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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture On Saturday, June 11, 2005, at 6:24 pm, Phyllis wrote: > Today (12. June) is the feast day of: > > Onuphrius (d. c. 400) Among the legends of the early desert > fathers > is the story of Onuphrius. While on a visit to the hermits of the > Thebaid, Abbot Paphnutius met O. O. told him he had been a hermit > for seventy years. O. regaled P. with miraculously-appearing food, > then told him that God had sent P. to bury him. O. then died, P. > buried him in a hole in the mountainside that then disappeared. In celebration of this widely popular saint, herewith a few medievally pertinent, mostly south Italian witnesses to his cult. Visually, they're not very exciting (except, perhaps for some of the scenery): O., after all was a hermit, and what he had dedicated to him medievally was mostly hermitages and small monastic churches. Frequently located in exposed positions on mountain tops or on steep hillsides, these had a way of becoming ruinous over time and for the most part have not survived or else have been completely rebuilt in more recent times. O.'s originally 13th-century church at San Giovanni Rotondo (FG) on the Gargano: http://www.padrepioesangiovannirotondo.it/chiesa_di_s__onofrio.htm http://www.discoveritalia.de/luoghi/images/content/multimedia/foto400/97019154.jpg TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/bbbt6 The latter's main portal: http://www.sangiovannirotondo.biz/via_francesca/tn_san_giovanni_rotondo_2.jpg TimyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/exqk8 These two pages have thumbnail-sized views of the originally twelfth-century monastery of Sant'Onofrio at Petina (SA): http://www.aulettaterranostra.it/index.aspx?pag=15 http://www.comune.petina.sa.it/risorse_culturali.asp O.'s hermitage outside of Sulmona (AQ): http://www.sulmona.org/tour/parte6.php Better views of the hermitage's montane surround are at the bottom of this page: http://www.concapeligna.it/itinerari/itinerario1/eremo/eremo.htm At the time of his election to the papacy in 1294, the future Celestine V was residing in a grotto here. The building shown is of course later; it is also a reconstruction of one destroyed by German artillery in 1943. And, from northern Italy, O. in a fifteenth-century fresco in the church of Santa Brigida at Santa Brigida (BG) in the Valle Brembana: http://www.maschiselvatici.it/immagini/onofrio.jpg Best, 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