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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today, May 12, is the feast of: Flavia Domitilla, Euphrosyna, and Theodora (d. c100) Flavia was a great-niece of emperors Titus and Domitian. She was exiled as a Christian. She may also have been martyred with two foster-sisters. Then again, there may be two martyrs of the same name. Her cult was deemed too confusing, and suppressed in 1969. Nereus and Achilleus (?) are Roman martyrs of the Via Ardeatina, where they had a tomb in the cemetery of Domitilla. The tradition recorded by pope St. Damasus in the latter half of the fourth century is that Nereus and Achilleus were Praetorian Guards who converted to Christianity and refused to bear arms. They tried to leave the army but were captured and beheaded, supposedly in the reign of Trajan. A rather different legend tells that they were eunuchs in the service of Flavia Domitilla; they were exiled with her and later beheaded. Pope Damasus made some improvements at their grave and set up there his verse epitaph for them (fragments of which have now been recovered). Damasus' successor pope St. Siricius (384-99) erected a subterranean basilica at the site that also encompassed the nearby grave of St. Petronilla. This church, featured in the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome, became a stational church under pope Gregory III (731-41). Later damaged by an earthquake (probably in 897), it was visited occasionally in the early modern period and was excavated and identified by G. B. De Rossi in 1873-75. Eusebius the historian says: - "In the fifteenth year of Domitian, for professing Christ, Flavia Domitilla, the niece of Flavius Clemens, one of the consuls of Rome at that time, was transported with many others, by way of punishment, to the island of Pontia." Nereus and Achilles are in the Acts said to have been two eunuchs. They were beheaded at Terracina, if we may so far trust these Acts. Flavia Domitilla is also said to have been burnt alive. The martyrdom of Nereus and Achilleus (at right) in a copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fol. 358v): http://tinyurl.com/26byca6 Pancras of Rome (d. c304, supposedly) is a Roman martyr of the Via Aurelia. Pope St. Symmachus (498-514) erected a basilica over his grave in the cemetery of Octavilla. This was rebuilt by pope Honorius I (625-38), who added a confessio and placed the altar directly over Pancras' tomb. In the sixth or early seventh century Pancras received a legendary Passio that made him a wealthy orphan from Phrygia born in the time of Valerian and Gallienus (254-60) and brought to Rome by his uncle and, at the age of fourteen, martyred by beheading under Diocletian (r. 284-305; started his persecution in 303). The corpse was left for the dogs to eat, but a Christian woman secretly buried it in the nearby catacombs. Gregory of Tours tells us that Pancras was considered especially vigilant in punishing those who had broken their word and that oaths were therefore often taken at his tomb. His basilica is included in the seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome; it was rebuilt in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and again in the seventeenth century. Pancras' cult spread widely across Europe. Probably because he has the same feast day as Nereus and Achilleus, he too came to be considered a military saint. There are numerous castle chapel dedications to him from the twelfth century onward. In the later Middle Ages he was one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Augustine dedicated in his honour the first church he erected in Canterbury. Fifty years later Pope St Vitalian sent to Oswy, king of Northumberland, a portion of the martyr's relics, the distribution of which seems to have propagated his cult in England. Relics of Pancras that ended up at Waltham could well be those in the portable shrine Harold is depicted as swearing on in the Bayeux Tapestry. This was part of a full and illuminating expose of the cult of the Roman Pancras (as opposed to the Sicilian one) in Britain. Pancras is at left in this set of drawings from the thirteenth-century windows of the west choir in the cathedral of Naumburg in Sachsen-Anhalt: http://www.brandenburg1260.de/glasfenster1.jpg Pancras' martyrdom as depicted in a copy (1326-1350) of a French-language collection of saint's lives (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 232r): http://tinyurl.com/23vzhva Pancras’ martyrdom as depicted in a copy (1348) of the Legenda aurea in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 134r): http://tinyurl.com/2ae5qmy Pancras, in a portrait emphasizing his wealth and his youth, at center in the Triptych of Saint Pancrace (c1515) at the paroissiale Saint-Dalmas-le-Selvage (Alpes-Maritimes): http://tinyurl.com/2sg3vc Although Pancras is entered separately from Nereus nd Achilleus in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and some early medieval liturgical books (as well as in today's RM), they were often commemorated jointly. Here's a page from a twelfth-century French gradual (the Graduel de Bellelay) with an Alleluia for all three: http://bellelay.enc.sorbonne.fr/feuillet309.php And here's the same passage, with an illumination of Nereus, Achilleus, and Pancras, in a North Italian missal, c1370 (Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 0136, fol. 240r): http://tinyurl.com/2v92b5 A page from a late twelfth-century liturgical calendar, probably (as John Briggs pointed out in 2007) from Chertsey Abbey, with an entry for the three made on the wrong day, lined out in red, and replaced just below with a new entry at the proper date: http://tinyurl.com/25pw6m . More on this ms.: http://tinyurl.com/2dz6g5 A view of the page for May, listing N., A., and P., in the painted liturgical calendar in the presbytery of the thirteenth-century oratory of San Pellegrino at Bominaco, a locality of Caporciano in Abruzzo (the so-called Calendario Valvense): http://tinyurl.com/o8pgh6 Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) The theologian, monastic founder, and bishop Epiphanius was born in the vicinity of Eleutheropolis in Judea. Epiphanius was converted from Judaism and became a monk in the Palestinian desert. He built and served as abbot of a monastery at Eleutheropolis for 30 years, but in 367 was appointed bishop of Constantia (as Salamis in Cyprus was then called), holding that office for a further 36 years. He was also the metropolitan of Cyprus. He was famous for his scholarship, ascetic practices, and spiritual wisdom, and actively involved in disputes over the date of Easter, some schisms, and Origenism. A learned and committed defender of Nicene orthodoxy and a foe of remnant paganism on Cyprus, Epiphanius was also an early opponent of the public use of sacred images (icons). He was virulently opposed to heresy, and his handbook of heresies was famous. He died while returning in disgust from Constantinople, where he realized he was being engineered into condemning John Chrysostom. Jerome described him as 'a last relic of ancient piety'. We know about him from his own writings, from those of other ecclesiastics with whom he was in contact, and from a Bios by his disciple John (BHG 596). Epiphanius as depicted in a mid-eleventh-century mosaic in the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv (Kiev): http://tinyurl.com/2a3zmur Epiphanius as depicted in the frescoes (c1313-c1320) in the eastern arch of the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/37nntde Epiphanius as depicted in the frescoes (between c1312 and 1321/1322) in the parecclesion of the Most Holy Theotokos in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo: http://tinyurl.com/2bto7ta Epiphanius as depicted in the frescoes (1335-1350) in the prothesis of the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of recent events, the Republic of 2Kosovo or Serbia's Kosovo province of Kosovo and Metohija: http://tinyurl.com/25jzjtk Modoaldus (d. 640) An aristocratic Aquitainian, Modoaldus was a courtier at the Frankish court before being appointed bishop of Trier. He became Dagobert I's spiritual advisor. One of the few facts that we have about Modoaldus is that he attended the Council of Reims in 625. Rictrudis/Rictrudis/Richrudis (d. 688) Our chief source for Rictrude is her Vita written in 907 by the learned Hucbald of St.-Amand. According to this text, which combines the traditions of her abbey at today's Marchiennes (Nord) with contextual matter and spiritually incidents derived from other sources, she was a pious, high-status woman of Novempopulana (roughly today's Gascony) who married a leading Frankish noble of Neustria, St. Adalbald, at a time when he was in the service of Dagobert I of Austrasia, who lived with him happily for sixteen years until he was murdered by some of her relatives, and whose spiritual advisor was St. Amandus of Maastricht. After she was widowed she entered the abbey at Marchiennes together with her three young daughters (all of whom are saints) and ruled it for 40 years until her death, when her daughter St. Clotsind succeeded her. Her cult is first attested from the tenth century. Hucbald's Vita Rictrudis also gives her a son who became a priest and later headed a monastery, the sainted Maurontus. Her cult, which followed the fortunes of her abbey, is attested by dedications of churches throughout Flanders and Hainaut. Relics believed to be hers are preserved in the originally twelfth-/sixteenth-century church dedicated to her at Ronchin (Nord) in France. Philip of Agira/-the Syrian/-of Thrace/-of Constantinople (7th century?) was a Greek monk who settled in Argyrium near the headwaters of the Salso in east-central Sicily in today's Enna province. There he became the eponymous founder of one of the principal monasteries of Byzantine Sicily prior to the Muslim conquest, St. Philip of Agira or, in Italian, San Filippo d'Agira. He has a probably later ninth-century Life attributed to one Eusebius, supposedly his companion on his first century CE trip from the East to Rome and thence as an evangelist to Sicily but in reality the work of an unknown monk of San Filippo d'Agira who, perhaps drawing on already existing tradition, composed this legend. The latter makes Philip both an evangelist and a thaumaturge: his compelling the demons of Etna to roll in flight down the mountain as so many rocks is a particularly nice touch. The Eusebian Life gave rise to a closely contemporary canon (long hymn) in Philip's honor and from this or from the Eusebian Life (or from both) in turn comes the late medieval but also Greek pseudo-Athanasian Life of Philip, seemingly written at and for the Basilian house of San Filippo Grande near Messina. There are also a number of smaller liturgical compositions, also medieval, in his honor. Philip was once thought to have actually lived in the fifth century. This view is discounted by scholars who prefer a dating during the late sixth- and seventh-century partial rehellenization of Sicily but is still quite prevalent in popular accounts. His cult is widespread in central and northeastern Sicily and has been transported elsewhere around the world by emigrants from these places. Germanus I, patriarch of Constantinople (d. after 17 January 730) The well educated and talented nobleman Germanus has a legendary, probably eleventh-century Bios that underlies many accounts of him. He became patriarch in 715 and was forced into exile in 730 because of his opposition to the emperor Leo III's policy of iconoclasm. At the opening of the year 730 Leo [the iconoclastic emperor] held a council of those who favoured his views, and endeavoured to force the patriarch to subscribe its decree against the use of images and pictures, but he preferred to resign his dignity, and removing his pall, he turned to the emperor, and said, "Sire, I may not innovate, nor make an alteration without the authority of an Œcumenical Council." And he retired to the patriarchal palace. The emperor sent officers to expel him, and the old man, then aged eighty, was driven forth with blows and insults. He retured to his paternal mansion having occupied the see fourteen years, five months and three days. In his home he lived as a monk, and died peacefully about the year 732. His surviving sermons show considerable literary artistry. His relics are said to have been removed to France when Constantinople was under Latin rule in the thirteenth century. But in 1348 Anthony of Novgorod was shown (a reliquary of) his hand, which latter he says was used to consecrate the city's patriarchs. Germanus as depicted (roundel with red background) in the (1330s) frescoes of the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija: http://tinyurl.com/23b9gdq Ethelhard (d. 805) enjoyed a formal cult for quite a short time; he was one of the victim's of Lanfranc's cleanup of the English calendar in the late eleventh century. He was abbot of Louth (Lincolnshire), and archbishop of Canterbury from 793 on. He oversaw Canterbury's restoration to metropolitan status (after Kent escaped Mercian overlordship), and played an important role in restoring Canterbury's prestige. Fremund (d. 866) Fremund had the royal blood of both Mercia and East Anglia in his veins. So, although he became a hermit, he was still a threat to his apostate kinsman Oswy, who sikked the Danes on poor Fremund. Although he may have been purely fictional, both Dunstable and Cropredy claimed his relics in the later Middle Ages. Dominic of the Causeway/Domingo de la Calzada (d. 1109) Dominic, according to his vita, was a Basque shepherd who was rejected when he tried to become a monk because he was too ignorant and deformed. So he became a hermit. He gathered disciples, and they built a bridge and hospice for pilgrims to Compostela. A church was built after Domingo's death on the site of his hermitage, which in time became the center of the diocese Calahorra-Sto.-Domingo de la Calzada. Francesco Patrizi (d. 1328) (blessed) Francesco was from Siena. In c. 1288 he entered the Servite order. His greatest gift was his ability to reconcile enemies. He had a wonderful gift for preaching moving sermons with little or no preparation. He foresaw that he would die on the feast of the Ascension, 1328, but he went out to preach anyway because he had been invited to do so. He died on his way to the pulpit. He was beatified in 1743. Imelda Lambertini (blessed) (d. 1333) Little Imelda was the daughter of the count of Bologna. She was very pious, and at the age of nine she went to live at a Dominican convent, where she seems to have spent all her time longing for her first communion. She begged and begged and begged, and finally when she was eleven a glowing chalice in the air above her head convinced the convent priest to give in. So she had communion – and immediately died. She's now the patron saint of first communicants. Gemma of Sulmona, shepherdess and recluse, (1429) was born in Sulmona - the birth place of Ovid. Her parents were peasants and encouraged their precocious daughter's piety. They charged her with minding the sheep, an occupation which gave her ample leisure for prayer and contemplation. For 42 years she lived in a cell attached to the church of St John in Sulmona. Her cult was approved in 1890. Juana of Portugal (blessed) (d. 1490) Juana was a daughter of Alfonso V of Portugal, born in 1452. As a teenager she refused efforts to marry her off, and finally got permission to become a Dominican nun in 1472. She became famous for her penitential practices and care for the poor and slaves. Her cult was confirmed in 1693. Happy reading, Terri Morgan ********************************************************************** 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