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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (29. September) is the feast day of: 1) Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels. Prior to 1969 this feast was one of M. alone. Medievally it commemorated the consecration of a humble church dedicated to M. This was originally a Roman feast and the church in question had been one on the Via Salaria at the sixth milestone from Rome. In the ninth-century martyrologies (and perhaps in the sacramentaries as well; I haven't looked) the church's location is no longer specified, allowing those unfamiliar with the feast's history to suppose that the reference was to the by then already internationally famous Michaelic shrine at today's Monte Sant'Angelo (FG) on the Gargano Peninsula in northern Apulia. The latter commemorates an apparition that is variously dated; the official website of the shrine at Monte Sant'Angelo on the Gargano gives 492 as the traditional date but suggests 663 as more probable. See: http://www.gargano.it/sanmichele/english/appariz-en.htm Both dates, though, are only guesses based on data of dubious historicity appearing in the Garganic shrine's principal foundation account, the late eighth- or ninth-century _Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano_ (BHL 5948). For a virtual tour of the shrine, go to: http://www.gargano.it/sanmichele/english/home-en.htm and click on "Virtual Visit". The site's home page, with language options in Italian, German, or English, is at: http://www.gargano.it/sanmichele/index.html Some views of medieval representations of M. from Monte Sant'Angelo and elsewhere will be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3pnrah and here (with a good view of M.'s cave church at the shrine): http://tinyurl.com/4vtpuz Does anyone have a good view to link to of M.'s supposed footprint in the rock of his cave church at Monte Sant'Angelo? Success brings imitation. Elsewhere on the same peninsula, at today's Cagnano Varano (FG), is another cave church, said to be attested from 1054, dedicated to M. (not unusually: M. was very popular among the region's Greeks and Lombards). But local tradition (not attested medievally) has it that M. appeared there as well and that one can see footprints left by his horse on the cave's right wall and traces of the angel's wings on the left. An illustrated, Italian-language account of this site is here: http://tinyurl.com/4toz4q 2) Rhipsime, Gaiana, and companions (d. early 4th cent.?). R. (also Rhipsima; in Armenian: Hripsime), G. (also Gayana, Gayane), et socc. are the protomartyrs of Armenia. Their cult is attested from the later fourth century onward; in the texts that we have it has been incorporated into the legendary accounts of Armenia's conversion to Christianity. Their romance-like Passiones in several languages and several versions usually make R. a member both of the Roman imperial family and of a community of Roman virgins led by G. who to avoid being forced into a marriage arranged by Diocletian escapes with these companions to Armenia. There king Tiridates has them arrested at Diocletian's request but is struck by R.'s beauty and offers to make her his wife. R. refuses and all are executed not long before tomorrow's St. Gregory the Illuminator is released from prison and begins the conversion of Armenia. R.'s shrine at Etchmiadzin containing her tomb became in the early seventh century Armenia's since much rebuilt Hripsime church. Two illustrated, English-language pages on this pile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Hripsime_Church http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Hripsime_Cathedral Other views: http://tinyurl.com/25ntepv http://www.explorearmenia.net/images/Hripsime_Additional_2.JPG http://tinyurl.com/2bdv98n Two illustrated, English-language pages on G.'s originally seventh-century and likewise much rebuilt church at Etchmiadzin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Gayane_Church http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Gayane_Church 3) Fraternus of Auxerre (d. ca. 450). F. (in French, Fraterne) is one of the bishops of Auxerre recorded in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, whence he entered the ninth-century historical martyrologies. The later ninth-century initial series of Vitae in the episcopal _Gesta_ of Auxerre makes him the ninth bishop (and the second after St. Germanus, d. 448), has him elected after a period of ten years in which, because of barbarian devastations, there was no bishop, and accepts what must have been a local tradition to the effect that he was killed by barbarians on the very first day of his pontificate. Though Louis Duchesne (_Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule_, 2e éd. rev., p. 435) found this (hi)story "bien invraisemblable", it lives on in Books of the Saints and has even found an occasional echo in "Saints of the Day" notices on this list. In the later ninth century remains thought to be those of F. were entombed in the newly built crypt of the abbey church of Saint-Germain, where they remain today. 4) Cyriacus, hermit in Palestine (d. 557). We know about C. (also C. the Anchorite) from his contemporary Bios by Cyril of Scythopolis (BHG 463). A native of Corinth, where an uncle was bishop and he was lector, he migrated to Palestine and spent many years as a monk, initially under the direction of Sts. Euthymius and Gerasimus., before withdrawing to a cave previously inhabited by yesterday's St. Chariton, abbot in Palestine. A paragon of moral virtues and complete orthodoxy, C. is said to have died at the age of one hundred and eight. C. as depicted in the late twelfth-century (1192) frescoes of the church of the Panagia tou Arakou in Lagoudera (Nicosia prefecture), Republic of Cyprus: http://tinyurl.com/34rpl7a C. (at center) as depicted in September calendar portraits in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Deèani monastery near Peæ 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/33884jk 5) Alaric of Ufnau (d. later 10th cent.). A tenth-century monk of this name is said to be recorded in the necrology of Benedictine abbey of Einsiedeln (Canton Schwyz). By ca. 1075 a monk of this name from Einsiedeln who had been divinely prompted to become an hermit on the island of Ufnau/Ufenau (also in Canton Schwyz) in Lake Zurich was enough of a figure of local memory/legend that the author of the Vita secunda of St. Wiborada (BHL 8867) has him present at St. Gallen and urging W. (d. 925 or 926) to be more careful of her health. By the fourteenth century, according to records from that century from Ufnau, his name was Adelricus (in German: Adelrich, the name by which he is generally known in Switzerland, and Adalrich), he had a cult on the island, and was said to have settled on the island with his mother Regelinde (Reginlinde), the last wife of the genealogically significant duke Burchard I of Swabia. Ufnau was given to Einsiedeln abbey in 965 by Otto I. It has two medieval churches, restored in 2007/08: the seemingly originally tenth-century Sankt Martinskapelle (sometimes dated to the seventh or eighth century; previously restored, 1964/65) and the originally twelfth-century Kirche Sankt Peter und Paul (1141/42; later medieval additions; previously restored, 1959). The latter, a replacement for a predecessor of the same dedication first documented from 970, has been shown archeologically to be built over the remains of a Gallo-Roman temple. Here's a view of the island with the St. Martinskapelle at left and St. Peter und Paul at right: http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Adalrich-Insel_Ufenau.jpg Other views of St. Peter und Paul: http://www.kraftplätze.ch/images/ufenau_kirche.jpg http://tinyurl.com/ydtrxqx http://tinyurl.com/yctpg58 This view of St. Peter und Paul shows at far left a fifteenth-century portrait of Regelinde (recently restored): http://www.klosterrapperswil.ch/aktuell/2009/2009_06_17_2.JPG The facing column has a companion portrait of A., shown poorly here: http://www.ufnau.ch/images/aktuelles/DSC_0247.jpg http://www.ufnau.ch/images/aktuelles/IMG_0008.jpg The only halfway decent view of that that I have been able to find on the Web is this one from before the latest restoration (Regelinde looks much brighter now than she did in a photo taken at the same time as this): http://www.ufnau.ch/album/Fresken/f41s8403_150.jpg A few views of the St. Martinskapelle: http://www.klosterrapperswil.ch/aktuell/2009/2009_06_17_1.JPG http://tinyurl.com/y8mf765 http://www.ufnau.ch/images/aktuelles/IMG_0017.jpg This interior view shows A.'s seventeenth-century tomb recording an Elevatio of 1663 (A.'s cult is said to have been confirmed in 1659): http://tinyurl.com/yafa8so A.'s relics are no longer there. They are said to have been lost during a war in the eighteenth century. Relics of A. (perhaps from St. Peter und St. Paul) are also said to have been removed from the island in 1959 and brought to the abbey of Einsiedeln. The humanistically educated imperial poet laureate and German knight Ulrich von von Hutten (1488-1523), a supporter of Protestant Reformation, spent his last years in exile on Ufenau, where he was supported by Huldrych Zwingli. A couple of views of his tombstone on the south side of St. Peter und Paul occur about a third of the way down this page: http://tinyurl.com/y96h33p Another view, with the inscription not darkened for photographing: http://tinyurl.com/yag43ty 6) Grimoald of Pontecorvo (d. 12th cent.). This less well known saint of the Regno was archpriest of Pontecorvo, a town on the central Liri in today's Frosinone province of southern Lazio. According to a probably late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century account by an unidentified bishop of Aquino (BHL 4310), at Christ's bidding John the Baptist appeared to a peasant of Pontecorvo who was being tempted by Satan at the river's edge and with a single word -- but with enough noise of water that others heard this from a considerable distance -- sent the Evil One to the bottom of the stream. John then turned to the stupefied peasant and commanded him to betake himself to Grimoald and to convey to him 1) the saint's promise of life among the elect should he continue his customary fasting, praying, and giving of alms and 2) the instruction that he should exhort his people to construct a church in the saint's honor. Fearing to be taken for a looney, the peasant did not immediately fulfil this command. So John appeared to someone in another town and imposed upon him the same mission to G. Both the peasant and the second person did finally carry John's bidding to the archpriest, who in turn did as he was told. The people of Pontecorvo built the church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1137 by Guarinus, the bishop of nearby Aquino. G. will have been archpriest of Pontecorvo's church of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, first documented from the middle of the eleventh century. It was erected over the ruins of the local castle, one of whose towers became the base of the cathedral's belfry. A cathedral since 1725 and now a co-cathedral of the diocese of Sora - Aquino - Pontecorvo, it has been rebuilt several times, most recently after its almost complete destruction during the Allied bombardment of Pontecorvo on 1. November 1943. Three views of the cathedral shortly after this event: http://tinyurl.com/mf2rd http://tinyurl.com/noxwx and a view of it today, with its reconstructed "romanesque" facade: http://www.menteantica.it/pontecorvo/im560002.jpg BHL 4310 is a well written and in places mildly entertaining document. It and its accompanying hymn printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_ are derived from a now lost lectionary in Beneventan script (so certainly medieval) from Pontecorvo. G., whose own cult these texts do not altogether establish, was accepted into the Roman Martyrology by cardinal Baronio on the basis of cathedral documents from Aquino that have since disappeared. His remains are said to have been in San Bartolomeo Apostolo since 1162; they were accorded solemn recognition in 1760, in 1862, and in 1952. In 1892 Pontecorvo was granted a new Office of St. Grimoald and of the Appearance of St. John. G. was dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001 but is still celebrated today in Pontecorvo. The only medieval church in Pontecorvo to survive World War II largely intact was that of San Giovannello. This has been deconsecrated and awaits restoration. Here's a view: http://tinyurl.com/25y74mo It's uncertain whether this church is the one whose initial construction is documented by BHL 4310. Longstanding local tradition in Pontecorvo identifies that church with one built in the riparian locality of Melfi to commemorate the Appearance and thus called San Giovanni Appare. The present church of this name is a recent replacement for a predecessor, said to have been medieval in origin but since rebuilt and expanded, that was badly damaged in World War II and whose remains were later washed away by the Liri (whose violence when in flood renders unlikely the survival of any building remnants at the site). 7) Nicholas of Forca Palena (Bl.; d. 1449). This less well known holy person of the Regno (also N. of Furca Palena) was a native of today's Forca di Palena (CH) in Abruzzo and a priest in the diocese of Sulmona who in the very early fifteenth century, when he was about fifty years old, moved to Rome and joined a community of hermits living in a tower near the now vanished church of San Salvatore in thermis. N. succeeded to the leadership of this growing group, opened a second house for them in Naples in 1417 (its church at Caponapoli is now Santa Maria delle Grazie Maggiore), was entrusted by Eugenius IV with the supervision of two Florentine monasteries in need of reform, and in 1444 erected in Rome his community's church and convent of Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo. In 1446 N.'s hermits were formally admitted into the Jeronimite order. N., who is said to have been a centenarian at his death, was buried near the main altar of Sant'Onofrio. The inscription on his monumental tombstone speaks of his curing the sick; this has been interpreted as a reference to healing miracles operated by him. In 1606 N.'s grave was re-located within the same altar area and his tombstone was mounted on an exterior wall of the church. In 1712 N.'s remains were translated to underneath Sant'Onofrio's main altar. In 1771 his cult was confirmed papally at the level of Beatus. N.'s monumental tombstone at Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo: http://web.tiscalinet.it/palena/nicolo5.jpg Some illustrated, Italian-language pages on Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo: Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo: http://tinyurl.com/2afpo9c http://www.santosepolcro.sicilia.it/sede.htm http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi123a.htm http://web.tiscalinet.it/palena/nicolo.htm Best, John Dillon (last year's post lightly revised and with the additions of Rhipsime, Gaiana, and companions, Cyriacus, hermit in Palestine, and Bl. 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