medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
John,
Surely mention should be made (and a connection inferred from the
fact?) that St. Bibiana is patroness of the archdiocese of Los
Angeles and patron saint of drunks (bibiamo!).
GHB
On Dec 2, 2010, at 1:30 PM, John Dillon wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Today (2. December) is the feast day of:
>
> 1) Bibiana (?). B. is a very poorly attested martyr of Rome, first
> recorded in the _Liber Pontificalis_ where we are told that pope St.
> Simplicius (468-83) dedicated a basilica to her near the Licinian
> palace. She has a legendary Passio in differing versions (BHL
> 1322-1323) that makes her a martyr under Julian the Apostate (for
> western saints, a good indicator of fiction). Her basilica was
> rebuilt in the thirteenth century by Honorius III and was reworked,
> largely on the same plan, by Bernini in 1624-26. Herewith a view of
> the interior, showing ancient Roman columns said to have belonged to
> the fifth-century church:
> http://tinyurl.com/24bde9
> Marjorie Greene has another view of some of the ancient columns in
> Santa Bibiana in her medrelart album on this church:
> http://medrelart.shutterfly.com/activityfeed/85
>
>
> 2) Pi(g)menius of Rome (?). P. is a somewhat less poorly attested
> Roman martyr who was attracted into the legend of Bibiana and whose
> entry for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology led to B.'s
> being commemorated on this day in the RM. P. was laid to rest in
> the cemetery of Pontianus on the Via Portuensis. In addition to his
> inclusion in B.'s Passio he has one of his own, BHL 6849-6849a.
>
>
> 3) Chromatius of Aquileia (d. 407 or 408). Bishop of Aquileia from
> 388, C. was a friend both of St. Jerome and of Rufinus of Aquileia.
> He encouraged the latter to undertake his translation of Eusebius'
> _Ecclesiastical History_. A correspondent of Ambrose of Milan, C.
> seems both from his sermons and from buildings dated in part to his
> episcopacy to have been about as active as A. in consecrating
> churches and martyria. One of these was the structure at Aquileia
> now referred to as the basilica di Monastero, parts of whose
> sacristy and of two phases of mosaic flooring survive in the
> structural complex of the present eleventh-/fourteenth-century
> patriarchal basilica. Herewith a few views of the remains of this
> basilica:
> http://www.aquileia.net/images/musei02.jpg
> http://tinyurl.com/ud8ne
> http://tinyurl.com/27bgoh6
>
> The nave of the patriarchal basilica replaced a predecessor whose
> early fourth-century mosaic floor was uncovered a little less than a
> century ago. Measuring some 700 square metres, it is said to be the
> largest early Christian mosaic floor in western Europe. Herewith
> some views of a monument with which C. will certainly have been
> familiar:
> http://tinyurl.com/2cfuus
> http://tinyurl.com/6abevv
> http://tinyurl.com/y67pb6
> http://tinyurl.com/ycvq8a
>
> Italia nell'Arte Medievale has two pages on the patriarchal basilica
> at Aquileia, the second one focussing on the originally ninth-
> century crypt and its earlier twelfth-century frescoes (but, alas,
> the site is again off-line at the moment):
> http://tinyurl.com/ykxqadm
> http://tinyurl.com/yfmj4fg
>
>
> 4) Silverius, pope (d. 537). Like his father, pope St. Hormisdas,
> whose epitaph he wrote (MGH, Antiquitates, 1: _Poetae Latini aevi
> Carolini_, vol. 1, p. 114; _Liber Pontificalis_, ed. Duchesne, vol.
> 1, p. 274), this less well known saint of the Regno hailed from what
> is now Frosinone in southern Lazio. He was a subdeacon when in
> early June 536 king Theodahad compelled the Roman clergy to elect
> him their bishop, succeeding St. Agapitus I, who had died in
> Constantinople. The holders of power in Constantinople (especially,
> it would seem, the empress Theodora) had a candidate of their own
> for that position, the deacon Vigilius who at the time was papal
> aprocrisarius to their court. After Belisarius entered Rome in
> December of that year S.'s position became perilous. Accused of
> having collaborated with the Gothic enemy, he was degraded and
> removed from his post on 11. March 537.
>
> S. was exiled to Patara in Lycia, where the local bishop took it
> upon himself to persuade Justinian that there had been a miscarriage
> of justice. S. was sent back to Rome to face a trial and, if
> convicted, re-assignment to a new see. Instead, Vigilius had him
> exiled to one of the larger Pontine islands (probably today's
> Palmarola but perhaps Ponza itself), where an abdication seems to
> have been extracted from him in November and where his death on this
> day is thought to have been hastened by starvation and neglect. S.
> was buried on the island; his body was never taken elsewhere. (That
> and not his birthplace is what makes S. a saint of the Regno).
> Miracles were reported at his grave, which latter became a
> pilgrimage destination. An eleventh-century calendar from the
> monastery of the BVM on the Aventine grants S. the status of
> martyr. He is the patron saint of Ponza (LT) in southern Lazio.
>
> A dedicatory inscription from a priest Hilarus celebrating S.'s
> safety (recovery from illness?) was discovered in 1962 in Rome's
> basilica of Santa Pudenziana. Here's a view:
> http://tinyurl.com/6jmceu
>
>
> 5) Francus of Francavilla (Bl.; d. early 11th cent., supposedly).
> This less well known holy person of the Regno is a co-patron of
> Francavilla al Mare (CH) in Abruzzo. He belongs to a cult of Sette
> Santi Fratelli ('Seven Holy Little Brothers'; in some accounts they
> are as many as nine) whose individual members are venerated on
> different days in different Abruzzese towns. Brief Italian-language
> accounts of them are here:
> http://www.casoli.info/casoli/prata/prata02.htm
>
> According to the _Croniche ed antichità di Calabria_ of Fra Girolamo
> Marafioti (Padova, 1601), who drew on accounts furnished by
> correspondents in Benevento, F. and his colleagues in the cult were
> Greek-rite monks from Calabria who moved to today's Abruzzo as a
> community under a hegumen called Hilarion and who after the latter's
> death in the pontificate of Eugenius IV (1431-47) became hermits in
> separate locations along the great chain of central Appennine peaks
> now known as the Maiella. But at least some were venerated earlier
> than this.
>
> Twentieth-century scholars resolved the difficulty by positing that
> Marafioti had confused Eugenius IV with the earlier Sergius IV
> (1009-1012) and by then hypothesizing that F. and his colleagues had
> come from Greek-rite monasteries in Calabria that had been abandoned
> in later tenth century in consequence of Muslim raids. Were there
> any earlier documentation for the belief that F. et al. were Greeks
> from the south, this view would be more plausible. The chances are
> excellent that these are local saints whom subsequent community
> memory first adapted to the paradigm of hermits of the Maiella (of
> whom there were a great many) and later to the well-known paradigm
> of The Saint Who Has Come to Us from Afar. Their cult (confirmed
> papally in 1893) was promoted by Franciscans of Abruzzo who honored
> them as their predecessors in this region. F. has yet to grace the
> pages of the RM.
>
>
> 6) Oderisius I, abbot of Montecassino (Bl.; d. 1105). The name of
> this less well known holy person from the Regno is sometimes given
> as Odorisius. A scion of the counts of the Marsi, he was educated
> at Montecassino under abbot Richerius. Two of O.'s brothers were
> Atto, bishop of Chieti and Transmundus, abbot of San Clemente a
> Casauria and bishop of Valva. In 1059 pope Nicholas II made him a
> cardinal; for close to thirty years O. served the papacy in Rome.
> In 1087 O. was back at Montecassino as prior and in September of
> that year he was elected abbot to replace Desiderius II (who was now
> pope as Victor III).
>
> Known to historians for his correspondence with the emperor Alexius
> I Comnenus in support of the First Crusade, O. continued Desiderius'
> work in bringing the abbey to a state of proper splendor and
> usefulness. In particular, O. was responsible for a major expansion
> of the abbey's library and promoted the work of its scriptorium,
> many of whose products are described in Francis Newton's monumental
> study, _The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino, 1058-1105_
> (Cambridge University Press, 1999). O. has yet to grace the pages
> of the RM.
>
>
> 6) John of Ruusbroec (Bl.; d. 1381). Rather little is known about
> the life of the Flemish mystic J. His town of origin is today's
> Ruisbroek near Brussels, whose older spelling Ruusbroec (in English,
> sometimes also Ruysbroeck) is often used in his nomenclature to
> differentiate him from the fifteenth-century architect generally
> known as Jan van Ruisbroek. Raised by his mother (there is some
> suspicion that he may have been illegitimate), in order to attain a
> more than rudimentary education he was sent at the age of eleven to
> Brussels and lived there with a wealthy relative who for some thirty
> years would serve him as a surrogate parent. J.'s mother later
> moved to Brussels too, where she became a beguine and was separated
> from her son.
>
> The relative was a chaplain at the collegiate church of St. Gudula
> in Brussels and it was at the chapter school there that he was
> educated for the church. He was ordained priest in 1318 and in time
> became a choral vicar at St. Gudula and later a chaplain there. In
> 1343 he, a friend, and his surrogate father founded a monastic
> community at Groenendael in today's West-Vlaanderen that in 1350
> became a house of canon regular with J. as its prior. J. held this
> post until his death.
>
> During his very long life J. wrote at least eleven spiritual
> treatises in Middle Dutch, of which his _Die geestelike brulocht_
> (in English, _The Spiritual Espousals_) is considered his
> masterwork. Once translated into Latin, these and seven of his
> letters formed the basis of his European reputation. The latter
> suffered a serious setback when they were condemned by Jean Gerson,
> the chancellor of the university of Paris, who had been asked to
> review them in 1399. But J.'s esteem remained strong at
> Groenendael, whose earlier fifteenth-century institutional history
> by Henricus Pomerius drew on both the local archive and a now lost
> early Vita to create a picture of him that is our chief biographical
> source for him. Late in their lives J. had been in contact with
> Geert Grote, the founder of the Devotio Moderna movement in the
> northern Netherlands; there too his writings found a warm and
> continued reception.
>
> J. was beatified by St. Pius X in 1908. He entered the RM in its
> revision of 2001.
>
> Some views, etc. of Brussels' mostly thirteenth- to fifteenth-
> century now cathedral church of St. Michael and St. Gudula (over an
> eleventh-century crypt):
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathedraal_van_Sint-Michiel_en_Sint-Goedele
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael_and_Gudula_Cathedral
> http://www.trabel.com/brussel/brussels-ch-churchstmichael.htm
> http://tinyurl.com/7rfy3r
> A ground plan and a brief architectural history are here:
> http://tinyurl.com/9gyyg5
> A multi-page, illustrated, English-language guide to the crypt
> begins here:
> http://tinyurl.com/8gub96
> Four virtual tours of the building (not including the crypt) are
> available here:
> http://bruxelles.arounder.com/cathedral/
> This expandable view of a later fifteenth-century painting, by the
> Master of the View of Saint Gudula, of the Preaching of St.
> Gaugeric, shows one of the church's towers not yet completed:
> http://www.worldvisitguide.com/oeuvre/O0018284.html
> Rosemary Hayes has some photos of this church on the second page of
> her Brussels album on Shutterfly:
> http://hayesmilligan.shutterfly.com/22
>
> A reduced reproduction of an engraving of the abbey of Groenendael
> from 1560 (NB: the transcription of the caption at top center leaves
> something to be desired):
> http://tinyurl.com/27ueoqc
>
> For readers of English, a recent book of note on J. is Geert Warnar,
> _Ruusbroec: Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century_, tr.
> Diane Webb (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
>
> Best,
> John Dillon
> (last year's post lightly revised and with the addition of John of
> Ruusbroec)
>
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Prof. Em. George Hardin Brown, FMAA, FSA
Department of English, 450 Serra Mall
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2087
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