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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (6. August) is the feast day of: 1) The Transfiguration of Christ, also celebrated as the feast of the Holy Savior. For details, see this month's separate thread "Transfiguration date". See also 3) below. 2) Hormisdas, pope (d. 523). H., who hailed from Frosinone in Lazio, had been married before he began his career as a senior churchman. He was a close collaborator of pope St. Symmachus, whom he succeeded. H. put an end both to the Laurentian schism in Rome and, with the support of the emperor Justin I, to the Acacian schism between Rome and the east. The 'Formula of Hormisdas' re-establishing Chalcedonian orthodoxy affirmed Rome's status as the preserver of undefiled apostolic tradition; the patriarch of Constantinople who signed it added a gloss implying the parity of these two sees. Dionysius Exiguus' second edition of his collection of church canons was made at H.'s direction. H.'s letters are an important source for the history of the papacy in the sixth century. H. was buried in Old St. Peter's; his epitaph (in six elegiac distichs) was written by his son, the future pope St. Silverius. For an expandable view of the opening pages of an eleventh-century manuscript of H.'s letters and decrees, see: http://193.206.215.4/mostra/sala7-s2.htm The PL text of H.'s decree affirming that of pope St. Gelasius I on canonical and non-canonical scripture is here: http://tinyurl.com/hpqh8 The transenna sections on either side of the central aperture in the chancel screen at Rome's Basilica of San Clemente are thought to date from O.'s time: http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/sanclem1.jpg http://www.emmauscollege.nl/images/tekenen/clement2.jpg http://tinyurl.com/j849l The largely twelfth-century church of San Pietro Apostolo at Albano Laziale (RM) utilizes a hall from an ancient Roman baths complex and is considered a rebuilding of the basilica that, according to the _Liber pontificalis_, H. erected here: http://www.comune.albanolaziale.roma.it/Guida/tour20.htm http://tinyurl.com/f54u7 3. Clement/Chremes of Placa (d. ca. 1099). In 1092 Roger I granted to the Greek hermit Clement or Chremes (the surviving abstracts of Roger's now lost diploma differ on this point differ and the names in Greek are very similarly formed) land on the hill of Placa near today's Francavilla di Sicilia (ME) in northeastern Sicily for the erection of a new monastery dedicated to the Most Holy Savior. The rest of what's "known" about C. is either tradition or inference, though he does have a very nice Vita composed by the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar Ottavio Gaetani (the miracle of Roger and the tame animals is particularly fine). Records from the early years of the monastery are virtually nonexistent: even the names of the abbots between C. and the Theodoret who was in office in 1179 are unknown. The date of C.'s passing not having been preserved, he was by the Early Modern period celebrated liturgically on the feast of his monastery's dedicatee. As the monastery had been subordinated in the early twelfth century to the archimandrite of the monastery of Santissimo Salvatore de lingua phari at Messina, and as we know that (in common with much of Christianity in southern Europe) the latter celebrated the Transfiguration on this day, chances are excellent that the founder's commemoration at San Salvatore di Placa took place on 6. August much earlier than the scanty record would suggest. C.'s monastery seems to have survived the great earthquake that shook eastern Sicily in 1693 but by 1747 it was already abandoned and in danger of collapse. A little bit of rubble is said to be all that's left of it. A view of the hill on which it was sited, showing the remains of a fortress with which it shared this elevation from the later twelfth century onward, is here: http://www.ipaesaggi.it/Itinerari/Francavilla.htm For details of this cult, erroneously reported in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum as still alive at Francavilla di Sicilia, see Mario Re, "Dell'abate Clemente divenuto San Cremete", _Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici_ n.s. 33 (1996), 181-92. 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