 |
 |
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today, March 2, is the feast day of: Troadius (d. 250 or 251) According to St. Gregory of Nyssa's Bios of St. Gregory the Thaumaturge (Gregory of Neocaesarea), when during the Decian persecution that saint was in hiding at some distance from Neocaesarea in Pontus, he announced one day that a young Christian of noble birth named Troadius had been arrested in that city, brought before the governor, condemned to death, and executed. This astounded Gregory's audience. A deacon then went into Neocaesarea and returned bearing confirmation of Gregory's revelation. Thus far Gregory of Nyssa. Byzantine synaxaries record Troadius under today's date as a martyr under Decius but do not specify his city. Quintus the Thaumaturge/the Confessor/of Phrygia (d. c283) Our sources for Quintus are at least partly legendary Byzantine synaxary accounts, one of which (BHG 2377) is in the so-called Menologion of Basil II. Born in Phrygia of Christian parents, he is said to have migrated to Aeolis and there to have devoted himself to serving the poor. At (Aeolic) Cyme the Roman governor tried to make him sacrifice to the idols but stopped, either because Quintus through his prayers had cured him of demonic possession or because an earthquake destroyed the temple and its statues. Not long afterward, another magistrate had Quintus arrested and tortured. He too gave up when Quintus was instantly healed of his injuries. Thus enabled to continue his ministry, Quintus died in peace a few years later. His suffering is said to have occurred in the reign of Aurelian (270-75). The synaxaries record Quintus today and on July 2. In the menaea his feast occurs in early May. Quintus has yet to grace the pages of the RM. He is commemorated today in some but by no means all Orthodox churches. Ceadda / Chad (d. 672?) The youngest of four brothers; Cedd, Cynebil, and Celin, all of whom were eminent priests, Chad was a disciple of St. Aidan at Lindisfarne. After studying in Ireland he returned to his native Northumbria, where he assisted his brother St. Cedd in the latter's foundation of the monastery of Lastingham and succeeded him as abbot in 664. In the same year he was consecrated bishop of Northumbria in place of the absent St. Wilfrid (who had been chosen but had ambled off to Francia and was taking his time coming back). Two of the bishops who consecrated him were not in communion with Rome. When in 669 St. Theodore of Tarsus and of Canterbury arrived from Rome, he ordered Chad to resign so Wilfrid could be instated. Chad did so but soon was appointed by Theodore as bishop of the Mercians, establishing himself at Lichfield. He died in the great plague. Chad was noted for his humility and his piety. When in about 700 Lichfield's cathedral of St. Peter was first built, his remains were brought to it. Bede describes his shrine, and the habit of mixing dust from Chad's tomb with water, to be drunk by ailing humans and beasts. There they stayed until the reign of Henry VIII, when his shrine was destroyed and his relics were dispersed. In 2003, excavations beneath Lichfield Cathedral revealed remains of its early eighth-century predecessor, including a sunken chamber thought to have been the site of Chad's first shrine. Recovered were three fragments of a carved limestone panel depicting an angel, some of whose red polychromy was still visible. According to Rosemary Cramp, the panel had been part of a casket: http://tinyurl.com/24zwb4 . See also: http://www.lichfield-cathedral.org/angel.htm Charles the Good (blessed) (d. 1127) Charles of Flanders seems to have been a rather nice count. The son of St. Canute of Denmark, after his father was killed in 1086, the infant Charles went with his Flemish mother Adela of Flanders to the Flemish court, and in 1119 became count of Flanders. He was personally devout and fed the poor in a famine and was very generous in other alms. His was murdered in his castle church of St. Donatien in Bruges while he was 1) hearing mass, 2) praying, and 3) passing out alms with both hands (if the chief chronicler of the event, Galbert of Bruges, can be believed) and was proclaimed a martyr who had been slain while performing a religious duty. He seems to have been a strong and reasonably pious ruler, polished off by a clan of ministeriales he threatened to return to servile status. He enjoys a cult that was confirmed papally at the level of Beatus by Leo XIII in 1882. Charles' murder as depicted in a (c1375-1380) copy of the Grandes chroniques de France (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 2813, fol. 206v): http://tinyurl.com/yfnq6ou , http://tinyurl.com/yk85g83 Luke Casalius/Luca Casali (d. earlier 12th century?) is yet another Luke venerated in Sicily, this time at two towns in today's Enna province, Nicosia and Agira. Today's Luke has a Vita (BHL 4979) redacted from now lost manuscripts at Nicosia by Ottavio Gaetani SJ (d. 1620). This account tells us that Luke was born at Nicosia and that he was educated in early childhood by the praefectus (head) of the monastery of St. Philip at Agira who was then staying in a Nicosia suburb. When Luke was ten, this person brought him to the monastery, where he became a monk and later was ordained priest. Having exhibited all sorts of exemplary behavior, Luke in time was elected praefectus but declined, only to relent when his monks got the pope to persuade him to accept. His conduct in office was praiseworthy, though he went blind while administering his charge. Luke's blindness led to a miracle. On the way back to Agira from a visit to his family in Nicosia the monks who were his companions convinced him that a crowd of townspeople was following in the hope of hearing a sermon. Luke obligingly preached to a landscape devoid of people (other than the saint and his companions), whereupon the rocks that lay about the place responded with a chorus of 'Amen', thus proving his sanctity to the astonished tricksters. Luke died at the monastery in Agira and was buried there; upon the urging of the people of Agira, the pope entered him in the number of the saints. The people of Nicosia, wishing to honor one of their own, dedicated a church to him on the spot where the rocks had responded to his preaching. Thus far his Vita. Luke's cult blossomed in 1575, when he freed Nicosia from a plague (presumably the same one from whose ravages Corleone was spared that year through the intercession of St. Leo Luke). Nicosia made him its patron and celebrated his feast at public expense. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Luke's presumed remains, along with those of Philip of Agira and of other saints, were discovered in a hidden resting place in the abbey. With the exception of a relic granted to Nicosia, they remain there today. Agira's originally twelfth-century church of the Most Holy Savior (Santissimo Salvatore) houses a mitre and the head of a pastoral staff traditionally believed to have been Luke's. Shown in the last illustration on this page: http://digilander.libero.it/agira1/s_s_salvatore.htm , they are probably those of a fourteenth-century abbot. In what seems to have been Luke’s time this house was a priory of St. Mary of the Latins (Santa Maria Latina) in Jerusalem. In the later twelfth century it became the center of that abbey's operations and from that time forward its heads were styled abbot. Fulk of Neuilly (blessed (d. 1201) The subject of an unconfirmed cult, Fulk was a priest in Neuilly-sur-Marne near Paris who won fame for his penitential sermons. Innocent III commissioned him to preach the 4th Crusade, but he died before it began. He was known for his lack of asceticism (in fact, one chronicler notes that he would eat any food set before him). Henry Suso (d. 1366) Henry Suso was a German noble who joined the Dominican order at a young age. He studied with Meister Eckhart and became one of the great spiritual writers of the later Middle Ages. Henry was the author of the familiar carol "In dulci jubilo" which was dictated to him by angels, who also invited him to dance to it - the carol being, of course, a dance form in origin, as the angels well knew. happy reading, Terri Morgan -- "Nobility depends not on parentage or place of birth, but on breadth of compassion and depth of loving kindness. If we would be noble, let us be greathearted." - anon. [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