Today, 29 July, is the feast of ...
* Martha, virgin (first century) - according to Provencal legend, she
accompanied Mary Magdalen to the south of France, and evangelized
Tarascon, where her relics were invented in 1187
* Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrice, martyrs (304?) - a newborn baby
accused the murderer of Beatrice of the crime, and three hours later he
died a horrible death (and all who were present decided to convert to
Christianity)
* Felix 'II' (365) - since 1947, the *Annuario Pontificio*, in its list of
popes, has noted 'Felix II as an antipope
* Lupus or Loup, bishop of Troyes (478) - accompanied Germain d'Auxerre
into Britain to combat the Pelagians; taken hostage by Attila
* Olaf of Norway, martyr (1030) - spring that gushed from his grave cured
people miraculously; the site is known as the Feginsbrekka, or 'hill of
joy'
* Urban II, pope (1099)
After a bit of prompting from George Ferzoco, Michael Hynes told us what
he thinks of the cult of Urban:
Ok, I'll just say one or two things about Urban II. He is indeed the
infamous pope of the 1st Crusade (called for at the Council of Clermont in
1095). He was born of an aristocratic French family, was prior of Cluny
(1067-70) under Abbot Hugh, archbp of Reims, and finally pope (1088-99).
His was one of the most sucessful pontificates. He was sucessful in
besting Henry IV and the anti-pope, Clement III; he was a great
legislative and conciliar pope; he (mostly) suceeded in consolidating the
reform. Politically adroit, Urban tackled the thorny problem of what to do
about scismatic (N.B. that contoumacious scism was regarded as a heresy)
ordinations and (because of the scism) multiple claimants to the same
office with pragmatism and diplomacy. His politically adroitness (like the
Am. pres. Bill Clinton), however, often left his actual positions open
to misunderstanding. He has, for example, been viewed as a moderate on
issues of investiture and clerical hommage. I am arguing in my diss. that
this was merely a tactic--Urban was as opposed to these practices as G
VII. Urban also completed the reformation of the south-western French
church that had been initiated by G VII at the Council of Poitiers (1078).
It was no accident that he chose Clermont in Eastern Aquitaine as the
opening site for a series of French councils which basically
took the papacy on a tour of Aquitaine and culminated with the Council of
Poitiers (under Urban's sucessor) in 1100. From the pt. of view of French
social history (I include this out of personal interest and for Richard),
Urban suceeded in taming the peace and truce of God (prob. repressed in
this region by G VII), and (this is especially for you Richard Landes) he
took action against the cult of Saint Martial. As far as my evaluation of
Urban goes, he was a corpus mixtum. But I think that given a choice
between an inflexable purist like G VII and a wiley pragmatist like Urban,
I'd choose the latter. For his legislative achievements alone, I suppose
he earned his sainthood.
* Guillaume Pinchon, bishop of Saint-Brieuc (1234) - canonized in 1247; at
translation of his relics the following year, his body was found to be
incorrupt
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Carolyn Muessig
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