (the suffix differentiates him from St. Prosdocimus of Rieti):
a) as portrayed in a fifth- or earlier sixth-century relief found in his later sixteenth-century tomb (1564) in the sacello di San Prosdocimo in Padua's basilica di Santa Giustina and now mounted on the wall behind it:
http://tinyurl.com/q8ol9yx
b) as portrayed (at left; at right, St. Catherine of Alexandria) by Guariento di Arpo in his mid-fourteenth-century Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece (1344) in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena:
http://tinyurl.com/hkm7ftd
The altarpiece as a whole (Prosdocimus and Catherine at far right in the pinnacles):
http://tinyurl.com/hurpjod
c) as portrayed on two mid-fourteenth-century Paduan coins struck under Jacopo II da Carrara (1345-1350):
1): http://www.deamoneta.com/auctions/view/232/444
2) http://www.lamoneta.it/gallery/image/12292-artemide-astaxxxv2012-carrarinor/
d) as depicted (bottom register at center), by Giusto de' Menabuoi or by a follower, in a later fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1370-1380) on the north wall of the _Salone_ in Padua's Palazzo della Ragione:
http://tinyurl.com/pysgc34
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/n98x5ln
e) as depicted (third from left) in the earlier fifteenth-century Polyptych of Santa Giustina in the chiesa di Santa Giustina in Monselice (PD) in the southern Veneto:
http://tinyurl.com/orwhn8m
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/nac8aag
f) as depicted by Giovanni d'Alemagna in a mid-fifteenth-century panel painting (1440s) in the Museo Diocesano San Gregorio Barbarigo in Padua:
http://www.arlango.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/15.jpg
g) as portrayed by Donatello and assistants in a mid-fifteenth-century bronze statue (later 1440s) at the high altar of Padua's Basilica del Santo:
http://www.wga.hu/art/d/donatell/2_mature/padova/2altar04.jpg
Detail view:
http://fe.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/foto/160000/144000/143867.jpg
h) as portrayed by Donatello in a mid-fifteenth-century mostly stone sculpture (1450) in the Museo del Cenacolo di Santo Spirito in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/pke68e2
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/zhp9m6q
i) as depicted by Andrea Mantegna on a panel of his mid-fifteenth-century St. Luke Polyptych (1453-1454), formerly in Padua's basilica di Santa Giustina and now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan:
http://tinyurl.com/pwxlmky
j) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Maximus of Padua; detail view) by Bartolomeo Montagna in his early sixteenth-century frescoes of Padua's early bishops (ca. 1501-1507) in the Salone dei Vescovi of Padua's Palazzo Vescovile:
http://museodiocesanopadova.it/web/strip/strip_2.jpg
k) as depicted by the Master of the San Nicoḷ Triptych in an early sixteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1503), offered for sale at Sotheby's in June 2015:
http://tinyurl.com/plqo9xg
l) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Peter) by il Pordenone in an early sixteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1515-1517) in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh:
http://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/st._prosdocimus_and_st._peter
m) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Justina of Padua) by Domenico Campagnola in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (ca. 1537) in the Oratorio del Redentore in Padua:
http://salvalarte.legambientepadova.it/foto/redent/02.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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