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Today, July 5, is the feast of:
The Seven Joys of Mary. Already celebrated in the Middle Ages, this became an official RC feast in 1906 (Pius X). Mary's official joys are: the annunciation, the visitation, the birth of Jesus, the visit of the magi, finding Jesus in the Temple after he had been lost, the resurrection, and Mary's own assumption into heaven.
Cyprilla (d. c304, supposedly) Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM mistakenly called Cyprilla “Cyrilla”. As Cyprilla she is widely recorded in Eastern calendars and synaxaries, where her feast is given variously as occurring either yesterday or today. She has a legendary Passio whose sole witness is of the eleventh century. This makes her a widow of Cyrene in the Libyan Pentapolis who along with two other Christian women, Aroa and Lucia (not known to have received a cult and perhaps entirely fictional), assists yesterday's St. Theodore of Cyrene during the Great Persecution, is arrested, refuses to abjure her faith, and undergoes gruesome torments ending in a very bloody death. When and how she really suffered are unknown.
Athanasius of Jerusalem (d. 451 or 452) We learn about Athanasius from Nicephorus Callistus, Historia ecclesaistica. He was a deacon of the church of the Resurrection who opposed the monastic revolt in 451-453 against Jerusalem's bishop Juvenal after the latter had changed sides at the Council of Chalcedon and had accepted the Tome of Leo. He was murdered by, or on the order of, the monks' leader, Theodosius. He has never had a formal cult. Cardinal Baronio entered him in the RM as a martyr for Chalcedonian orthodoxy.
Domitius (Latin)/Dometius the Healer/the Illustrious/the Persian (d. later 4th or 5th century) is originally a saint of the Syriac-language church whose celebration on this day is at least as old as the sixth century. He has a legendary Vita in that tongue (BHO 263) that makes him a pagan of Cappadocian origin who during the reign of Valens (364-378) experiences an angelically assisted conversion to Christianity and withdraws to a cave on mount Quros (in today's southern Turkey, not very far from the site of the ancient Syrian city of Cyrus/Cyrrhus). There he is miraculously cured of sciatica, lives very ascetically, operates miraculous cures on other humans and on a lame camel, escapes an attempt by jealous physicians to kill him, and dies in his cave with an angel at his side. Later a monastery named for him (Mor Dimet) arises on that very spot.
In the later sixth century St. Gregory of Tours, who had at least one Syrian informant, purveys a miracle story about Domitius (In gloria confessorum, 99) in which he is called a martyr, perhaps because in Gregory's version Domitius was never cured of his own illness and suffered from it for as long as he lived. Just possibly, though, this characterization of Domitius as a martyr derives from a belief circulating in the East that this saint had actually died for his faith. Earlier in the same century the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas, himself a Syrian, records under July 6, 363 that a speleote named Domitius of Assyrian (i.e. Persian) origin and not said to have been a healer was on the orders of Julian the Apostate stoned to death in the general vicinity of Cyrus/Cyrrhus. Despite the differences in their characterization, the prevailing view now is that this Domitius and Domitius the Healer are in origin one and the same saint.
There are good reasons for disbelieving Malalas' account. Martyrdoms personally ordered by Julian ordinarily are fictional; the story is absent from the work of the fifth-century church historian Theodoret, who as bishop of Cyrus/Cyrrhus would be expected to have known of it; a similar martyrdom not specifically associated with Domitius is recounted early in the sixth century by Severus of Antioch (Homiliae cathedrales, 51). But once the story did attach itself to Domitius it stuck. He has a relatively late Greek-language Passio (BHG 560) that though based on Malalas' account or on one very like it includes traditional stories of Domitius' healing. In this persona of a martyr who died for his faith he is known as Domitius the Persian.
Domitius is entered for today in the ninth-century martyrologies of Florus, St. Ado, and Usuard. In the late sixteenth century cardinal Baronio, thinking that he could distinguish between the two, entered both Domitius the Healer and Domitius the Persian in the RM, assigning Domitius the Healer to today and Domitius the Persian to July 7. Today's RM dispenses entirely with Domitius the Persian. Treating the healing accounts as legendary, it says of Domitius called the Healer (cognomento Medico) merely that he was a hermit on Mt. Quros.
Domitius being stoned to death as depicted (lower register, left of center) in a rather degraded June calendar portrait in the frescoes (between c1312 and 1321/1322) of 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/2f3odr8
Wendelin (mid-6th century) There is a very strong cult of Wendelin, even though his vita is largely legendary. He was a hermit in the Vogesen, according to legend the son of an Irish-Scottish king. His tomb at St. Wendel in Saarland became an important pilgrimage center. He is the patron of farmers and cattle. There are churches dedicated to St. Wendelin not only in Europe but in South America, China, and Africa.
Martha the mother of St. Simeon Stylites the Younger (d. later 6th century) Simeon Stylites the Younger was venerated late in life and for centuries afterward at a monastery named for him and extending around his final pillar on a mountain near Antioch on the Orontes in what until the earlier twentieth century was part of Syria (like Antioch/Antakya itself, it's now in Turkey's Hatay province). At some time between the writing of Simeon's earliest, very late sixth- or early seventh-century Bios and the late ninth century, a brief Bios of Martha was written at the monastery to accompany her veneration there. Her Bios presents her as a native of Antioch and a pious widow who carefully raises Simeon in the faith and who after he has left home operates miracles and repeatedly is graced with apparitions of St. John the Baptist and of angels. When one of these angels tells her that she has but one more year to live Simeon receives a similar vision. When Martha has but three months to live she goes to the monastery and asks Simeon what his plans are for her burial. His answer is that he has none but that he and the monks are constantly discussing this. Peeved at this response, she announces that the common grave for foreigners in the Antiochian suburb of Daphne will be good enough for her.
When she does die she is buried at Daphne. Simeon is informed angelically and makes arrangements to have his mother's body brought to the monastery. But this plan is forestalled by the pious action of someone from a village near Antioch who discovers Martha's body in a trench in the cemetery in Daphne and who, thinking that she deserves better, sends it on to the monastery. The party conveying her body meets the party sent out by Simeon and together they fulfill his wish. Martha at first is interred in the monastery's church of the Holy Trinity next to Simeon's column. Soon, though, she appears in a vision and requests a separate chapel, which is constructed for her next to the aforementioned church. Martha is translated thither with great solemnity; miracles occur at her tomb.
Morwenna/ Mwynen (6th century?) has been confused with Modwenna. Apparently, though, Morwenna was born to an Irish-Welsh family that settled in northern Cornwall. Morwenstow in Cornwall is named after her, and was (is?) the site of her holy well.
Numerian (d. c666) was born in c600 in Trier as the son of a rich senator. He became a monk at Remiremont and then Luxeuil, and from c650 on was bishop of Trier.
Modwenna (d. various) There were several Irish and English saints named Modwenna, and the stories of their lives have become inextricably mixed. They include a follower of Hilda who may have succeeded her as abbess of Whitby (d. c695), another English abbess of the nunnery of Polesworth (d. c900), and an Irishwoman who founded and ruled the Irish nunnery of Killeevy. Another is a 7th century virgin saint who lived as a hermit near Burton-on-Trent (England).
Thomas of Terreti/-of Terreto (d. c1000?) was a very pious early hegumen of the now vanished monastery of the Theotokos at Terreti, formerly a rural suburb of Reggio di Calabria and now incorporated in one of the quarters of city. We know about him from Philip of Bova's (1280) additions to cod. Messanensis graecus 86 and from a brief fourteenth-century hymn in his honor. Today is Thomas' dies natalis. His cult was maintained at the monastery (which in the Norman period had been given archimandrital status) and its possessions. Thomas was one of the Italo-Greek saints who entered the RM in its revisions of 2004.
Athanasius the Athonite (d. c1001) Our knowledge of the founder of the Great Lavra (despite its name, a cenobitic monastery) on Mt. Athos comes from two early Bioi that may both derive from an even earlier Bios, now lost. He was a native of Trebizond and his baptismal name was Abraamios ('Abraham'). Orphaned at an early age, he moved to Constantinople after the deaths of his adoptive parents. There he studied rhetoric and began a teaching career. Always very ascetic, he soon moved to a monastery in Bithynia where he lived for several years under the direction of St. Michael Maleinos and became good friends with the latter's nephew, the future emperor Nicephoras Phocas (r., 963-969). In 962/63 with Nicephoras' help Athanasius founded the monastery for which he is known; in the years that followed he enriched it through grants from members of other great families. He had to deal with hostility from hermits already at Athos, they attempted to murder him twice, but Emperor John Tzimisces protected him. By the end of his life, Athanasius was superior over 58 communities of monks and hermits on Athos. Athanasius died along with several other monks when the upper part of a roof they were building for a church fell in on them.
Here's a view of his tomb in the Great Lavra: http://tinyurl.com/op52sa
Athansasius as depicted c1300 in a fresco attributed to Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos: http://tinyurl.com/3acbgbt
Detail (Athansasius): http://tinyurl.com/3xlbtuu
Athansasius as depicted in the (c1314-c1320) frescoes of the church of St. Nikita at Čučer in today''s Čučer-Sandevo in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: http://tinyurl.com/2bymmbn
Athansasius as depicted in the frescoes (between 1335 and 1350) of the nave in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near 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/ydyopdq , http://tinyurl.com/35vmrw4
Detail (Athansasius): http://tinyurl.com/33znspo
Athansasius as depicted in an icon (c1360-1380) in the Pantokrator monastery on Mt. Athos: http://tinyurl.com/257dvao
Athansasius (at left, with Sts. Barlaam, center, and Joasaph, right) as depicted in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century Novgorod School icon in the Museum of History and Architecture, Novgorod: http://tinyurl.com/2wexexu
William of Hirsau (d. 1091) Born in Regensburg, William was a child oblate to the monastery of St. Emmeram. While still there he taught and wrote on mathematics, astronomy, and music. In 1069 William became abbot of Hirsau in the Black Forest, which he reformed on the model of Cluny. Under William's leadership, Hirsau became the largest monastery in Germany - forces that William used to support the cause of Gregory VII in the Investiture Contest. (see July 4)
Elias of Bourdeilles (d. 1484) Born in 1407 as count of Bourdeilles, Elias became a Franciscan at the age of ten. In 1437 he became bishop of Périgueux, in 1468 bishop of Tours, and was named a cardinal in 1483. He was famous for his written defense of Joan of Arc. A process to beatify him was begun, but never brought to completion.
Anthony Zaccaria/in Italian, Antonio Maria Zaccaria (d. 1539) was born in Cremona. After early study there he took a degree in medicine at Padua in 1524. With Dominicans as his spiritual directors he began a lay apostolate to the poor in his native city. After being ordained priest there in 1528 he became the spiritual director of a countess, and encouraged her to found a congregation of women - the "Angelicals" - dedicated to charitable works and especially care for women at risk of becoming prostitutes. Then he moved, with aristocratic patronage, to Milan, where in the early 1530s he was the leading spirit in the establishment of a new order of ascetic priests, the Clerics Regular of St. Paul Beheaded, approved by Clement VII in 1533 and focusing on preaching and on encouraging popular devotion to the Eucharist. The church of St. Barnabas in Milan eventually became the congregation's headquarters, so they are popularly known as "Barnabites." He was canonized in 1897; since 1893 his relics have reposed in the chiesa di San Barnaba in Milan.
Happy reading,
Terri Morgan
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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. - Anon