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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today, February 23, is the feast day of: Serenus/Cerneuf the Gardener (d. c307) The Greek Serenus took to an ascetic life, raising vegetables in his garden to feed himself and visitors. When persecution broke out, he was at first ignored. But then, says legend, the wife of one of the imperial guardsmen fell in lust with S. and he rejected her (Or she trampled his garden and he chased her away from it.) She complained that he had insulted her. The husband complained to the governor. Serenus was acquitted of the charge but in the course of examination it was discovered that he was a Christian so he was beheaded. Alexander Akimetes (d. 430) Alexander was a Greek army officer who sold his goods and became a monk. He proved to be a zealot, and was imprisoned after he set fire to a pagan temple. When released, Alexander went to the desert, where he converted a band of robbers and assembled them into a monastery. Then Alexander went on and established a monastery on the Euphrates. Still not willing to settle down, though, he then formed a traveling monastery, starting with 150 monks (later 300) he wandered from place to place. He seems to have founded a system of round-the-clock monastic worship, the monks working in shifts. Montanus of Toledo (d. c530) The Spanish Montanus was born c450, and in 522 became archbishop of Toledo. He convened two of the famous councils of Toledo, and was an active opponent of heresy. Mildburga/Mildburg/Milburg (d c715) A daughter of King Merewald of Mercia and of his queen, St. Ermenburga, a princess of the royal family of Kent, she was sister to St. Mildrith (Mildreda), abbess of Minster-in-Thanet and St Mildgytha. In the 670s or 680s she became second abbess of the double monastery founded by her father at today's Much Wenlock in central Shropshire. The charters show Mildburga acquiring other estates for the monastery. She was credited with miraculous healing powers and a life of conspicuous sanctity as well as the gift of levitation and an inexplicable power over birds. Her tomb was an important cult center until Vikings destroyed the convent; in 1101 the cult was revived when some boys in the eleventh century were playing in a field when they began to sink into the ground; nearby Cluniac monks then dug at that spot and found her tomb, expanding their foundation to include it. Her relics worked impressive miracles, including healing lepers and the blind, and making one poor sufferer vomit out an incredibly long worm that had caused a wasting sickness. We know about Mildburga chiefly from the so-called Kentish Royal Legend (Ţá hálgan; between 725 and 974) and other Old English texts of the Mildrith Legend and from the perhaps authentic charters preserved in the "Testament of St Mildburg" preserved in her later eleventh-century Vita (BHL 5959) attributed to Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. St. Boniface's Epistle 10 (dated to 716), which recounts the visions of the Monk of Wenlock, calls the abbey there the monasterium Milburge abbatiss(a)e. This formulation has been taken to indicate that Mildburga was still alive at or close to the time of the letter's composition. When Mildburga's cult began is uncertain. She is already a saint in the Kentish Royal Legend and her resting place at Wenlock is listed in the eleventh-century Old English resting-place list Secgan be pam Godes sanctum pe on Engla lande terost reston. The abbey at Wenlock was re-founded as a Cluniac priory in the later eleventh century and in 1101 remains believed to be those of M. were miraculously discovered in Wenlock's then ruinous church of the Holy Trinity (the predecessor of the present one), whence they were translated to the nearby priory church. Lazarus Zographus (d. c. 867) The Armenian Lazarus became a monk in Constantinople, famed as a painter (his nickname means "the painter") who restored defaced icons in the reign of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus. Legend says that he was tortured for this. But he survived and with the failure of the iconoclast movement was restored and even sent as an ambassador to Rome, where he died. Peter Damian (d. 1072) Peter was a native of Ravenna, cared for in his youth by an older brother, Damian, who sponsored his education and whose name Peter took in recognition of this service. After studying grammar and rhetoric and teaching for a time, he became a Camaldolese monk at Fonte Avellana in 1035. There he became abbot, founded other monasteries, lived an ascetic life, gave simonists a hard time, and started his extensive career of letters, treatises, and sermons. PD worked to suppress local liturgies, organized the Camaldolese order, reacted against secular learning (grammar, by the way, is the work of the devil), advocated a desert spirituality, etc. He was a crusader against homosexuality. In 1057 he was forced to become cardinal bishop of Ostia (his letters begging to be relieved of the office are very sad) and spent the rest of his life as a prominent member of the papal reform movement, despite his periodic attempts to return to the monastery, where he would relax by carving wooden spoons. As a papal advisor he undertook numerous legations in Italy. He died at Faenza while returning to Rome from one such mission to Ravenna. He was declared a doctor of the church in 1828. His feast was celebrated on February 23 (his birthday) until just recently and is now marked for February 21. John Theristes (11th century) John was an Italo-Greek whose family lived at Cursano, a town near Stilo in the Locride, the strip of territory running along Calabria's southernmost Ionian coast. Muslim raiders killed many of the town's inhabitants (including its head official, his father) and enslaved his mother, who was already pregnant with him. Born in Sicily and secretly brought up as a Christian, John managed at age 14 to return to Calabria, where he became a monk and worked various miracles. The latter included bringing in by himself a large harvest before a suddenly arising thunderstorm could spoil it. Hence his appellation 'Theristes' (or 'Theristis'), signifying 'Harvester'. The monastery that he founded at today's Bivongi (RC) was after his death named in his honor and perpetuated his cult. John's Bios survives in two versions (BHG 894, 894a) elaborating a now lost predecessor reflected in eleventh-century canons (long hymns) in his honour by Leo of Stilo and by Bartholomew of Rome. In its present forms it is variously thought to have been written either in the twelfth century or in 1217/18 and to have been rewritten not long after the latter date, probably to document some possessions of John's monastery when the latter was re-chartered under Frederick II. Two early modern Latin translations, both rather free (but the one in the Acta Sanctorum is considerably more so), underlie many modern accounts of John. In the Latin church, John's feast day used to be February 24. The latest revision of the RM lists him (without the appellation 'Theristes') for today, his traditional date in Greek churches. At the monastery at Bivongi, overseen since February 1995 by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy, his feast day continues to be the 24th. This may also be where he is on the calendar of the Roman Catholic diocese of Locri-Gerace. happy reading, Terri -- "It's not the verbing that weirds the language -- it's the renounification." - Mahk Leblanc [log in to unmask] ********************************************************************** 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