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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (25. April) is the feast day of: 1) Mark the Evangelist (d. ca. 64, supposedly). The gospel that bears his name was already attributed to to M. early in the second century by Papias, who derived his information from John the Presbyter (Eusebius, _Historia ecclesiastica_, 3. 39. 15; cf. 2. 15). Eusebius (_ibid_., 2. 16, 24) also knew a tradition, not vouched for by Clement of Alexandria, that M. founded the church of Alexandria in Egypt and was its first bishop. Jerome (_De viris illustribus_, 8) says that M. died there. Eusebius (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 2. 24) in saying that St. An(n)ianus became M.'s first successor in the Alexandrian see in the eighth year of Nero (63/64) gives an approximate date for M.'s death. According to the legendary fourth- or fifth-century _Acts of Mark_ (_Martyrium Marci_), this occurred by martyrdom at Alexandria on a return visit two years after A. became M.'s successor there. By the end of the fourth century M. had a tomb at Alexandria that was the object of pilgrimage. By then too he had an important basilica at Constantinople, erected by Theodosius the Great. The emperor Romanus I restored it in the first half of the tenth century. In the late eighth century the Friulans Paul the Deacon and Paulinus of Aquileia gave voice to the belief that M. had been the apostle of the upper Adriatic. In 829 the Venetian doge Giustiniano Particiaco left money in his will for the erection in his city a church to house M.'s remains (apparently not including M.'s head, believed in Alexandria to have been found in the seventh century by the Coptic pope St. Benjamin I and which Alexandrians claim still to have). The narrative portion of the tenth-century Translation of St. Mark to Venice (BHL 5284) provides a nicely detailed story of how those remains got there from Alexandria. That early church (consecrated in 832) is long gone. Its late eleventh-century replacement was in the thirteenth century adorned with spolia from Constantinople, including perhaps pieces from M.'s Theodosian basilica there. A few views of full-page depictions of M. from various gospel books: a) Rossano Gospels (Byzantine; sixth-century; also known as the Codex Purpureus of Rossano), Rossano (CS), diocesan museum (this is said to be the oldest surviving portrait of an evangelist in the history of manuscript illumination): http://tinyurl.com/3yd86d b) Lindisfarne Gospels (Northumbria, late seventh- or early eighth-century), London, BL, Cotton MS Nero D. IV, fol. 93b: http://www.katapi.org.uk/BibleMSS/LindisfarneMk.htm c) Lichfield Gospels (Gospels of St Chad; eighth-century), Lichfield, cathedral library: http://tinyurl.com/2npljz d) Blois Gospels (earlier ninth-century), Paris, BnF, ms. Latin, fol. 73v: http://tinyurl.com/25c27v5 e) Soissons Gospels (earlier ninth-century), Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 8850, fol. 81v: http://tinyurl.com/265r8s http://tinyurl.com/2s4nqp f) Lothar Gospels (mid-ninth-century), Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 266, fol. 75v: http://tinyurl.com/26448zm g) Landévennec Gospels (Brittany; ninth-century), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D. 2. 16, fol. 71v: http://tinyurl.com/3bqpjo h) Trebizond Gospels (Armenian; eleventh-century), Venice, San Lazzaro, Mekhitarist Library, MS 1400/108: http://tinyurl.com/6ccxwz i) A Greek-language gospels from Constantinople (eleventh- or twelfth-century), Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 20, fol. 151v: http://tinyurl.com/2f3q792 j) A Greek-language gospels from Sicily or mainland southern Italy (twelfth-century), Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 475 (V.7.2), fol. 110v: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/apr2006.html k) A Greek-language gospels from Constantinople (thirteenth-century), Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 54, fol. 111r: http://tinyurl.com/2dtro4t Venice, basilica di San Marco: Exterior: http://tinyurl.com/ypvakl http://tinyurl.com/2gr4cf http://tinyurl.com/yqb2t7 Interior: http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=20210&rendTypeId=4 http://tinyurl.com/25r7zh http://tinyurl.com/ddtv8l http://tinyurl.com/2bbjzf http://tinyurl.com/6dmoey http://www.flickr.com/photos/27650643@N02/3335535880/sizes/l/ Some exterior views of the apses of originally eleventh-century chiesa di San Marco at Rossano (CS) in Calabria before their recent "restoration": http://tinyurl.com/27xs5qs http://tinyurl.com/262mlay http://tinyurl.com/2bl53rr After "restoration": http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/14506251.jpg http://www.italie1.com/popup.php?iddocument=6736 A recent interior view of the central apse: http://tinyurl.com/286n6b8 An illustrated, Italian-language page on this church: http://www.calabriatours.org/chiese/san_marco_rossano.htm An illustrated, not exactly favorable Italian-language evaluation of the "restoration": http://www.agoramagazine.it/agora/spip.php?article1244 M. as depicted in the mid-eleventh-century mosaics of the Nea Moni on Chios: http://tinyurl.com/2dyb78m http://tinyurl.com/22ruk3c M. as depicted in the mid-eleventh-century mosaics of the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv (Kiev): http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=982 M. in a relief on the early thirteenth-century north portal of the abbey church of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Loiret): http://tinyurl.com/2eezbhk M. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1317-1324) of the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija: http://tinyurl.com/293v22f http://tinyurl.com/2dqevax M. as depicted in a later fourteenth-century window (ca. 1380) from the cathedral of Erfurt, now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich: http://tinyurl.com/2dkwy8k The modern copy of Donatello's statue of M. (1411-1413) for the church of Orsanmichele in Florence on display in the appropriate niche: http://tinyurl.com/2dywee http://tinyurl.com/yrjtam http://tinyurl.com/26p2ub M. as depicted by Beato Angelico in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence: The Martyrdom of St. Mark (ca. 1433): http://tinyurl.com/28rn6a Detail (St. Mark), Crucifixion and Saints (ca. 1441-42): http://tinyurl.com/yop6jy Same, entire composition: http://tinyurl.com/23ud5n M. enthroned as depicted by Bartolomeo Vivarini in an altarpiece from 1476 in the basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice: http://tinyurl.com/2eznmrm 2) An(n)ianus (d. 1st. cent., supposedly). A. is the fairly legendary first bishop of Alexandria after St. Mark, whom, according to Eusebius (see above), he succeeded in 63 or 64. The _Acts of Mark_ (_Martyrium Marci_) relate how M., freshly arrived at Alexandria, took to the cobbler A. his sandal whose strap had just broken. During the repair, A. accidentally injured his hand with an awl. M. caused the wound to heal forthwith, whereupon A. gave M. the hospitality of his own home. From there M. preached the gospel in Alexandria and there he converted A. and his family along with many others. Still according to this account, M. later decided to move on to the Libyan Pentapolis but before he left Alexandria he established A. as its bishop. A smallish view of a relief (1478) by Pietro Lombardo, in the portal lunette of Venice's church of San Tomà (the cobblers' church), of M. healing A.: http://tinyurl.com/2w6hor A view of a relief (ca. 1481) by Tullio Lombardo, in Venice's church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (San Zanipolo), of M. baptizing A.: http://www.wga.hu/art/l/lombardo/tullio/mocenig2.jpg 3) Phoebadius of Agen (d. prob. after 391). The anti-Arian writer P. (also Foebadius, Febadius, etc.; in French, Phébade and Phébadius) is the first attested bishop of today's Agen (Lot-et-Garonne). As he is not among the subscribers of the acts of the Council of Serdica/Sardica (342-343), his elevation is presumed to have occurred between then and 357/58, the year in which he seem to have written his surviving treatise _Contra Arianos_. P. was a major figure at the synod of Rimini in 359. He is also recorded among the participants in the synods of Valence in 374 and Zaragoza in 380 and, treated as an author who is still living, is the subject of chapter 108 of St. Jerome's _De viris illustribus_, written in 392-393. Since 1112 remains believed to be those of P. have reposed at the originally eleventh-, but mostly thirteenth-/fourteenth-, century église Saint Pierre (et Saint Phébade) in Venerque (Haute-Garonne): http://tinyurl.com/2eatykk http://tinyurl.com/27luw9r http://tinyurl.com/2ccwuzm http://tinyurl.com/36zb9sl An illustrated, French-language account of P.'s thirteenth-century reliquary châsse in that church: http://tinyurl.com/2brj6jc NB: There are three sets of images. Keep clicking on "Voir la suite des images". 4) Clarentius (d. early 7th cent.). We know from the _Chronicon_ of St. Ado of Vienne that in A.'s time C. was thought to have been that city's twenty-ninth bishop. His successor, St. Sindulfus of Vienne, is recorded as having been present at a council in 626. Ado's martyrology enters C. under today's date. For reasons that are not clear, cardinal Baronio in entering him in the RM moved his commemoration to 26. April. Today's RM (2001, rev. 2004) restores the commemoration to the earlier date. 5) Ermin of Lobbes (d. 737). We know about E. (Erminus, Erminius, Ermenus, etc.) from his late tenth-century Vita formerly ascribed to his immediate successor Anso of Lobbes (BHL 2614 and 2614a) as well as from matter in the also late tenth-century _Gesta abbatum Lobiensium_ of Folcuin of Lobbes (Folcuin of Saint-Bertin). According to these accounts, he was abbot-bishop St. Ursmar's chosen succesor, being consecrated bishop (an office that both permitted Lobbes to conduct missions and that reduced external interference) in 711 and installed as abbot following U.'s death in 718. E. was noted for his extensive missionary activities and for numerous miracles. Today is his _dies natalis_. The sole architectural survivor of the abbey at Lobbes in what is now Belgian Hainaut is its much rebuilt but originally ninth-century église collégiale Saint-Ursmer (also Saint-Ursmarus; parts of the crypt are said to be older; the tower is eleventh-century). Herewith a single view, and two sets of expandable views: http://tinyurl.com/38pll4 http://tinyurl.com/y2k23dm http://tinyurl.com/y2jlt3k 6) Franca of Piacenza (d. 1218). We know about the Benedictine abbess and Cistercian founding abbess F. (also Francesca [da] Vitalta, after the comital family to which she is said to have belonged) from a brief, allegedly shortly post-mortem account by a prior Lanfranc of the Cistercian house of Santa Maria di Ponte Trebbia (a.k.a. Santa Maria di Quartazzo) and from an earlier thirteenth-century Vita by a Cistercian priest from Milan, Bertramus Reoldus, deriving from information he learned while in exile in Piacenza (BHL 3092 and 3093, respectively). The first of these, in a report of two visions received by Cistercian from Ponte Trebbia's mother house of Chiaravallle della Colomba, tells us that F. had entered a monastery at Piacenza, that from there she had founded a new house which after a false start elsewhere was established in the wilderness at a place called Locus sanctus, and that on her death she had been received as a saint in Heaven. Lanfranc adds that the pope had decreed that F. be honored as a saint on earth. Father Bertramus' account tells us additionally that F. belonged to the aforementioned comital house, that she had been oblated at the age of seven in the Benedictine monastery of St. Syrus in Piacenza, that she there became abbess but provoked dissent through attempts to enforce stricter observance of the Rule, that she became a Cistercian at Rapallo and together with another noble (Carenzia Visconti) founded her Cistercian house of Locus sanctus, that she was famous for miracles (many of which are described), that after her death her body was translated twice, winding up in Piacenza, and that other Cistercian houses descended from hers. Bertramus' Vita would appear to have been destined for a canonization campaign. In Piacenza, the tradition was that F.'s cult had been confirmed by Gregory X (said to have been a relative of the aforementioned Carenzia Visconti, who succeeded F. as abbess of Locus sanctus). In the mid-sixteenth century F. became the titular of a new church in Piacenza; in the early seventeenth century Paul V recognized her cult for the diocese of Piacenza at the level of Saint, the title she also bears in the RM. Best, John Dillon (last year's post revised and with the addition of Phoebadius of Agen) ********************************************************************** 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