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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture 1. On Thursday, September 7, 2006, at 6:23 pm, I wrote: > Benevento soon claimed (in a Translation account, BHL 4140) to > have the bodies of its other native sons, F. and D., as well. The view that Benevento had the bodies of its Sts. Festus and Desiderius antedates Sico's raid by at least a century, as it is already in Bede's Martyrology. Here we are told that, after the martyrdom of Januarius and his comapnions, people of Misenum retrieved the body of St. Sos(s)ius and gave it honorable burial in their basilica, that people of Pozzuoli retrieved the bodies of Sts. Proculus, Eutyches, and Acutius and buried these by a basilica of St. Stephen, and that Beneventans gathered up the bodies of F. and D. This account, which recurs in Ado and in Usuard, assigns particular martyr-cult locales to the other companions but not to F. and D., whose precise grave sites will have been unknown to its creator and whose very removal to Benevento could be fictional. Since F. and D.'s cult is already attested to by the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, the probability is that they are genuine martyrs. Either by the early Middle Ages their cult had ceased to be active or else it was located at a place to which the creator of this account had no access. Just possibly, Benevento during the early years of Lombard expansion was that isolated from the East Roman enclave around Naples. It seems more likely, though, that Benevento's veneration of F. and D. postdates by several centuries the late sixth- or seventh-century development of the the Januarius legend and derives instead from these saints' mention in the historical martyrologies. Though its earliest witness is of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, the Beneventan Translation of J. (BHL 4120), in which the remains of F. and D. are taken from a spot described only as being where they had been placed by a (legendary) senator Cyphius, seems to have been written not terribly long after J.'s early ninth-century translation to Benevento (its view of prince Sico is unusually favorable and there are no references to later miracles). The parallel Translation of F. and D. (BHL 4126), surely older than its first witness (early thirteenth- century), narrates the pagan senator Cyphius' translation of these relics from Pozzuoli to Benevento. Both, I suspect, were written in the reign of Sico's son, prince Sicard (d. 839), whose interest in endowing his capital with relics can been seen in his translations from Amalfi of St. Trophimena and from Salerno of the recently arrived St. Bartholomew the Apostle. 2. Since yesterday's treatment of F. and D. was so short on visuals (I had been hoping to show both a better view of D. as he appears in the Catacombe di San Gennaro at Naples and the untonsured F. in the remains of the twelfth-century Januarian portrait cycle in the church of Sant'Aniello at Quindici [AV]), herewith some views of the lovely church at Noli (SV) in Liguria dedicated to another saint of 7. September, the Corsican martyr Paragorius, and restored in the nineteenth century by the Portuguese architect Alfredo d'Andrade: Some exterior views: http://www.archeoge.arti.beniculturali.it/archeologia/noli.htm http://www.oltreilviaggio.it/europa/italia/liguria/noli07.htm http://www.thais.it/architettura/romanica/schede/scm_00077.htm A somewhat blurry view of the upper parts of the belltower and of the nave, showing a deep narrow window, is here: http://tinyurl.com/crrem Note the _bacini_ (decorative dishes of Islamic manufacture) in the roundels: http://tinyurl.com/8q4gg An interior view: http://www.thais.it/architettura/romanica/schede/scm_00078.htm Two views of the crypt: http://www.sapere.it/mm/geografia/objects/10436366.jpg http://tinyurl.com/9cd4w 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