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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Dear Martin, Thanks very much for your response. For particulars, see below. At 05:33 PM 3/30/2004 -03-30, you wrote: > Minerve gets a mention in P. Sebillot, _Traditions et >Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne_, Paris, 1882, p. 333: > > "En beaucoup de pays de France, des divinites paiennes ont ete >transformees en saints, et assez souvent le nom lui-meme est conserve: >Minerve est devenue sainte Minerve, vierge et martyre, dans un pays appele >le Minervois (Aude, cf. Babou, _Les paiens innocents_)." I do not have >access to the Babou title, which may have more detail on this figure. Nor do I. But I do have access to sources informing me that the work in question is Hippolyte Babou's _Les payens innocents, nouvelles_ (Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1858 and 1862; nouvelle ed., with spelling "paiens", Paris: Charpentier, 1878) and wonder therefore about the scholarly value of any historical data on this question offered by this collection of short stories. I also wonder about the accuracy of Sebillot's assertion vis-a-vis a "sainte Minerve," given that two French encyclopedias giving information on the Minervois (which is in Herault as well as Aude) tell me, apart from the toponym's apparent derivation from 'Minerva'/'Minerba', only that there was a fifth-century Christian church here with a surviving altar honoring St. Rusticus of Narbonne. One of these articles (late 19th-century) considers speculative any local worship of Minerva, whereas the other (from the 1960s and quite brief) says that the Christian church replaced a _pagan_ temple of Minerva; though that too could be speculative, it's always possible that such a temple of Minerva has now been positively identified at this site. > Both >Mackillop (_Dictionary of Celtic Mythology_, Oxford, 1998, p.293) and >Merceron (_Dictionnaire des saints imaginaires et Facetieux_, Paris, 2002, >p. 912) note that the cult of Minerva became widely conflated with the >cult of >the British healing goddess Sulis, notably at Bath (Aquae Sulis) but on >the continent, too. That Sulis, whose Roman-period identification as Minerva Sulis is well known, had a cult on the continent was news to me. It may also be news to MacKillop, as his article says nothing about this. It speaks first of Gaulish Minerva (noting that she's also attested in Britain) and then of the British healing goddess Sulis but does not identify the two. > It may therefore be that her survival in saintly guise >is connected with her status as a 'sainte des eaux guerisseuses'. Or not. While I don't think it unlikely that some early Christians may have transformed Minerva into a local saint, I would like to see that established before going on to speculate on this particular connection. And I would think it unlikely that such a local transformation would have long survived scrutiny of the institutional church, let alone enter a liturgical calendar ancestral to the current Santi Beati reference to a Santa Minerva commemorated on 23 August. I do note, though, that 23 August is the feast of Minervus (or Minervinus) and of Eleazar with his eight sons, early martyrs of Lyon about whom nothing is known. And I wonder whether Santa Minerva is not the product of 1) a modern desire to produce a name-saint for people named Minerva and 2) the existence of male St. Minervus commemorated on this day. Best again, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html