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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today (27. December) is also the feast day of: 1) Fabiola (d. 399). We know about the Roman matron F. from St. Jerome's _Epistulae_, where 3. 77 is his commemoration of her, written in the year 400, and 3. 78, on the twelve tribes of Israel in the desert, honors her in retrospect. The very wealthy F. was a member of one of the most ancient patrician lineages in Rome, the _gens Fabia_. Her husband by her first marriage was repeatedly unfaithful; she divorced him and, contrary to church teaching, remarried while her first husband was yet alive. After her second husband had died F. appeared publicly as a penitent at the Lateran Basilica on the day preceding Easter. Received into the church, she devoted herself to works of charity, establishing a hospital and personally tending the sick. A few years before her death F. moved to Bethlehem, where she supported Jerome and studied Holy Writ. What appears to have been the Hunnic invasion of Italy in 395 caused her to return to the Eternal City, where she joined forces with St. Pammachius in operating a great hospice at Portus. F. continued to live ascetically, maintained a correspondence with Jerome (who also ascribed her return to a distaste for aspects of the controversy between himself and bishop John II of Jerusalem), and continued to serve the poor and the ill until her death on this day. Thus far Jerome. F. is said to appear in martyrologies from the fifteenth century onward. She entered the RM in its revision of 2001, seemingly as a replacement for St. Nicarete (no. 2, below). Annotated texts of Jerome, _Epistulae_, 3. 77 and 78 are here: http://tinyurl.com/22u2oj8 http://tinyurl.com/28cp4y3 2) Nicarete (d. earlier 5th cent.). Like her contemporary Fabiola (no. 1, above), N. (also Niceras) was a wealthy, pious, and charitable matron of the later Roman empire. In her case, though, the family to which she belonged resided at Nicomedia, the capital in which she operated was Constantinople, she was a virgin, and the controversial churchman whom she followed was St. John Chrysostom. We know about N. from Sozomen's _Historia ecclesiastica_, 8. 23 (written a few decades after her approximate date of death). A skilled herbalist, she cured Chrysostom of a stomach ailment and often obtained positive results that had eluded trained physicians. Though much of her property was confiscated by the state following the riots caused by Chrysostom's expulsion in 403, she continued nonetheless to maintain a large household and to give generously to the poor. N. withdrew from Constantinople in 404 to avoid persecution after Chrysostom's exile. Thus far Sozomen. Palladius' immediately posthumous _Dialogue_ on Chrysostom's life (BHG 780) names several of Chryostom's female associates in this time of crisis but is silent with regard to N. N. appears not to have had a medieval cult. She entered the RM under cardinal Baronio, who assigned her to this day, and left it in the revision of 2001. She is commemorated today by the Église Orthodoxe de France. 3) Theodore "Graptos" (d. ca. 841) and Theophanes "Graptos" (d. 845). We know about these Palestinian brothers, victims of Byzantine second iconoclasm, chiefly from Theodore's immediately posthumous Encomium by Theophanes of Caesarea in Cappadocia (BHG 1745z), from the Bios of St. Michael the Syncellus by a monk of the Chora monastery at Constantinople (BHG 1296), and from Symeon Metaphrastes' tenth-century Bios of Theodore (BHG 1746). Monks of the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem, they traveled with Michael to Constantinople in around 813. Emperor Leo V (813-820) tried unsuccessfully to use them as envoys to the patriarch of Jerusalem on behalf of Leo's iconoclast policies; when they refused he had them imprisoned. Freed in the wake of Leo's assassination, they remained in Constantinople. During the renewed iconoclasm under emperor Theophilus (829-842) the brothers were confined on the island of Aphousia in the Sea of Marmara. They are said to have been brought back to Constantinople and there to have suffered punishment by branding on their faces the identical twelve-line iambic inscription (hence their by-name Graptos, "the Written" [in respect of T. and T., frequently rendered as "the Branded"). Tattooing letters on the face was a traditional punishment in empire. Recent scholarly opinion is divided on whether T. and T. actually underwent such disfigurement (the sources have a very pronounced iconophile bias) and, if so, whether our text of the twelve lines is authentic. After this, the brothers are said to have been banished to the Apamea in Bithynia. Theodore died during Theophilus' reign. Theophanes, who was both a priest and an accomplished hymnographer (whence he is sometimes called T. the Hymnographer, T. the Poet, or T. the Melode), survived and in 843 was made metropolitan of Nicaea (whence he is also known as T. of Nicaea) by the iconophile patriarch St. Methodius I. A modern translation of Theophanes' canon on Mary Magdalen: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ephrem/22julcan.htm A few visuals: a) Theophanes as seen in a detail of his full-length portrait (in mural of several hymnographers flanking Theodore the Stoudite) in the later twelfth-century (ca. 1164) frescoes in the north chapel of the church of St. Panteleimon (Pantaleon) at Nerezi Lartëm (Skopje) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: http://tinyurl.com/29pjby2 The composition as a whole: http://tinyurl.com/2545uda b) Theophanes as depicted in the late twelfth-century frescoes (1192; cleaned and restored, late 1960s and early 1970s) in the Panagia tou Arakou at Lagoudera in Cyprus: http://tinyurl.com/34zx4xc c) Theodore as depicted in the originally early thirteenth-century frescoes (1208 or 1209; repainted in 1569) in the nave of the church of the Theotokos in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/23jnzh5 d) Theophanes as depicted in the originally early thirteenth-century frescoes (1208 or 1209; repainted in 1569) in the nave of the church of the Theotokos in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/26r9s2s http://tinyurl.com/39w e) Theophanes as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. 1315 and 1321) on a pendentive of the dome in the parecclesion of the Chora Church (Kariye Camii), Istanbul, starting with a relatively clear, black-and-white view: http://tinyurl.com/28fe4vd A rather less clear view in color: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75404268@N00/3175406867/ f) Theodore as depicted in a damaged (saline deposits?) earlier fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1314 or betw. 1328 and 1334) in the church of the Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki: http://tinyurl.com/2aecajk g) Theophanes (at right; at left, St. Philip the Apostle) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija: http://tinyurl.com/yf8z62u Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** 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