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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today, June 1, is the feast of: Candida (or Whyte) of Whitchurch (?) Nothing is known about this saint except that she was about 40 when she died. But I thought her worth a mention since her shrine (at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset) was the only one to survive the English Reformation intact. Gratian and Felinus, martyrs (uncertain) the less said about SS. Gratian and Felinus . . . the better." Ischyrion and Companions (d. 250) Ischyrion was an official in Egypt. He proclaimed his faith during the Decian persecution. He and several companions were impaled and tortured until they died. Proculus of Bologna (d. c304, perhaps) The (pseudo-) Hieronymian Martyrology lists a Proculus for this date, place of martyrdom unspecified. The late fourth-/early fifth-century writers Victricius of Rouen and Paulinus of Nola knew our Proculus’ cult at Bologna. His church there goes back to the early eleventh century. Later medieval members of the adjacent monastic community created various Vitae for him, including a twelfth-century one that made him a military martyr under the early sixth-century emperor Justin I and a thirteenth-century one identifying him as the Proculus of Narni and thus a bishop, drawing on the early medieval Legenda XII Syrorum, whose own account of that Proculus' feast had already in the twelfth century been read in the dioceses of Bologna and Ravenna on 1 June. Proculus the Soldier (d. c. 304) and Proculus of Bologna (d. c. 542) These two saints got blended over the centuries. Proculus was apparently an army officer, either beheaded or crucified during Diocletian's persecution. His later namesake became bishop of Bologna in 540, and was killed by the Gothic rulers of Italy. Pamphilus and companions (d. 309) Pamphilus was from Beirut. He studied at the Alexandria catechetical school, became a priest and founded his own Bible school at Caesarea, edited the Bible, gave wealth to the poor, etc. He was arrested as a Christian in 308; after a long time in prison, he and two others were sentenced to death. While in prison awaiting martyrdom wrote a defense of Origen. The other two were beheaded, but the governor had one of his own servants crucified as a Christian at the same time, and when one of Pamphilus’ students asked for his body, he was tortured and finally burned to death. Pamphilus was described by Eusebius as 'the most illustrious martyr of his day for philosophical learning and for every virtue'. Fortunatus of Montefalco (d. c400) We know about him from his late seventh- or early eighth-century Vita by the priest Audelaus. According to this text, Fortunatus was a poor priest of a church about twelve miles distant from Spoleto who engaged in manual labor in order to make ends meet and who with the little he earned was constantly generous to widows and orphans, to paupers, and to pilgrims. One day, while plowing a field he turned up a couple of denarii (low-value coins), put them away, and went back to work. An angel came by in the guise of a pilgrim came by and asked for aid; Fortunatus offered him the denarii and as he did so these were turned into aurei (high-value coins of gold). Fortunatus gave them to the pilgrim/angel and went back to work. Though he did not operate miracles in his lifetime, he did so after his death. A popular cult arose and a church, consecrated by a bishop of Spoleto, was later built to house his remains. Caprasius of Lérins (d. after 434) Caprasius was co-founder of the great monastery of Lerins. He started as a hermit in the island, where the ascetic brothers Honoratus and Venantius visited him. The Provençal hermit accompanied them on a journey to the East that ended at Modon in the Peloponnese, where Venantius died. Caprasius returned with Honoratus to Provence, where they founded the famous monastery of Lérins. When Honoratus became bishop of Arles, Caprasius took over as abbot. Late antique ecclesiastical writers of Gaul (Sts. Eucherius of Lyon and Sidonius Apollinaris) praise his sanctity. He enters the martyrologies with Florus of Lyon. Ronan of Locronan (d. 6th century?) The eponym of Locronan (Finistère), this Breton saint has a legendary Vita, seemingly of the thirteenth century and written at Quimper. According to that account, the Irish-born Ronan established a hermitage in the forest of Névet, where he was visited by, and dispensed counsel to, King Grallo (the very legendary fourth-century Gradlon) and where he had to contend with accusations by a local wife of being a werewolf and of having tried to seduce her. Ronan, so this story goes, then moved on to the vicinity of Hillion, where he died after establishing a new hermitage. A dispute over the possession of his body was resolved by its miraculous transportation back to his first hermitage, where a chapel (later destroyed by Northmen and then rebuilt) was erected in his honor. Later still his remains found their way to Quimper, where they were kept in the cathedral and worked miracles. The site of his memorial chapel came to be called Locronan. His cult there is attested from the 1030s onward. Wigstan (d. 849) The Anglo-Saxon king's son Wigstan (also often Wystan; in Latin, Wistanus) is first attested in the early eleventh-century catalogue Secgan be þam godes sanctum þe on Engla lande œrost reston, which tells us that he rests at the monastery of Repton (in today's Derbyshire). In the early twelfth century the chronicler John of Worcester records his royal parentage in Mercia, his death on this day in 849, and his burial at Repton. William of Malmesbury, writing in the Regesta regum Anglorum, tells us that Wigstan, preferring a life of religion to secular rulership, declined to succeed his father as king and was subsequently murdered on the orders of another Mercian royal whose request to marry Wigstan's widowed mother (the queen Elfleda) Wigstan had refused. His early thirteenth-century is a reworking of a Passio that is thought also to underlie the twelfth-century accounts. The eighth-century crypt beneath the later tenth- to fifteenth-century St Wystans church at Repton may initially have been a baptistery and had been expanded to accommodate at least one royal burial (king Wiglaf; d. 839). At some point in ninth or tenth century it received two additional access points; this and a cluster of early graves in the east end of the church together suggest veneration there of a regionally important saint. According to Thomas of Marlborough, the author of one version of the thirteenth-century Vita, in the early eleventh century king Cnut removed Wigstan's bones from Repton to the abbey at Evesham in today's Worcestershire, though some of his relics were later returned to his earlier resting place. In the later Middle Ages a church dedicated to Wigstan at Wistow in Leicestershire was reputed to mark the site of his murder. Legend tells that on the anniversary of his death each year, a light hovered over the spot where he was killed and human hair, just like that which had been hacked from his head, grew from the ground - for one hour each year. Clarus (d. c875) Clarus, according to legend, was from Rochester. He became a hermit near Cherbourg (France). A noblewoman fell in lust with him, and killed him when he chastely rejected her advances. His shrine was at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. Simeon of Trier (d. 1035) According to his early eleventh-century Vita by abbot Eberwin of Trier, Simeon (also Symeon; sometimes called "of Syracuse") was a Greek-speaking native of Syracuse who grew up in Constantinople and who became a monk first in Palestine and later at St. Catherine's in Sinai. He was sent from the latter to Normandy to collect a debt from duke Richard II, traveling part of the way with his future biographer, the archbishop Poppo of Trier, who was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When Simeon arrived at his destination the duke was dead, his successor would not pay, and Simeon returned to Palestine as tour guide to a group of pilgrims from Trier. Later he moved to Trier and became a recluse in a gatehouse in the wall - the famous Porta Nigra, which survived when the rest of the wall was knocked down because there was a chapel dedicated to Simeon in his former anchor hold. At one point in his life people believed that he was a magician and they would often attack him with stones. However, long before his death he was venerated as a saint and a wonder-worker. He was canonized shortly after his death, in 1042, apparently the second formal pontifical canonization in history. Eneco of Ona (d. 1057) A monk of San Juan de la Pena in Aragon, Eneco (Ignatius) was a hermit who, in 1029 was convinced by King Sancho the Great to serve as abbot of a new Cluniac monastery at Ona near Burgos. He proved to be a very successful reformer, besides a good peacemaker, and a reputed miracle-worker. He was a good abbot; even Jews and Muslims are said to have mourned when he died. Alexander III probably canonized him, as his date of canonization was 1259. Conrad (Cuno/Kuno) of Trier (d. 1066) Perhaps trying to take advantage of the chaotic conditions in Germany during the minority of Henry IV, Conrad's uncle, Archbishop Anno of Cologne, tried to impose Conrad as archbishop of Trier. This was resented. As Conrad traveled to his new see, he was seized on the way, and thrown from the battlements of a castle. He's venerated as a martyr. Theobald of Alba, shoemaker (1150) - Honoured throughout Piedmont as the patron of cobblers and porters. He always gave two-thirds of his earnings to the poor. Achmed, Zoraida, and Zaida (aka bl. Bernard, Mary, and Gracia) (d. c1180) These were children of the emir of Lerida (Catalonia). Achmed converted to Christianity, took the name “Bernard” and became a Cistercian near Tarragona. He then converted his two sisters, who took the names Mary and Gracia. The three then tried to convert their brother - who betrayed them, so they were executed. Giovanni Pelingotto, Franciscan tertiary (1304) came from a prosperous merchant family of Urbino. During his life he tended to the sick and to the poor. Ercolano da Piegaro, Franciscan (1451) - One of the foremost preachers of the fifteenth century. 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." ********************************************************************** 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