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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (20. December) is the feast day of: 1) Liberalis of Rome (?). L., whose name at times is given as Liberatus (probably a misguided late antique emendation of an erroneous reading _Liberatis_ such as appears in the oldest manuscript of the [pseudo-]Hieronymian Martyrology), is a martyr of the cemetery _in clivum Cucumeris_ or _ad Septem Palumbas_ on the Via Salaria, where in the seventh century he reposed in an underground chamber beneath a basilica dedicated to a martyr named John. As one might infer from the foregoing, L. is recorded in seventh-century guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome. The L. entered under today or under tomorrow in witnesses of the (ps.-)HM, usually identified therein as a martyr of the East but in one later manuscript said to be of Rome, is assumed to be our L. Two brief, fifth-century inscriptions concerning L. survive in the collection of epigraphic verse known as the _Sylloge Laureshamensis quartus_ (preserved in a ninth-century manuscript from Lorsch, now Città del Vaticano, BAV, Pal. lat. 833). From the first of these we learn that a certain Florus had erected L.'s mausoleum and that, in Florus' understanding, L. was a consul martyred under the same princeps who had advanced him to the consulate. Since L. is absent from the consular fasti, a common assumption is that he had been a suffect consul. Why it should be taken as a certainty that Florus was correctly informed on this point eludes me. The second inscription says that L.'s tomb had been profaned during a war (Alaric's sack in 410?) and that L.'s faithful devotee Florus had restored it. 2) Philogonius (d. ca. 323). P. (also Filogonius) is the traditional twenty-second bishop of Antioch after St. Peter. According to St. John Chrysostom's Homily 6, he had been a lawyer before being chosen bishop. According to Theodoret (_Historia Ecclesiastica_, 1. 3), P. completed the rebuilding of Antioch's Old Church that had been started by bishop Vitalis. At the time of Chrysostom's sermon (later 380s), P.'s feast day was today. 3) Ursicinus of the Jura (d. early 7th cent.). U. (in French also Ursanne) is the eponymous founder of the former monastery of Saint-Ursanne (canton Jura) in Switzerland. He has an eleventh-century Vita (BHL Novum Supplementum, p. 846; no BHL no.) that makes him a student of St. Columban at Luxeuil who left that house with C. when the latter was driven out but who then went his own way and became a hermit in the valley of the Doubs, ultimately attracting followers who preserved his memory. Columban's early biographer Jonas of Bobbio is silent concerning U. U.'s cult is attested from the later seventh century onward. In eleventh-century litanies from the diocese of Besançon his name follows those of saints of Luxeuil. The originally eleventh-/twelfth- to fifteenth-century collégiale St.-Ursanne at Saint-Ursanne (restored, 1904-1905) contains among its numerous sarcophagi one said to have been U.'s. Expandable views of the church are here: http://tinyurl.com/ay7jsv More views (not expandable) are here, including one of several of the church's sarcophagi: http://tinyurl.com/8lqzup Two other views of the interior: http://tinyurl.com/9stcwz http://tinyurl.com/787upj 4) Dominic of Silos (d. 1073). Of noble birth, D. is said to have been a shepherd in his youth. Whether this were simply an instance of aristocratic participation in the pastoral economy of of D.'s region (La Rioja) or instead/also an imitation of the local saint Aemilian of the Cowl / Millán de la Cogolla (12. November) is not clear. He then became a cleric and was ordained priest by the bishop of Nájera. Briefly a hermit, at about the age of thirty D. became a monk of the great monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, whose priory in his home town of Cañas he then reformed. In 1038 D. was summoned to the mother house itself and quickly was named prior there. When he opposed a raid on San Millán's treasury by king Garcia (G. de Nájera) of Pamplona/Navarre, the latter had him demoted and subjected him to public ridicule. In about 1040, having had enough of this, D. moved on to Castile. There, in 1041, D. was appointed abbot of the decayed monastery of San Sebastian at Silos. He reformed this house as well and with the aid of royal and other wealthy patrons converted it over the next thirty years into a flourishing spiritual institution and a home of art and culture. Postmortem miracles led to D.'s translation in 1076 from a tomb in the cloister to the church of the abbey, which later came to be called after him. D.'s earliest Vita (BHL 2238) was written by his disciple Grimaldo for his canonization; its _miracula_ were added to by a series of other hands. The oeuvre of the poet Gonzalo de Berceo (d. 1252) includes a _Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos_. D.'s cult was confirmed in 1720 and in 1733; he entered the RM in 1748. For Grimaldo's Vita of D. see Vitalino Valcárcel, _La "Vita Dominici Siliensis" de Grimaldo: Estudio, edición crítica y traducción_ (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1982). A recent study in English is Anthony John Lappin, _The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos_ (Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002). Views of San Millán de la Cogolla were given in November's notice of that monastery's eponym. See: http://tinyurl.com/87gj4a Some visuals, etc. pertaining to the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos), Castilla y León. Distance views (early modern structures): http://tinyurl.com/yun8zt http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIS18453.jpg Multiple views of the cloister and the chapter room: http://www.astragalo.net/burgos/silos.htm Multiple views (expandable), including various works of art: http://tinyurl.com/2kg99l Cloister (eleventh-/twelfth-century): Spanish-language account: http://www.abadiadesilos.es/claustro.htm Individual views: http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/silos2.jpg http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo_domingo_de_silos_cloister.jpg http://tinyurl.com/2vk7yg http://tinyurl.com/tvw8x http://catholicmusicnetwork.com/images/artists/silos2.jpg Multiple views (expandable): http://www.terres-romanes.lu/silos.htm http://tinyurl.com/32c9or Cloister pillar reliefs: http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-descent-from-.jpg http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-burial.jpg http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo_domingo_doubting_thomas.jpg http://tinyurl.com/vf73c http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Silos-Duda.jpg D.'s former tomb in the cloister: http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIM18806.jpg http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/silos.html http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/tumbasilos.jpg http://tinyurl.com/2l55eu Details of the enameled copper frontal (betw. 1165 and 1170) on D.'s tomb: http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/historia/obras/9322.htm http://tinyurl.com/2w5wbr A black-and-white view of an altar frontal (ca. 1400; in the form of a retable) dedicated to D., seemingly from Navarre and now in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao: http://tinyurl.com/ytdrsr There's a larger version of the same view in this account of the piece by Ana Galilea Antón: http://www.euskomedia.org/PDFAnlt/arte/15449459.pdf Bartolomé Bermejo's portrait of D. enthroned (ca. 1477; center panel of a retable) now in the Prado in Madrid: http://tinyurl.com/2ycw2c Best, John Dillon (Dominic of Silos lightly revised from last year's post) ********************************************************************** 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