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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Good morning from Vietnam,

In fact there is only one saint Meriadec of whom we know nothing except what
is told about him in his very late (XVth c. ?) *vita*. This *vita* is mainly
an attempt to prove that the Rohan family was the heir of the fabulous first
King of Brittany Conan Meriadec.

No bishop of Vannes is named Meriadec at the beginning of the XIVth c.

The last status quaestionis seems to be a study of mine (in French) « Le
contexte idéologique du développement du culte de saint
Mériadec<http://www.scribd.com/doc/2348375/Le-culte-de-saint-Meriadec>en
Bretagne au bas Moyen Âge », dans
*Saint-Jean-du-Doigt des origines à Tanguy Prigent. Actes du colloque (23-25
septembre 1999) réunis par Jean-Christophe Cassard*, Brest, 2001 (= *Études
sur *la Bretagne* et les pays celtiques, Kreiz 14*), p. 125-136.

Best from

Andre-Yves Bourges
http://www.hagio-historiographie-medievale.org



2011/6/7 Terri Morgan <[log in to unmask]>

> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Today, June 7, is the feast of:
>
>
>
> Two saints named Meriadec (Meriadoc) of Vannes.
>
>    #1 (d. c. 686) was the son of the duke of Brittany, but probably from
> Wales. He became a priest and went to Cornwall, where he produced a
> miraculous spring. He then became a hermit at Vannes in Brittany, in time
> becoming bishop there.
>
>    #2 (d. 1302) was Breton - also a hermit who was made bishop of Vannes,
> where he was famous for his charity.
>
> An account of one of their lives survives in the Cornish text *Beunans
> Meriasek*.
>
>
>
> As well as
>
> Potamiæna the younger, virgin and martyr (about 303) was a beautiful young
> slave girl belonging to a heathen master at Hermopolis, in Egypt, in the
> reign of the Emperor Maximian. Her master inflamed with passion… She was
> arrested in Alexandria and apparently could have saved her life if she had
> been willing to give up her virginity. She was condemned to be sunk by
> degrees in a cauldron of boiling pitch and was being led to death by
> Basilides, who on the way protected her against the insults of the mob. In
> return for his kindness the martyr promised him not to forget him with her
> Lord when she reached her destination. Soon after Potamiæna's death
> Basilides was asked by his fellow-soldiers to take a certain oath; on
> answering that he could not do it, as he was a Christian, at first they
> thought he was jesting, but seeing he was in earnest they denounced him and
> he was condemned to be beheaded. While waiting in jail for his sentence to
> be carried out some Christians (Origen being possibly one of them) visited
> him and asked him how he happened to be converted; he answered that three
> days after her death, Potamiæna had appeared to him by night and placed a
> crown on his head as a pledge that the Lord would soon receive him into his
> glory. Potamiæna appeared to many other persons at that time, calling them
> to faith and martyrdom. To these conversions, Origen, an eyewitness,
> testifies in his "*Contra Celsum*". Marcella, mother of Potamiæna, who
> likewise perished by fire, is the only other martyr whose name is recorded
> in authentic sources.
>
>
>
> Paul I of Constantinople (d. 350 or 351) was patriarch of Constantinople
> during a period of Arian ascendancy. He was deposed and banished by Emperor
> Constantius, taking refuge in Trier. He was reinstated thanks to popular
> demonstrations, the western emperor's insistence, and letters from the pope,
> but had to deal with a rival Arian bishop and open street violence. He was
> exiled a second time, to Pontus, after a popular mob protected him from
> imperial vengeance by murdering the imperial official sent to drive him from
> town. He made it back to town again, but was exiled yet again after the
> death of his protector Constans I - regarded as such a threat that he was
> taken in chains to Mesopotamia, then Syria, then Armenia. In the last place
> he was dungeoned and starved for six days, but didn't die fast enough, so he
> was strangled. In art, he is sometimes shown being strangled with his own
> stole.
>
>
>
> Colmán/Coloman of Dromore (d. earlier 6th century?) is the fairly legendary
> first bishop of Dromore (Druim Mor) in County Down, Northern Ireland, whose
> monastery also claimed him as its founder. According to his legend, he was a
> member of the royal lineage of Cashel. He became a disciple of St. Ailbhe of
> Emly and went on to found his own monastery, where he was the mentor of
> Finian of Clonard. His Vitae are late and unreliable. He is entered for
> today in several early Irish and Scottish calendars. Today's cathedral of
> Dromore was built on the site of the ancient monastery that regarded him as
> its founder. A cross surviving in fragments from that house was re-erected
> near the cathedral in 1887. His cult won formal approval in 1903 as the
> patron of the diocese of Dromore.
>
>
>
> Daniel of Skete/-of Sketis (d. c576)  We know about the Egyptian desert
> father Daniel from a brief account in chapter 42 of the *Lives of the
> Eastern Saints* by his younger contemporary the Syriac-writing monophysite
> John of Ephesus and by smallish narrative anecdotes in Greek (BHG 2101 a-c,
> 2102a, 2102 c-f, 2128), Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages in which
> Daniel illustrates one or another aspect of holiness and piety and which in
> some cases have been collected and edited to create texts that because of
> their length are conventionally called *Lives*.  Hegumen of the famous
> monastery of Skete (Sketis) in today's Wadi Natrun, he is said by John to
> have been harassed by officialdom attempting to impose Chalcedonian
> orthodoxy on his community, which latter, like others in the area, still
> adhered to the views of the deposed fifth-century patriarch Dioscorus of
> Alexandria.
>
>    Daniel had a reputation for being able to perceive hidden sanctity in
> others; several of the anecdotes attached to his name have to do with holy
> fools.  Recorded in medieval Byzantine and Coptic synaxaries and celebrated
> today in Orthodox churches, he has yet to grace the pages of the RM.
>
>    Daniel as depicted in the mosaics in the katholikon of Hosios Loukas
> near Distomo in Phokis: http://tinyurl.com/26e76qr
>
>
>
> Vulflagius (in French, Wulphy, Wulfy, Vulphis; in English sometimes
> Wulphlag) (d. c643, supposedly) is a saint of Ponthieu and of the
> Pas-de-Calais. According to his undated *Vita*, he was born near today's
> Rue (Somme). As a young man, Vulflagius married and had three daughters. He
> led such an exemplary life that his fellow citizens elected him as their
> priest. Accordingly, with the consent of his wife, Vulflagius received
> ordination from St Riquier. But he could not bear the separation and made
> clandestine visits to his wife, then became extremely penitent over this
> behavior and undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When he returned he still
> regarded himself as unworthy to act as a shepherd to others and decided to
> lead the life of a hermit. As a hermit he received the gifts of prophecy and
> healing.
>
>    A tradition of the nearby abbey of Centula/St. Riquier identified the
> site of his hermitage as today's Regnière-Écluse and connected a translation
> of his remains from there to the abbey with the translation to the abbey of
> those of its founder (d. c645). Early modern acceptance of this story as
> historically accurate, together with an inference that Vulflagius had
> predeceased St. Riquier by a couple of years, has given us his date of death
> noted above. Relics said to be his will have been at Rue in the twelfth
> century, when the predecessor of that town's early nineteenth-century église
> Saint-Wulphy was built, and were certainly there in the early sixteenth
> century, when a surviving inventory of its treasury was drawn up. One (a jaw
> bone) survived the destruction of the church's reliquaries in 1783,
> underwent a formal recognition in 1835, and is now preserved in the modern
> church. A relic believed to be his was presumably once housed in the
> originally late fifteenth-century église paroissiale Saint-Wulphy at
> Montreuil-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais).
>
>    Vulflagius has yet to grace the pages of the RM. He has been equated
> conjecturally with the sixth-century St. Vulfilaicus of Trier, the last
> notice of whose relics is from the later tenth century and one of whose many
> name-forms in French is Wulphy.
>
>
>
> Aventinus/Aventine of Larbouch (d. 732)  Aventinus was a native of Bagneres
> in the Pyrenees. He became a hermit in the valley of Larbouche, where he was
> killed by Arab raiders. He is represented with his head in his hand after
> the legend that he carried his own head to his burial place.
>
>
>
> Willibard of Eichstatt (786): was born in the kingdom of the West Saxons.
> With his father and brother he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (he
> later wrote an account of the holy places, the Hodoeporicon). In 740 he met
> the pope, who sent him to aid his uncle (or perhaps cousin) Boniface with
> his work in eastern Germany. He eventually found himself in Franconia where
> in 742 he was consecrated bishop of Eichstatt by St Boniface. Willibard set
> about proselytizing the area. He spent the rest of his long life
> evangelizing and organizing his diocese. One of his achievements was the
> founding of a double monastery at Heidenheim where his brother, St Winebald
> ruled the monks, and his sister St Walburga ruled the nuns.
>
>
>
> Herkumbert/Erkanbert (d. 830) is thought to have come from Mainfranken near
> Würzburg. He was one of Charlemagne's missionaries among the Saxons.
> Primarily active along the middle Weser, Erkanbert became the first bishop
> of Minden in c. 795. He had been an active missionary in that region before
> the erection of the bishopric, and continued his work in his new office. He
> is not yet listed in the RM.
>
>    Here he is at far right on the recently restored Golden Altarpiece
> (1220) of Minden's ex-cathedral of Sts. Gorgonius and Peter:
>
> http://www.amtage.de/Goldene_Tafel_im_Dom/jakobi02_web.jpg
>
>       That view is from this German-language page on the altarpiece:
> http://tinyurl.com/2ngjk2
>
>    Here's another such page:
> http://www.dom-minden.de/goldenetafel/index.htm
>
>    Another view of the saints from this altar during its restoration:
> http://tinyurl.com/3zktjb
>
>
>
> Deochar/Deokar/Dietger (d. c832) was a monk at Fulda who studied under
> Alcuin at Charlemagne's court. He then was a hermit in today's Herrrieden in
> Mittelfranken, where Charlemagne established for him a Benedictine
> monastery. He served as its abbot, and became an imperial counsellor and
> emissary (*missus*). In 819 he took part in the translation of the remains
> of yesterday's St. Boniface to Mainz. In 829 he participated in the Synod of
> Mainz. He was laid to rest in the monastery church, whose originally
> eleventh-century successor dedicated to St. Vitus and to Deochar is now a
> parish church. Within a century of his death his monastery passed into the
> possession of the bishop of Eichstätt. The monastery was converted into a
> canonry in 888. In the later eleventh century Deochar was listed as a saint
> of the diocese and gave him an annual commemoration on this day at
> Herrieden. In 1316 some of his relics went to Nürnberg, where they were
> displayed in a chapel dedicated to him in the church of St. Lawrence
> (Lorenzkirche). Since the nineteenth century those relics have been in
> Eichstätt, but the Lorenzkirche in Nürnberg retains its early
> fifteenth-century Deocarusraltar. Deochar is a patron saint of the blind and
> of those with diseases of the eye. He is also Herrieden's patron saint and
> the third patron of Nürnberg (after Sts. Sebaldus and Lawrence) but is not
> in the RM.
>
>    Here's Deochar as depicted in the Pontifical of bishop Gundekar II
> (1057–1075): http://tinyurl.com/59fuqf
>
>    Here's a panel of the Deocarusralter in Nurnberg showing Deochar leading
> the visually impaired in prayer at St. Boniface's shrine:
> http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Deochar.jpg
>
>       A view of the altar as a whole: http://tinyurl.com/26mycyc That's
> Deochar in his sarcophagus at bottom center.
>
>
>
> Peter, Walabonsus, Sabinian, Wistremund, Habentius and Jeremiah (in
> Spanish: Pedro, Walabonso, Sabiniano, Wistremundo, Havencio or Abencio,
> Jeremías) (d. 851). Our source for these martyrs of Muslim-ruled Córdoba is
> the *Memoriale sanctorum* of St. Eulogius of Toledo. Pedro, a priest from
> Écija, and Walabonsus, a deacon from a place variously identified as Elche,
> Niebla, or as Peñaflor, were serving at the convent of Cuteclara outside of
> Córdoba. Sabiniano and Wistremundo were monks of St Zoilus at Armelata;
> Wistremundo also hailed from Écija. Havencio was a monk of St. Christopher
> in Córdoba and the very elderly Jeremiah was a founder of the monastery of
> Tábanos, to which the recently martyred St. Isaac of Córdoba (3 June) had
> belonged. After Isaac’s public execution for defaming the Prophet, Pedro and
> companions presented themselves to the cadi and associated themselves with
> the professions of Isaac and of the intervening martyr St. Sanctius (Sancho;
> 5 June). After their convictions they were executed by decapitation, except
> for Jeremiah, who had been sentenced to the same fate but was first
> scourged, a punishment that he did not survive. One of the places where
> Walabonso is thought to have hailed from is Niebla in Andalusia's Huelva
> province, where he is the patron saint. He and his also martyred sister
> Maria (the Maria of Flora and Maria; 24 Nov.) are the patron saints of the
> local diocese.
>
>
>
> Gottschalk (d. 1066)  The son of a Slav prince, Gottschalk was raised as a
> Christian, apostatized for a while, but reconverted when he married a
> relative of King Knut of Denmark & England. He established himself as ruler
> over the Slavs who lived in the region east of Lubeck, and instituted a
> policy of firm Christianization, complete with (German) missionaries and
> monastic foundations. This was not popular. He fought in the service of Cnut
> of Denmark, returning home to help protect the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen
> against Liutizi raiders. He was killed in an anti-Christian (and
> anti-German) revolt led by his brother-in-law.
>
>    “The heathen party, headed by Plasso, Gotteschalk's brother-in-law, rose
> and extirpated Christianity. Hamburg and Mecklenburg were destroyed by the
> pagans, who sacrificed John, bishop of Mecklenburg, to their deities, stoned
> St. Answar, abbot of Ratzeburg and twenty-eight monks to death, assassinated
> Gotteschalk at Lenzen, at the foot of the altar, butchered Eppo the priest,
> who was offering the Holy Sacrifice upon the altar itself, and slaughtered
> all the rest of the clergy and Christians who were in the sacred building.”
>
>
>
> Robert of Newminster (d. 1159) The Paris-educated Robert is said to have
> been born at Craven in today's North Yorkshire. He became a Benedictine monk
> of Whitby and in the early 1130s he joined the group of Cistercians who were
> soon to establish Fountains Abbey and in 1137 he was chosen to head the
> latter's daughter house, Newminster, founded the following year at today's
> Morpeth in Northumberland. He seems to have been pious, prayerful, and
> inclined toward visions. In 1147 some of his monks accused him of getting
> too friendly with a female benefactor of the monastery; he cleared himself
> of the charge at Citeaux - the belt that Bernard of Clairvaux gave him as
> token of his innocence was later used to heal the sick. Reginald of Durham
> tells us that he was on good terms with St. Godric of Finchale. Like Godric,
> Robert was never formally canonized. Godric saw Robert’s soul go up to
> heaven like a sphere of fire at his death. Said in his two *Vitae* to have
> been otherworldly and austere, he nonetheless managed to found three
> Cistercian houses from Newminster. Miracles were reported at his tomb. His
> cult has been kept alive by the Cistercian order and by the Roman Catholic
> diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, whose parishes at Morpeth and at Fenham in
> Newcastle are named for him.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Happy reading,
>
> Terri Morgan
>
> --
>
> " 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."
>
>
>
>
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