medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
23. November is also the feast day of:
1) Felicity of Rome (?). F. is a saint of the cemetery of Maximus on the Via Salaria nova, where she had a martyrial basilica erected by pope St. Boniface I (418-22). Pope St. Gregory the Great delivered a sermon there on F.'s _dies natalis_, which latter is recorded in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology as 23. November. Gregory's sermon (_Homiliae in Evangelia_, 4. 3) recounts matter from the legend of F.'s having been a wealthy widow with seven sons who were caught up with her in a persecution and were martyred before she was.
F.'s legend, which is at the core of her early Passio (BHL 2853), gives the sons names of seven saints entered in the _Depositio martyrum_ of the Chronographer of 354, without reference to F., under 10. July as martyrs of four different cemeteries. Early pictorial representations of it are a fifth- or sixth-century altar niche painting of F. and her seven sons in a late antique oratory discovered in 1812 near the Baths of Trajan, where according to an inscription F. was venerated as patron of Roman women (_Felicitas cultrix Romanarum_), and a fragmentarily preserved, late seventh- or eighth-century catacomb painting in which the Redeemer gives a crown to F. and her sons (identified by name). Herewith some later representations:
F.'s altar (said to be ninth-century, as is the ciborium in front of it) in Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare in Classe (the fenestella strongly suggests the former presence of relics):
http://tinyurl.com/35uknjv
Better views are at the alas currently off-line Italia nell'Arte Medievale page on this church
http://tinyurl.com/ykaaebq
http://tinyurl.com/yzcyzy9
http://tinyurl.com/ygl7sxj
F. and her sons as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (1348) of the _Legenda aurea_ in the version of Jrean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 157v):
http://tinyurl.com/ybdavag
The martyrdom of F. and her sons as depicted in a later fifteenth-century (1463) copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 388v):
http://tinyurl.com/y9ntrq9
Neri di Bicci's altar painting of F. (1464; scenes from her Passio in the predella) in Florence's chiesa di Santa Felicita (now largely eighteenth-century but going back through a succession of churches dedicated to F. to at least the eleventh century):
http://tinyurl.com/y8twbud
F. and her seven sons as depicted in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's _Nuremberg Chronicle_ (1493) at fol. CXIIIIr:
http://tinyurl.com/y8kenyp
Pope St. Leo III (795-816) translated remains believed to be F.'s to Rome's titular church of St. Susanna. She is depicted at right in the early modern painting of Sts. Susanna, Gabinus, and F. above the altar containing the presumed relics of S. and G. in Santa Susanna's crypt :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsax/147964549/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsax/147964370/sizes/o/
Other remains believed to be those of F. and her sons have been in the Beneventan cultural area since at least the eleventh century, when a revised Passio of F. (BHL 2854-2855) was rounded off with an account of their having been translated in the tenth century from Rome to today's Alife (CE) in Campania, whence in turn they later went to Benevento. Another Beneventan tradition has prince Sicard remove these relics by force from Alife in 839. In 1943 workers removing rubble from Benevento's then very heavily bomb-damaged cathedral found what are believed to have been the very same relics; in 1988 these were placed in an ancient sarcophagus which latter was put on display in the cathedral's left aisle. Elsewhere in the Beneventan area medieval dedications to F. are recorded from Montemarano (AV) and Montefalchione (AV), both in Campania.
2) Mustiola (?). The martyr M. has been venerated at ancient Clusium and medieval and modern Chiusi in southern Tuscany since late antiquity, when she had a martyrial basilica near the catacomb cemetery that is still named for her. A late antique verse epitaph for her that survived in fragments copied by early modern writers -- a piece bearing the first line is now set into a wall in Chiusi's cathedral of St. Secundianus -- asserts that she was of distinguished parentage). Her feast on this day is recorded in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian martyrology.
M. has a legendary Passio in several versions (BHL 4455, 4455a, 4456) that makes her a devoutly Christian matron and a cousin of the emperor Claudius (i.e. Claudius II Gothicus, r. 268-270) who during a persecution in the reign of Aurelian (270-275) succors the imprisoned deacon Irenaeus, observes his execution, reproaches the presiding magistrate, and in turn is beaten to death with weighted clubs. Some form of this was known to Usuard, who in the later ninth century used it for his entry under 3. July for I. and M. A later, more romance-like Passio (BHL 4456c) presents M. as a virgin who spurns the magistrate's advances.
In the earlier eighth century M.'s church at Chiusi was rebuilt. Her cult spread to other towns in northern central Italy, mostly in Tuscany. It is also well attested at Perugia and, in the Marche, at Pesaro, whose statutes of 1327 decree an annual celebration in her honor in gratitude for a military victory credited to her. The early 1470s brought a rediscovery at Chiusi of what were said to be her long-vanished relics. In 1474 Sixtus IV approved M.'s cult and her newly found remains were accorded a formal recognition. In 1784, when M.'s decayed church was being finally abandoned, those relics were brought into Chiusi's cathedral, where they found a home in a reliquary on the main altar.
Two views of Chiusi's catacombe di Santa Mustiola, rediscovered in 1634:
http://tinyurl.com/nnemhj
http://tinyurl.com/38oe7vc
Several expandable views are here (to proceed, click on the images):
http://tinyurl.com/2un84jd
From perhaps 989, when it is said to have been received as a gift, until its translation by theft to Perugia in 1473, a great relic, the Sant'Anello ("Holy Ring") said to have been Mary's wedding ring, was kept in Chiusi's church dedicated to M. A view of this object is here:
http://www.ktucitywalks.co.uk/277.html
The much rebuilt former abbazia della Santissima Trinità e di Santa Mustiola at Torri, a locality of Sovicille (SI) in Tuscany, is said to be first attested from 1070. Herewith a page of views of its originally thirteenth- to fifteenth-century cloister:
http://tinyurl.com/2ep8ev5
Another view:
http://tinyurl.com/22p45q3
The cloister's Cain-and-Abel capital:
http://tinyurl.com/2fn8ysm
The originally mid-thirteenth-century chiesa della Santissima Concezione in Sticciano, a _frazione_ of Roccastrada (GR) in Tuscany, formerly a castle church, is better known as the pieve di Santa Mustiola (its original dedication?). Some views:
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano01.jpg
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano08.jpg
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano09.jpg
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano12.jpg
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano11.jpg
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano10.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2cjmc3t
http://www.fototoscana.it/gallerie/sticciano01.jpg
3) Severinus of Paris (d. earlier 6th cent.?). In the second edition of his martyrology Usuard records under today the laying to rest at Paris of the hermit monk S. According to the ninth- or tenth-century Vita prima of St. Chlodoaldus/Cloud (BHL 1732), that worthy was tonsured by the contemplative recluse S. in the latter's cell. At Paris, where he was celebrated throughout the Middle Ages on 24. November, his originally eleventh- but now mostly thirteenth- to fifteenth-century church overlies what appears to have been a cemetery from the Merovingian period. Herewith three illustrated, English-language pages on the église Saint-Séverin in Paris' Quartier latin :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-S%C3%A9verin_%28Paris%29
http://www.tapirback.com/photos/places/paris/paris02.htm
http://www.parisbestlodge.com/saintseverinEN.html
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/2fmzkrr
http://blogs.sun.com/alexismp/resource/saint-severin.jpg
http://www.tapirback.com/photos/places/paris/par016.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/25hkzw5
http://tinyurl.com/39kjc9r
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/2fr8l4m
http://tinyurl.com/2v7fnba
http://tinyurl.com/337jo47
http://tinyurl.com/22lzxae
http://tinyurl.com/3a37x66
4) Gregory of Agrigento (d. in or after 603?). We know about an historical G., bishop of the Sicilian city of Agrigento, from half a dozen letters of pope St. Gregory the Great. These tell us only that G. had committed some offense for which he was tried in Rome. G. is the subject of a highly legendary late eighth- or very early ninth-century Bios (BHG 707-707p) by the priest Leontius, "hegumen" (the title is probably an honorific) of the Greek monastery of St. Sabas on the Aventine at Rome; this dates him to the reign of Justinian II (685-695 and 705-711). G. is also the subject of A) a kanon (a lengthy hymn form) by the ninth-century, Sicilian-born St. Joseph the Hymnographer that seems to rely on this Bios and B) a brief hymn by the eleventh-century Stephen of Grottaferrata.
Leontius' Bios has A) a metaphrastic paraphrase attested from the later tenth century but attributed with some probability to St. Nicetas the Paphlagonian (BHG 708), who prior to entering religion in 811 had been imperial governor of Sicily, and B) a drastic abbreviation by an unnamed author who wrote before the twelfth century (BHG 708f). Recorded in Byzantine, Armenian, and Georgian synaxaries on 23. or 24. November, G. is said by Leontius to have written numerous works of popular exegesis. A commentary on Ecclesiastes, first attested in a manuscript of the ninth century and said to be of Eastern origin, was ascribed to G. only from the fourteenth century onward and is very unlikely to be his.
One detail of Leontius' Bios that probably does represent local tradition is its report that G. restored a decayed pre-Christian temple at Agrigento and consecrated it as a Christian church. Someone at Agrigento certainly did this, for one of that city's archaic Greek temples owes its considerable degree of preservation to the fact that it was so converted in late antiquity. Last dedicated to Sts. Peter and
Paul, and popularly known (on the basis of a sixteenth-century conjecture of dubious merit) as the Temple of Concord, it was secularized in 1788 and restored to a semblance of what must have been its ancient appearance (minus the colored paint, roof, other woodwork, metal fittings, fictile revetments, furniture, cult statue, etc., etc.).
Two nocturnal views:
http://www.arnoneeditore.com/images/ag_con.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/22uzdjf
An English-language discussion with several somewhat expandable views is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yfq7tew
An Italian-language discussion, with many expandable views and with an account of what had to be done to convert the building to Christian cult use (essentially the same steps as were taken with the cathedral of Syracuse) is here :
G. as depicted (reduced, black-and-white image) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613):
http://tinyurl.com/2d9hjav
G. (third roundel from bottom) as depicted in this view of eleventh-century frescoes of saints in the Tokalı Kilise (or the Church of the Buckle) at Göreme (Nevşehir province) in Turkey:
http://tinyurl.com/2dyssek
G. as depicted in a late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century fresco, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/25zm8zq
G. as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave in 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/2dr5auj
Deatil (G.):
http://tinyurl.com/22kq4um
5) Columbanus the Younger (d. 616). The Irishman C., styled "the Younger" to distinguish him from his homonym C. of Hy (the founder of major abbeys in Ireland; d. 597), is also known from his major foundations as C. of Luxeuil and C. of Bobbio. He is surely too well known to the learned of this list to require an introduction here. Some of his writings survive but our chief source for him is his mid-seventh-century Vita by Jonas of Bobbio (BHL 1898).
An illustrated, French-language page on the monastère Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul in Luxeuil-les-Bains (Haute-Saône) in Franche-Comté
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monast%C3%A8re_de_Luxeuil
An illustrated, Italian-language page on the abbazia di San Colombano at Bobbio (PC) in Emilia-Romagna:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbazia_di_San_Colombano
C. as depicted in a fifteenth-century fresco in the concattedrale dei Santi Pietro, Lorenzo e Colombano at Brugnato (SP) in Liguria, formerly the church of one of Bobbio's very numerous dependencies:
http://tinyurl.com/278t6no
C.'s fifteenth-century sarcophagus in the crypt of the abbey church of San Colombano at Bobbio:
http://tinyurl.com/34h8faa
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised and with the additions of Mustiola, Severinus of Paris, and Columbanus the Younger)
**********************************************************************
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
