medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Bibiana (also Vibiana, Viviana) is a very poorly attested martyr of Rome, first recorded in the _Liber Pontificalis_ where one reads that pope St. Simplicius (468-83) dedicated to her a martyrial basilica containing her body and situated near the Licinian palace (i.e. on the Esquiline in the vicinity of Santa Maria Maggiore). It is not said how, in violation of ordinary Roman funerary practice, Bibiana's body came to be within the former _pomerium_. Archeological excavation on the site of this church's early modern successor has yielded remains of what has been interpreted as a hypogeum constructed by Simplicius.
Bibiana's legendary Passio (BHL 1322-1323) makes her a martyr scourged to death with lead weights under Julian the Apostate (for western saints, martyrdom under this emperor is a good indicator of fiction) and has her buried in her own house where previously she had buried her mother Dafrosa and her sister Demetria (who also were venerated in this church). Burial in one's own house is also a feature of the legendary Passio of Sts. John and Paul, whose paleochristian church on the Caelian seems to have had a _confessio_ over what may have been construed as these saints' original graves.
The church of St. Bibiana is among the martyrial resting places listed in the later eighth-century _Itinerarium Einsiedlense_; in seemingly the ninth century it received an adjacent monastery for women that bore Bibiana's name and that lasted until the 1440s. The church and the monastery were rebuilt in the thirteenth century by Honorius III and the church was reworked, largely on the same plan, by Bernini in 1624-1626. Herewith a few views of the interior of what's now the basilica di Santa Bibiana, showing ancient Roman columns said to have come from the fifth-century church:
http://tinyurl.com/cq8lemm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42858885@N00/6796837585/lightbox/
http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/86
On display in this church is a column to which Bibiana is said to have been bound during her martyrdom:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2761/4100602053_022cca9d84_b.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/zov92zy
Today (2. December) is Bibiana's feast day in her basilica on the Esquiline and her day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Bibiana as depicted (upper roundel in the right margin; martyrdom) in the December calendar in the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Louis de Savoie (betw. 1445-1450 and 1460; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 9473, fol. 14r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105326055/f39.item.zoom
Best,
John Dillon
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