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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (6. June) is the feast day of: 1) Vincent of Bevagna (d. 303, supposedly). V. is the legendary protobishop of Bevagna (anciently, Mevania) in Umbria. According to his legendary Passio (BHL 8676) he and his brother St. Benignus were both martyred under Diocletian. Today is his _dies natalis_. He is Bevagna's patron saint. V. is said to have had a fourth-century church at his gravesite that in the early Middle Ages served as Mevania's/Bevagna's cathedral. In the twelfth century this structure was abandoned as ruinous and V.'s relics were moved into the town's then new collegiate church of St. Michael the Archangel. V.'s cult spread not only in Umbria but also, through the transfer of relics, to Lucca, to Urbino, to Capua and to Benevento and, outside Italy, to Metz, where as recently as the 1960s he is said to have had not only a feast today but also a translation feast on 4. July (Metz' abbey of St-Vincent, on the other hand, housed relics said to be those of the better known St. Vincent of Saragossa). Herewith a few views of Bevagna's chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo: http://tinyurl.com/yw95md http://tinyurl.com/2yyhef http://www.bellaumbria.net/Bevagna/facciata-san-michele.jpg http://www.bellaumbria.net/Bevagna/bevagna-particolare.jpg An illustrated, italian-language account of this church, with older photographs, occurs about halfway down the page here: http://tinyurl.com/tmvvj 2) Artemius, Candida, and Paulina (d. 304, supposedly). A. and C., husband and wife, and their daughter P. are characters in the legendary Passio of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter (BHL 5230, etc.; originally late sixth-century?), said to have been converted to Christianity by P., to have been baptized by the priest M., and to have been martyred during the Great Persecution. A. is said to have been a jailer and to have been scourged and then decapitated; C. and P. are said to have been buried alive. Their late antique places of veneration would indicate that A. and C., however related one to another (if at all), are martyrs of the cemetery of Calepodius and that P. is a martyr of Via Portuensis. P. is the patron saint of Santa Paolina (AV) in Campania, where a church dedicated to her is recorded from the thirteenth century onward. The present one is a seventeenth-century rebuilding of an originally fourteenth-century structure. 3) Claude of Condat (d. in or after 699). C. (Claude of the Jura) is the traditional twelfth abbot of the monastery of Condat (for most of the Middle Ages called Saint-Oyend; today's Saint-Claude in Franche-Comté). One of that institution's medieval lists of abbots styles calls him "archbishop and abbot" and a dubious tradition, expressed in his perhaps thirteenth-century Vitae (BHL 1840, etc.), makes him archbishop of Besançon. Charter evidence has V. alive in 699. At some time between 1160 and 1213 there was a formal Inventio of his remains. Said to be wonder-working, these brought many pilgrims to Saint-Claude before their disappearance/destruction in 1794. 4) Norbert of Xanten (d. 1134). N. came from a well-off noble family who saw to his early endowment with comfortable benefices. After a near-death experience he turned very serious, gave up his position as almoner at the imperial court, was ordained priest in 1115, and began a failed attempt to reform the life of his fellow canons at Xanten in the Rheinland. In 1120 N. was given some land at a place in the diocese of Laon called Prémontré, where he founded the order of canons regular we know at the Premonstratensians. In 1196 N. was appointed bishop of Magdeburg, where he died on this day. His relics were later translated to Prague, where they remain today. N. was canonized in 1582. An English-language translation of N..'s contemporary Vita A is here: http://tinyurl.com/2lmt62 The monastery of San Severo at Orvieto has what is thought to be the oldest surviving portrait of N.: http://www.snc.edu/knightlife/archive/spring2000/fresco.html 5) Falco of La Cava (Bl.; d. 1146). Today's less well known holy person from the Regno was a member of the Cavensian community who after having been prior of La Cava's important dependency at Cersosima in Basilicata and of other dependencies in Calabria became in 1141 abbot of the mother house of the Most Holy Trinity at today's Cava de' Tirreni (SA) in coastal Campania. Renowned for his oratorical gifts, he expanded the community through the acquisition or erection of numerous dependencies. F.'s cult was confirmed in 1928. 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