Today, June 27, is the feast of:
Apollinarius of Ravenna (1st century) is now most famous for the two great late antique basilicas dedicated to him in Ravenna. According to tradition, he was the first bishop of Ravenna - later legend has St. Peter commission Apollinarius and send him to northern Italy to preach. His cult spread across the Alps to France and Germany, especially Alsace.
Crescens/Crescentius (1st century) was a disciple of Paul, who mentions that Crescens had gone to Galatia (2 Tim 4:10). Tradition makes him the first bishop of the Galatians and tells that he was martyred there in the reign of Trajan. Very confusing later traditions connect him with Vienne in France and Mainz in Germany (apparently because of a mix-up between Galatia and Gaul).
Zoilus of Córdoba (?) is an early martyr of Córdoba from the time of Diocletian’s persecutions, first mentioned (with the name-form Zoellus) by Prudentius. The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology enters him for today. Usuard adds a brief statement to the effect that his relics were found where they had been buried by a bishop Agapius; a longer Inventio, first attested from the tenth century, places this discovery in the time of king Sisebut (d. 621) and relates that Zoilus' relics were first brought to a little basilica of St. Felix that Bishop Agapius later replaced with a larger church dedicated to Zoilus. The tenth-century Calendar of Córdoba gives today as that of his principal feast and November 4 as that of the Invention of his relics. In the eleventh century he received a brief Passio that tells us nothing useful about him. In 883 he was one of the Cordoban saints whose putative relics were translated to Oviedo. In the eleventh century those of Zoilus were further translated to the monastery of Carrión de los Condes in the diocese of Palencia, which then came to be known by his name.
Majorinus/Majoranus/Malerinus/( Italian) Maggiorino of Acqui (d. 4th century?) is the very shadowy protobishop of Acqui in Piedmont. An eleventh-century diocesan chronology lists him first and says that he directed the see of Acqui for thirty-four years and eight months, that he died on June 27, and that he was buried in a church dedicated to St. Peter. Today's chiesa di San Pietro at Acqui, though vastly transformed since the Middle Ages, is originally of the tenth or early eleventh century; it was from this building, that he was later said to have been translated to Acqui's then new cathedral by bishop St. Guido (Wido; d. 1070). A very ancient tradition made by eminent scholars claims that he was created bishop by pope St. Sylvester after the Edict of Milan. Ravera adds that it's more probable that he participated in the council of Milan in 355 than that he was the “Maiorinus” present at Sylvester's Roman synod of 324.
Samson/Sampson the Hospitable/the Hospitaler/-of Constantinople (4th or 5th century) We first of Samson in a novel of Justinian I from November 3, 537 referring to a master of Constantinople's hospice of Sampson of blessed memory. According to Procopius, Samson had established this hospice "in early times"; the building itself had been damaged by fire in the Nika riots of 532 and Justinian had rebuilt and enlarged it. Crediting him with numerous healing miracles, Samson's legendary tenth-century periphrastic Bios (BHG 1615) says that he was laid to rest in the church of St. Mocius, where the ill were wont to anoint themselves with exudate from his myrrh-streaming body. Less plausibly, the Bios makes him a relative of Mocius', has him ordained priest by patriarch Menas (536-552), and claims that he miraculously saved his hospice from the Nika fire.
A novel of Manuel I Comnenus of March 1166 includes today, because of the veneration of the holy thaumaturge Samson, among those when the courts are not in session. In 1200 Anthony of Novgorod venerated at Samson's hospice the saint's staff, stole, and (other) priestly vestments. We have an encomium of Samson by the late thirteenth-/early fourteenth-century theologian and hagiographer Constantine Acropolites (BHG 1615d).
Herewith a computer-generated reconstruction of Samson's hospice as rebuilt by Justinian:
http://www.arkeo3d.com/byzantium1200/sampson.html
Samson as depicted (at left; at right, St. Cyrus) in the frescoes (1230s) in narthex of the church of the Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in southern Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/2d48d5n
Detail view: http://tinyurl.com/2buxq4r
Samson as depicted in a June calendar portrait in the frescoes (between c1312 and 1321/1322) of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica: http://tinyurl.com/2c47ava
Samson (at left; at right, the martyrdom of Sts. Cyrus and John) as depicted in the frescoes (1335-1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć: http://tinyurl.com/yfzgkf5
Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) succeeded his uncle Theophilus as bishop of Alexandria in 412. An uncompromising champion of the orthodoxy he had a large part in formulating, he continued his uncle's feud with St. John Chrysostom even after the latter's death, provoked riots against Alexandria's Novatianists and Jews and had both groups exiled from the city, and stirred up other riots against the imperial prefect, whom he loathed, and against the latter's friends (one of whom was the philosopher Hypatia, killed in 415). In 429 he began his lengthy battle against Nestorius, Nestorius' followers, and those whom he considered Nestorius’ forerunners (e.g., Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia). At the council of Ephesus in 431 Cyril managed to secure both the condemnation of Nestorius and the elevation of the see of Alexandria to the status of a patriarchate by making sure that the Nestorians couldn’t get there in time for the council. He is considered a saint on the basis of his fairly prolific exegetical and dogmatic writing. Cyril was especially important for his defense of the Virgin Mary as Theotokos (mother of God) against the Nestorians. The Western martyrologies from Bede onward enter him under January 28. The Marble Calendar of Naples (earlier ninth century) has him twice, once on June 7 and once on July 7. He was one of the great theologians of the Eastern church, venerated as the greatest teacher of the Coptic and Ethiopian churches. He was declared a doctor of the RC church in 1882.
Cyril (at right; at left, St. Athanasius of Alexandria) as depicted in a thirteenth-century menaion from Cyprus (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1561, fol. 77r): http://tinyurl.com/275pgqf
Cyril as depicted in the frescoes (1260-1263) of the altar area in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć: http://tinyurl.com/24hbjf8
Cyril (at left; at right, an unidentified hierarch) as depicted in the (either c1263-1270 or slightly later) frescoes of the altar area in the monastery church of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/2wrk2xd
Detail view: http://tinyurl.com/3xzfsp7
Cyril as depicted c1300 in a fresco attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos: http://tinyurl.com/y8tr6jv
Cyril as depicted in the frescoes (c1313-c1320) of the altar area in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/yjdsw5n
Detail view: http://tinyurl.com/yz9yqoa
Cyril (at right; at left, St. Basil the Great; at center, St. Gregory of Nazianzus) as depicted in the frescoes (1315-1321) of the parecclesion of the Chora Church (Kariye Camii) in Istanbul: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3558/3382587556_5071a79443_b.jpg
Cyril (at left; at right, St. John the Almsgiver) as depicted in the frescoes (1335-1350) in the nave of the church of the Pantocrator at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć: http://tinyurl.com/2cw5kqb
Cyril (at left; at center, St. Athanasius of Alexandria; at right, St. Leontius of Rostov) as depicted in a fifteenth-century Novgorod School icon now in the Museum of History and Architecture in Novgorod: http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=ru&mst_id=1199
Cyril (again followed by John the Almsgiver) as depicted in the restored frescoes (1544; attributed to Joseph Houris) of the St. Neophytos monastery near Paphos in the Republic of Cyprus: http://www.kypros.org/Sxetikos/Monastiria/NeophytosE-11b.htm
John of Chinon (d. 6th century) According to Gregory of Tours, John was a priest of Breton nationality who became a recluse at an oratory he had constructed at Chinon. Gregory tells a nice miracle story about one of the laurel trees under which John had been wont to read. He won a reputation as a healer and holy man. John’s cult was connected medievally to that of St. Radegund, thanks to an incident in Baudonivia's Vita of Radegund, wherein that saint, preparing to enter religion and fleeing the menaces of her spouse king Chlothar I, sends John a bejeweled ornament and her rich dress and asks that he pray that she never return to secular life. In the twelfth-century a rock-cut structure at Chinon (in today's Indre-et-Loire) identified as having been John's cell was converted into a church, now known as the chapelle Ste.-Radegonde.
Adeodatus of Naples (d. c671): see Oct 1
Arialdus, deacon of Milan (1066) The well-educated Arialdus taught at the cathedral school of Milan and in 1057 emerged into public view as the leader of the Pataria, the anti-nicolaism and anti-simony movement within the Ambrosian church. Supported by reforming Popes and opposed by his archbishop (Guido da Velate, 1045-71), he provoked violence against his ecclesiastical opponents and received the same from them. After the Patarenes got Alexander II to excommunicate the simoniac archbishop, the latter took his revenge on Arialdus (who had gone into hiding outside the city) by hunting him down and having him arrested. Arialdus was taken to a castle belonging to a niece of the archbishop and thence to a little island in Lago Maggiore, where he underwent a grisly execution. A year later, peace was made between the parties and his body was brought back to Milan, where it was displayed with honor at Sant'Ambrogio for ten days before being buried in a local monastery. Alexander II is said to have declared him a martyr. His cult was confirmed in 1904.
George Mtasmindeli/"the Athonite” (d. 1066) "Mtasmindeli" means "of the Black Mountain." He was sent off to the monastic life at age 7, but followed an uncle to a chaplaincy in a noble house, where he got a good classical education. He settled down as a monk and served as abbot of several monasteries on Mt. Athos and the Black Mountain. He is credited with reforming the Georgian church. There he made a major contribution to Georgian Christianity by translating the Bible and a great many other religious works.
Erlembald Cotta (d. 1075) was a Milanese knight, also involved in the Pataria movement. He was killed in a brawl, part of the ongoing agitation against the simonist bishop of Milan. He was regarded as a martyr and his relics were enshrined in 1095. But when Baronius revised the Roman Martyrology he decided that Erlembald didn't have an edifying enough character, and deleted him from the list.
Ladislas/Laszlo of Hungary (d. 1095) was a member of the Arpad dynasty and became king of the Magyars in 1077. He was a champion of Christianity, and also a major warrior who spent most of his reign expanding Hungary's borders. According to legend, while on a campaign Ladislaus and his troops ran out of water - Ladislaus prayed, and a spring appeared under his horse's hoof. He was known for his rectitude and virtue. In between fighting off threats to his thrown, he supported Gregory VII against Emperor Henry IV, encouraged missionaries in his kingdom (interestingly, he allowed religious freedom to Jews and Muslims), and strengthened the kingdom. He was so notorious as a champion of Christianity that he was invited to lead the First Crusade - a task he accepted, but he died before setting out. He was canonized in the 1190s and in 1192 Ladislas' relics were enshrined in the cathedral he had founded at Nagyvarad. He is said to have appeared in the sky riding a horse to drive the Mongols from Hungary.
Ferdinand of Aragon (d. later 11th century, supposedly) has been venerated on this day in the vicinity of Caiazzo in northern Campania since at least the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when he appears in notices by the Capuan ecclesiastical historian Michele Monaco and by Filippo Ferrari, as well as in an "ancient" office from Caiazzo printed by its bishop Paolo Filomarino. According to the little provided by these sources, he was frequently mentioned in the archives of the diocese of Caiazzo, was thought to have come from Spain, to have settled at Caiazzo, to have been chosen as its bishop after the death of an incumbent, to have died in the vicinity of Alvignano, and to have been buried in a church near there dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Whether Ferdinand (in Latin, Ferdinandus and Ferrandus) really came from Spain is unknown; early modern guesses about his date range from the eleventh century to the thirteenth. Monaco thought, rather shrewdly, that the specification "of Aragon" had to do with the kingdom's Aragonese rule in the fifteenth century. Given the lacunose state of Caiazzo's medieval diocesan records, it is impossible to say that he was ever its bishop; scholars from the early Bollandists onward have doubted that he was. He has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
Benvenuto of Gubbio (blessed) (d. 1232) was a knight before becoming a Franciscan lay brother in 1222. He was placed in charge of the lepers, living a completely exemplary life and becoming noted for his humility and patience. He was beatified in 1697.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
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" Nobility depends not on parentage or place of birth, but on breadth of compassion and of loving-kindness. If we would be noble, let us be greathearted."