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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (3. February) is the feast day of: Blaise (d. ca. 316, supposedly). The hieromartyr B. (Blasios/Vlasios, Vlaho/Bla¸, Blasius, Blas, Biagio/Biase, etc.) is traditionally said to have been bishop of Sebaste in Armenia (today's Sivas in central Turkey) and to have perished in the Licinian persecution. Some think it more likely that he was martyred under Diocletian. His cult is first attested from the sixth century, when the medical encyclopedist Aetius of Amida reports his being invoked in cases of illness of the throat. In B.'s developed legend, in which he is also flayed with carding combs and then decapitated, he saves a boy from choking to death on a fishbone. In the later Middle Ages B.'s reputed care for ailments of the throat caused him to be numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Since the tenth century B. has been the patron saint of Ragusa/Dubrovnik, where an eleventh-century head reliquary of him, formed as a Byzantine crown, is kept in that city's cathedral (now early modern) dedicated to him: http://img424.imageshack.us/img424/5418/dubro41wf.jpg Dubrovnik also has at least one arm reliquary of B. But so does his originally late twelfth-/early thirteenth-century collegiate church at Braunschweig, commonly known as the Braunschweiger Dom. Two expandable views of this reliquary are here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfenschatz The Braunschweiger Dom was a project of Henry the Lion, whose Welf family had a special devotion to B. Here are links to some pages of views of and text on this monument (which in the 1930s and early 1940s was converted into a "national shrine'): The Wikipedia-de page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunschweiger_Dom The Dom's own multi-page site (sections indexed across the top of the home page): http://www.braunschweigerdom.de/frameset/indexd.html Another multi-page site on this church (also German-language): http://www.vernetztes-gedaechtnis.de/dom.htm Raymond Faure's page of views: http://tinyurl.com/2dr3w3 (top four of these open up subsidiary pages) Further south, Armenian refugees are dubiously said to have brought to today's Maratea (PZ) in Basilicata in the year 732 urns containing B.'s relics and those of saint Macarius and to have installed these in a tiny chapel that previously had been dedicated to Minerva. The settlement here appears not to be documented prior to 1079. The central part of the church at the Santuario di San Biagio dates only to the later Middle Ages; rebuilt and added to in the Early Modern period, this shrine now enjoys the status of a papal basilica. A distance view of the site: http://tinyurl.com/3onnc Exterior view: http://tinyurl.com/57oyg Exterior view showing elevated roadway up to site and, at left, the statue of the Redeemer (the world's second tallest statue of JC, surpassed only by that at Rio de Janeiro): http://tinyurl.com/4nscz More views of the site are here: http://www.costadimaratea.com/album/immagini04.html According to diocese of Tursi-Lagonegro's description of the sanctuary http://www.anglona.mt.it/diocesi/strutt/maratea.htm , the church retains a single, damaged fresco from the fifteenth century (others disappeared during the restoration of 1963-70) preserves relics of B., of St. Macarius, and of St. Restituta (which one?). Here's a view of a thirteenth-century window from the area of Soissons, now in the Louvre, showing B. confronting the Roman governor persecuting him: http://tinyurl.com/2lkkb6 Location data for this object will be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Saint_Blaise_Louvre_OAR504.jpg And here's Masaccio's "Trittico di San Giovenale" (ca. 1424/25), with Sts. Bartholomew and B. at left: http://www.masaccio2001.it/cgi-bin/foto/SGiovenale.jpg Detail: http://www.masaccio2001.it/cgi-bin/foto/part_SGiovenale.jpg Italian-language account (three pages): http://www.masaccio2001.it/cgi-bin/italiano/trittico.shtml 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