medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. August) is the feast day of:
1) Maximus of Chinon (d. 5th cent.). All that is known about the historical M. (in French: Maxime, Mesme, Mexme) comes from chapter 22 of St. Gregory of Tours' _In gloria confessorum_. According to this, he was a disciple of St. Martin of Tours who left the Touraine to live humbly as a monk on the Île-Barbe at Lyon. When growing fame compelled M. to move on and he was crossing the Saône, his boat sank to the bottom but he was able to cross without difficulty to the other shore, all the while carrying the Gospels, a chalice, and a paten. M. returned to the Touraine, where he founded a monastery at today's Chinon (Indre-et-Loire). He is said to have aided besieged and thirsty people of the town by causing the occurrence there of a massive downpour. An eleventh-century Vita et Miracula (BHL 5838-5839) adds nothing about M. in his own lifetime.
M.'s monastery at Chinon was rebuilt in the tenth century and was expanded and rebuilt at various times in the succeeding centuries. The collapse in 1817 of the transept tower of its collégiale Saint-Mexme entailed the destruction of the building's east end. Herewith a couple of views of the surviving towers, narthex, and nave of what is now a school:
http://chinon2008.com/images/Bilan-St-Mexme.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/5kp7fe
http://www.francebalade.com/valvienne/chinstmexm2.jpg
The monastery's cloister is now in North Miami Beach (FL):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bernard_de_Clairvaux_Church
2) Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). A well-educated scion of a knightly family in Burgundy, B. entered religion at Cîteaux at the age of twenty-two, bringing with him as fellow postulants close to thirty relatives and friends. A few years later he was the founding abbot of Clairvaux. A voluminous and talented writer -- his sermons on the Song of Songs are medieval classics -- and an ardent reformer, the personally ascetic B. played a leading role both in the rapid growth of his Cistercian Order and in ecclesiastical matters more generally (e.g. the condemnation of Abelard in 1141). His support of Innocent II against Anacletus II brought him to Italy several times and, as papal legate, to Germany.
It was probably at the council of Pisa (1134) that B. met a local canon, also named Bernard, who later followed him to Clairvaux and who in 1145 would become the first Cistercian pope, taking the name Eugenius III. B. vigorously endorsed Eugenius' call for what is now known as the Second Crusade and his eloquence in that cause at the diet of Speyer in 1146 helped to secure the participation of the emperor Conrad III. B.'s writing seems to have stopped in about 1148 with his _De consideratione_, addressed to Eugenius (whom B. outlived by less than two months) and showing his characteristic combination of mystic spirituality and concern for the affairs of the church in the world.
B. was canonized in 1174. In 1830 he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. He is the patron saint of Gibraltar (reconquered for Christendom on 20. August 1462) and a patron of Queens' College, Cambridge. On the latter distinction, see:
http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/queens/Misc/Saints.html
At his native Fontaines-les-Dijon (Côte-d'Or) one may visit B.'s family home:
http://www.fontainelesdijon.fr/patrimoine/maisonnatstber.htm
as well as a medieval church re-dedicated to him in 1860:
http://www.fontainelesdijon.fr/patrimoine/archieglisestber.htm
An earlier re-dedication to B. was the monastery of Santa María at Sacramenia (Segovia), originally built between 1133 and 1141. It became a monastery of San Bernardo shortly after his canonization. Some expandable views of its church, now called that of Santa María la Real, are here:
http://tinyurl.com/mjgvl6
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Monasterio_de_Sacramenia
The monastery's cloister is now in North Miami Beach (FL) in the United States:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bernard_de_Clairvaux_Church
Some expandable views of medieval representations of B. (not sourced, unfortunately) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/nkmjv
A page of expandable views of sourced and dated manuscript illuminations depicting B.:
http://tinyurl.com/64pxor
And here are two other such depictions of him, one from a north Italian antiphoner in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (W. 412 b.):
http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/image_gallery/pages/0276.php
and one from a Catalan breviary of the late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century ("Breviary of Martin of Aragon"; Paris, BnF, ms. Rothschild 2529, fol. 374r):
http://www.aquiweb.com/templiers/images/bernard2.jpg
Two of the earliest Cistercian houses in Italy were founded by B.: today's Chiaravalle Milanese in Milan and Chiaravalle della Colomba at Alseno (PC) in Emilia. Their churches and other older buildings are from the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Histories, views, etc. of these daughters of Clairvaux:
Chiaravalle Milanese (1135; formerly Santa Maria di Roveniano):
http://www.giudittadembech.it/images/chiaravalle.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/mulp6b
http://www.gransito.com/vecchiamilano/Foto/chiaravalle.html
http://tinyurl.com/m3lx5w
http://tinyurl.com/m4dhn4
http://www.icsa-giacomelli.it/abbazia_di_chiaravalle.php
Chiaravalle della Colomba (1136):
History (Italian-language):
http://www.cistercensi.info/chiaravalledellacolomba/fondazione.htm
History (English-language):
http://tinyurl.com/kwu6j8
Views, etc.:
http://tinyurl.com/gnruj
http://tinyurl.com/zsvv7
http://www.cistercensi.info/chiaravalledellacolomba/
3) Herbert of Conza (d. 1181 or 1184). Today's less well known saint of the Regno (also H. of Middlesex) is documented as archbishop of today's Conza della Campania (AV) from 1169 through 1179, when he took part in Lateran III. A notice in the _Ymagines historiarum_ of Ralph of Dicetum (a.k.a. Ralph of Diss) has him made archbishop of Cosenza in Calabria by king William II and says that he perished in a great earthquake (one that destroyed its cathedral is recorded for Cosenza in 1184). In the absence of confirmation from other sources, the prevailing view now is that Ralph confused Conza with Cosenza and that H. died on 20. August 1181, the date (with an error making the year 1118) said to have been recorded for him on a pilaster in the cathedral of Conza that was destroyed in stages by the earthquakes of 1694 and 1732 (as opposed to its eighteenth-century replacement that collapsed in the great earthquake of 1980).
A sarcophagus said to contain H.'s remains was housed until recently in the Museo Provinciale Irpino at Avellino but is now back at Conza. Here are two views:
http://tinyurl.com/5v3d3v
http://tinyurl.com/5l9xjw
H. has no Vita and no medieval Office. He has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
The mention of Cosenza, though, creates an opportunity to link to a few visuals of that city's cathedral of Maria Santissima Assunta, consecrated in 1222:
http://tinyurl.com/592fym
http://tinyurl.com/56kayc
http://tinyurl.com/6px5lt
Its funerary monument for Isabella of Aragon (d. 1271; queen of Philip III of France):
http://tinyurl.com/ns8nkd
http://tinyurl.com/5ku5k6
http://tinyurl.com/mvqnmn
4) Bernardo Tolomei (d. 1348). The Sienese nobleman and contemplative Giovanni Tolomei was born in 1272. He studied law and then joined the Confraternity of the BVM attached to his city's hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. In 1313, seeking a more ascetic lifestyle, he took the name Bernardo and together with other nobles withdrew to a family property in the Accona desert of central Tuscany where they lived eremitically in shallow caves. In 1319 the group, which had grown larger, was permitted by the bishop of Arezzo to erect a Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto. The monks, as they now were, elected their abbot annually and a Patrizi and a Piccolomini each served for a year before B. was elected in 1321, after which time he was re-elected annually for the remainder of his life.
This initial Olivetan community found willing adherents elsewhere and before his death B. had established ten priories, all called Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto and all strictly bound to the mother house. In 1344 the Benedictine congregation so formed received papal approval from Clement VI. In 1348 B. moved to the priory at Siena to assist in the care of his monks who had been stricken by the Black Death and died there in the same year (traditionally, on 20. August). He was buried at the Sienese priory; the location of his gravesite is now unknown. In 1462 the Olivetans at the mother house were said to be venerating his relics there. B.'s cult was confirmed by the Congregation of Rites in 1644. He was canonized papally in 2009.
Herewith links to the website of B.'s initial foundation, the abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore at Chiusure (SI) in Tuscany, and to other illustrated pages on that house:
http://www.monteolivetomaggiore.it/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Oliveto_Maggiore
http://tinyurl.com/luqe2m
http://www.monte-oliveto.com/
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of Bernardo Tolomei)
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