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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (23. September) is the feast day of: 1) Zechariah and Elisabeth (d. 1st cent.). The parents of John the Baptist, the priest Z. and his wife E., also a descendant of Aaron, are familiar from Luke 1:5-79 and need no introduction to this list. According to the _Protevangelium Jacobi_ (23. 1-3; accepted by several Church Fathers), Z. was martyred by Herod's minions at the threshold of the Temple following the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. Orthodox churches celebrate this pair on 5. September; prior to its revision of 2001 the RM entered them under 5. November. Z. as depicted an earlier eleventh-century mosaic (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the katholikon of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis: http://tinyurl.com/2d5j2c9 Z. being visited by Gabriel as depicted by Giotto di Bondone in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1320) in the Peruzzi chapel of Florence's basilica di Santa Croce: http://www.wga.hu/art/g/giotto/s_croce/1peruzzi/baptis1.jpg Z.'s martyrdom as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near 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/2av98xq Z. and E. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) French-language collection of saint's Lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 72r): http://tinyurl.com/3xuyoo2 Z. and E. as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348) of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 141r): http://tinyurl.com/395754j Z. being visited by Gabriel as portrayed by Jacopo della Quercia on an earlier fifteenth-century relief (ca. 1424-1430) in the baptistery of Siena: http://tinyurl.com/2cll7xv Z. and E. as depicted in a panel of Rogier van der Weyden's St. John Altarpiece (ca. 1455-1460) in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin: http://tinyurl.com/37w87qy 2) Linus, pope (d. 1st cent.). According to most early sources for him (which are not especially early) L. was the first bishop of Rome after Peter. (Since the earliest testimony to Christian church organization, e.g. Acts, doesn't present the apostles as bishops of particular places, L. will have been the first bishop of Rome _tout court_.) Irenaeus (_Adv. haer._ 3. 3. 13) identifies him with the L. of 2 Tim 4:21. The Liberian Catalogue dates his pontificate to the years 56-67; Jerome places it in the years 67-78. L. is named in the Roman and the Ambrosian Canons of the Mass. He was venerated medievally as a martyr. Traditional Catholics still think of him as one. Here's L. officiating at the sepultures of Sts. Peter and Paul in panels of an early fourteenth-century fresco in the basilica of San Piero a Grado (San Petro ad Gradus Arnenses) in the Pisan _frazione_ of that name: http://tinyurl.com/3qmw4z http://tinyurl.com/4emvhh More views of this originally tenth- and eleventh-century church and of its important series of depictions of early popes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cienne/sets/72157600114508041/ In the legendary Passio of Sts. Nazarius and Celsus (BHL 6039-6050; BHG 1323-1324) and in its offshoot in the _Legenda aurea_, Nazarius was baptized by L. Here's a manuscript illumination from 1348 depicting that event as told in Jean de Vignay's French-language version of the _Legenda aurea_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 177r): http://tinyurl.com/mpav34 L.'s Vita in the Liber Pontificalis says that he was Tuscan. The late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century papal official and polymath Raffaele Maffei asserted in his _Commentariorum rerum urbanarum_ (finished, 1506) that L. came from Volterra. In 1519 (remember, folks, on this list we go up to the year 1550) Leo X granted Volterra an Office of L. accepting as traditional L.'s Volterran origin. Volterra's church of San Lino was built for Maffei (d. 1522) on a site purported to have been where L.'s family once dwelt. Herewith two views of the terracotta bust of L. attributed either to Giovanni della Robbia (d. 1529) or to Benedetto di Buglione (d. 1521), now in Volterra's diocesan museum: http://www.tuttipapi.it/TombeMausoleiRitratti/78-Lino.jpg http://www.toscanaoggi.it/musei/foto/grandi/11-2.gif 3) Thecla of Iconium (d. late 1st cent., supposedly). We know about T. from the romance-like, late second-century apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (BHG 1710-22; BHL 8020-25; BHO 1152-56). This makes T. a nobly born young woman of Iconium (today's Konya in Turkey) whose determination to remain virginal arouses the hostility of parents and lovers, who is converted to Christianity by St. Paul, and who is condemned to death by the Roman state, after which she survives two attempted executions, converts her mother, lives as a recluse in a cave, miraculously avoids being raped by brigands by going into a cleft in the cave that closes behind her, and finally dies a natural death. Her many sufferings make her a martyr. Widely venerated in medieval and modern Christianity, T. was dropped from the RM in 2001. Her feast today remains on local calendars (e.g., at Tarragona, which has her putative relics said to have been translated from Armenia and where she is the patron saint). Orthodox churches celebrate T. on 24. September. T. on the remains of a pilgrim flask from one of her Eastern cult sites, now in the Yale Art Gallery, New Haven (CT): http://tinyurl.com/46a939 Here's T., again between two beasts, on a sixth-century flask depicting both her and St. Men(n)as of Egypt. now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris: http://www.flickr.com/photos/antiquite-tardive/128179152/ Two views of the entrance to a cave at Ma'aloula in Syria traditionally said to have been T.'s resting place: http://tinyurl.com/3fh6kc http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2054404.jpg In the immediate vicinity one may see (and who could doubt this?) the very cleft in the rock through which T. passed: http://tinyurl.com/254v5lq Another traditional resting place of T. is the former Seleucia on the Calycadnus in Cilicia, now Silifke in Turkey's Mersin province, where since the fourth century a cave has been venerated as the site of her final hermitage (St. Gregory of Nazianzus visited T.'s martyrium there in the later 370s). Some views of the remains there of a large, above-ground, fifth-century basilica and of the enlarged cave church beneath it are here: http://www.salihsaydam.com/Mersin/Ayatekla_En.html http://tinyurl.com/lj9d7q http://tinyurl.com/nfo3ka http://tinyurl.com/naskpl http://www.egeriaproject.net/immov_display.aspx?id=41 T. as depicted in an early eleventh-century fresco in the Transfiguration cathedral at Chernihiv, the capital of the homonymous oblast in Ukraine: http://tinyurl.com/meq5j9 In this view of the late twelfth-century ciborium in the basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan T. is the center figure in the group at the left: http://tinyurl.com/3hnbg3 A smaller but clearer view: http://www.jemolo.com/alta/imgl0063.jpg T. as depicted in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou in the Republic of Cyprus: http://tinyurl.com/2bjeerd A panorama of the frescoes in the narthex: http://cyprus.arounder.com/asinou_church/CY000008416.html T. as depicted in a full-length portrait in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo: http://tinyurl.com/yakpu98 http://tinyurl.com/yedtkpy T. being set upon by lions as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo: http://tinyurl.com/24apkmb T. escaping into the cleft as depicted in a September calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century (betw. 1335 and 1350) frescoes of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near 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/29abov7 Expandable views of T. as depicted in two fifteenth-century breviaries held in French libraries: http://tinyurl.com/yyg3blq T. as depicted with St. Sebastian in the central panel of the Retable of Sts. Thecla and Sebastian (late fifteenth-century; attributed to Jaume Huguet) in the cathedral of Barcelona: http://tinyurl.com/488zel T. as depicted (at right) in an early sixteenth-century fresco (1502) by Dionisy and sons in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) Monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast: http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/116/214/index.shtml 4) Sossus (d. 305, supposedly). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is the early Christian martyr of Misenum, now Miseno (NA), in coastal Campania. S. (also Sossius, Sosius) is mentioned by the fifth-century exile in Campania Quodvultdeus of Carthage, was depicted in the now lost mosaics of the late fifth- or very early sixth-century church of St. Priscus at old Capua, is entered under today in the early sixth-century calendar of Carthage, appears in a non-Januarian sixth-century fresco in the catacombs of St. Gaudiosus at Naples, and is the subject of a verse epigram placed by pope St. Symmachus (498-514) over a relic niche in his chapel of St. Andrew next to old St. Peter's on the Vatican. The latter calls S. a _minister_ (a term often designating a deacon) who attempted to save his bishop's life and who suffered martyrdom along with him. A text of that epigram (PONTIFICIS VENERANDA SEQUENS... ) together with an Italian translation can be read about halfway down the page here: http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm In the late sixth- or seventh-century _Acta Bononiensia_ of the St. Januarius venerated especially at Naples (BHL 4132) and in subsequent versions of this account, S. was a deacon of Misenum who was already in prison when J., who was _not_ his bishop, became involved the tribunals that led to his own martyrdom, along with that of S. and others, at the Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields outside of Pozzuoli. S. was one of the saints of coastal Campania whose cult came early to England (probably with abbot St. Hadrian of Nisida) and traveled thence to the Low Countries, as evidenced by the Calendar of St. Willibrord, written between 702 and 706 and now Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 10837. According to a translation account (BHL 4116) of Januarius and some of his companions whose earliest witness is of the ninth century as well as to the early medieval historical martyrologies, S.'s remains were soon removed from their resting place at the Solfatara to a church at Misenum where they were venerated. In John the Deacon's account (BHL 4135) of S.'s early tenth-century translation to Naples S.'s tomb in this church, which according to John had become ruinous, was recognized only because it still bore a few letters of his name. The remains said to have been those of S. from Misenum were then deposited in a newly built Benedictine monastery in Naples that had recently acquired the relics of St. Severinus of Noricum and that shortly became known as the monastery of saints Severinus and Sossius (in the earliest sources, S.'s name appears as 'Sossus' but by this time the form with palatalizing 'i' was already standard). From Naples S.'s cult spread medievally to such other Benedictine monastery towns as Falvaterra (FR) in southern Lazio and San Sossio Baronia (AV) in Campania. In 1806 the monastery at Naples was secularized and in 1807 the remains or putative remains of Severinus and Sossius were formally translated to Fratta (now Frattamaggiore [NA]), just north of Naples, where they remain today in the originally twelfth- or thirteenth-century church of San Sossio, shown in the center here with its baroque facade and sixteenth-century belltower: http://tinyurl.com/nh4fw4 This building, an Italian national monument sometimes said to go back in part to the eleventh century and now a papal basilica, was gutted by fire in November 1945: http://tinyurl.com/3bovg9 http://tinyurl.com/2w6wly and has been restored in the interior to a "romanesque" look: http://tinyurl.com/3bq33g http://tinyurl.com/3czkkl Italian-language accounts of the church: http://www.tuttofrattamaggiore.it/chiese/chiesa_sansosio.htm http://www.trionfo.altervista.org/Monumenti/frattasossio.htm Also in Campania, S. is among the saints depicted in a late eleventh- or twelfth-century Januarian portrait cycle at the church of St. Agnellus (Sant'Aniello) at Quindici (AV): http://www.moschiano.net/Quindici/pages/affresco%2021_jpg.htm S. as depicted at lower right in the late fifteenth-century Polyptych of Saints Severinus and Sossius (whose central figure is Severinus) now in Naples' Museo nazionale di Capodimonte: http://tinyurl.com/2efzu96 5) Constantius of Ancona (d. 6th cent.). We know about C. (in Italian, Costanzo) from pope St. Gregory the Great, _Dialogi_, 1. 5, where we are told that he lived for many years in monastic garb at Ancona, that he was mansionary there of the church of St. Stephen, that he was short of stature and unprepossessing to look at, and that he had a great reputation as a holy person, and that his holiness was attested by a miracle in which lamps that he had filled with water blazed just as though they contained oil. Gregory then recounts an exemplary tale in which the humble and charitable C. embraces a rustic who had come to Ancona to see the great man of whom he has heard much but who on having C. pointed out to him refuses, thanks to C.'s appearance and the rustic's prejudices, to credit the identification. The fourteenth-century hagiographers Pietro Calò and Petrus de Natalibus report that at some unspecified time C.'s relics were translated from Ancona to Venice and were placed on a 12. July in the church of St. Basil there. They also give today as C.'s _dies natalis_. When Venice's parish of San Basilio vescovo was merged in 1808/09 into that of Santi Gervasio e Protasio its putative relics of C. as they were then -- a fragment of bone had been given to the diocese of Ancona in 1760 -- were transferred to the latter's church (a.k.a. San Trovaso). They are said to remain there today. 6) Adomnán of Iona (d. 704). We know about the learned abbot A. (also Adamnan) from entries in Irish annals, from mentions in his own writings, and from matter in St. Bede the Venerable's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ that at some points is at variance with the other, more reliable sources. A Life of A. in Old Irish thought to have been written in the early 960s contains traditional matter about his miracles and his abbatial doings. Born probably in Donegal, where his family on both sides was landed, he was a descendant both of important northern Irish kings and of an uncle of St. Columba (Columcille). Several descendants of another of Columba's uncles had preceded A. as abbot when he assumed the throne at Iona in 679. As abbot A. wrote both a widely circulated account of the holy places in Palestine (the _De locis sanctis_) and the standard -- and stylistically masterful -- Vita of Columba in three books. A friend of king Aldfrith of Northumbria, he is known to have been there twice (on one occasion presenting the king with a copy of his _De locis sanctis_). A. was also influential in northern Ireland, where he secured approval of a law protecting women, clergy, and infants in time of war and, if we follow Bede, promoted the Roman formula for the dating of Easter. According to the Annals of Ulster, today is A.'s _dies natalis_. His cult, attested from 727 onward, was probably immediate. Tradition associates him with either the site of, or the the actual founding of, a monastery at today's Dull in Perth and Kinross that in the twelfth century was converted to a Tironensian priory. Expandable views of A.'s well at Dull and of a bell traditionally said to have been A.'s are here: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=15499 Best, John Dillon (last year's post revised and with the additions of Zechariah and Elisabeth and Adomnán of Iona) ********************************************************************** 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