Today, September 10, is the feast of:

Barypsabas (1st century) was, according to his legend, an eastern hermit who was martyred in Dalmatia. He is supposed to have brought some of Jesus' blood to Rome in a jar.

Nemesius/Nemesion of Alexandria (d. 250).  We know about the Egyptian Nemesian from an excerpt by Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica, 6. 41. 21) from St. Dionysius of Alexandria's report on the martyrs of his city and elsewhere in Egypt during the Decian persecution.  Acquitted of having been one of a band of robbers others of whom were convicted, he was quickly informed against as being a Christian.  N. was then re-arrested, was tortured more severely than the robbers had been, and was executed by being burned between the latter, thus imitating Christ in the companions of his death. [note: I do not know if this is the same saint as the one in the entry below.]

Nemesian and companions (d. 257) Nemesian was a Numidian bishop, imprisoned with eight other bishops and assorted clerics and laypeople at Alexandria. They were sentenced to labor in the marble quarries of Sigum during the persecution of Valerian, where they were worked to death. Many priests and laypeople were also sentenced to the same quarry.

Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora (d. c304?) are saints of Bithynia with a recorded cult at a place called Pythia Therma, probably today's Yalova hot springs some eleven kilometers southwest of the Turkish provincial capital of Yalova. There they presided over a healing spring and in that capacity are assumed to have succeeded a local cult of nymphs. According to their legendary Passio by Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 1272x), they were orphaned sisters who suffered under Maximian (Galerius). Menodora was tried first and executed. When her sisters were shown her corpse, instead of recanting they bravely affirmed their faith and shared her fate. Thus far their Passio.

   Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora have brief synaxary notices belonging to their traditional commemoration on this day in the medieval Greek church. They are commemorated today in Orthodox churches and in Eastern-rite churches in communion with Rome. Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora entered the RM under cardinal Baronio and left it in the revision of 2001.

   Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora as depicted in the September calendar portraits in the frescoes (betw. c1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave 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/2wkmugk

   The martyrdom of Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora as depicted in a September calendar scene in the frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć: http://tinyurl.com/3ymvs7z

Pulcheria Aelia (d. 453) was a daughter of the emperor Arcadius and Eudoxia, the elder sister of the emperor Theodosius II, who in 408 succeeded to the purple when he was seven and she was thirteen. Six years later she was granted the title Augusta. Personally very pious, she took a vow of virginity and urged her two sisters to do the same (thus reducing the risk that an ambitious husband might do away with Theodosius and attempt to succeed by virtue of his marriage). She gets the credit for the aggressively pro-Christian tone of Theodosius' legislation, which throughout his reign sought to make things difficult for pagans and, especially, for Jews.

   When Theodosius grew up, Pulcheria came into conflict with his wife, a disagreement exacerbated by the fact that the new empress supported the Nestorians while P. was orthodox. Pulcheria also supported orthodoxy against monophysitism. In the controversy between the patriarchs Nestorius (of Constantinople) and Cyril (of Alexandria) Pulcheria sided with the latter and pressured Theodosius to exile Nestorius after Nestorius had been condemned by the Council of Ephesus. She was accused of infidelity with 'a handsome but gouty officer', and exiled to Jerusalem, where she entered a convent. After Theodosius' death in a hunting accident in 450, she returned to court and nominated Marcian as emperor, who was militarily elected to the Throne. She then married him on condition that her chastity be respected. In 451 the two of them called the Council of Chalcedon. Pulcheria's support of what became Chalcedonian orthodoxy probably had at least as much to do with her recognition as a saint by the churches of Rome and of Constantinople as did her extensive works of Christian charity. Nestorians and Monophysites did not think well of her.

   She was a great enthusiast for sacred relics, so much so that several very important ones were later associated with her. She was said to have been influential in the translation of an arm of St. Stephen from Jerusalem to Chalcedon where she founded an oratory to receive it (Theophanes Confessor and others after him relate that on the night that the relic arrived in Chalcedon Stephen appeared to Pulcheria in a dream to announce the fulfillment of her desire that this happen). In 438 she had the relics of St. John Chrysostom brought with great pomp to Constantinople. According to Sozomen, it was Pulcheria, informed by dream visions, who in 446 discovered in Constantinople the buried relics of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.

   St. John Damascene preserves a tradition whereby Marcian and Pulcheria, having been informed at the Council of Chalcedon that Mary's bodily relics were not to be had, received in 452 the Virgin's winding sheet that had been kept at Gethsemane and placed it in a church they had founded in the Blachernae section of Constantinople (this is one of three Marian churches in the city said by Theodore the Lector to have been founded by Pulcheria alone).

   Her entry in the Suda incorporates a Nestorian assessment: http://tinyurl.com/j22y3

Finian of Moville (d. c579) is regarded as one of the outstanding Irish scholars of the sixth century. As a young monk in Strathclyde, he attracted the love of a Pictish princess who was made ill by his saintly indifference; he eventually matched her with a more suitable candidate. (The preface to the hymn 'Parce Domine'; Liber Hymnorum, i, p.22, says that the princess Drusticc was sent for reading lessons to magister Mugint at Whithorn, where Finnian and his companions were also students. There she developed a passion for one of Finnian's companions, Rioc, and made a deal with Finnian to trade him her library books for the lad. Finnian, however, tricked her by sending to her another of his companions, Talmach, under cover of darkness, masquerading as Rioc. The product of this tryst was St Lonan.)  He is said to have studied at the Scottish monastery of Candida Casa, St. Ninian’s Whithorn. His legend credits him with a pilgrimage to Rome, where he was supposedly ordained. When he returned to Ireland, according to tradition he brought a manuscript of Vulgate, perhaps the first that reached Ireland. There is a late story that Finian's student, St. Columcille, took Finian's copy of the Psalter and copied it without his mentor's permission. This is supposed to have been the cause of the quarrel that led to Columcille leaving Ireland. After his study abroad, Finian founded two monasteries, at Dromin (Co. Louth) and at Moville (Co. Down) in c550. He gained a reputation as a severe ascetic: legend says that at Finian's first monastic foundation, seven monks died of hunger and cold, after which Finian lessened the rigors of his monastic rule. Like S. Frigidian (or Frediano) of Lucca, he changed the course of a river by prayer, so that a mill could be built close to his monastery.

Salvius of Albi (d. 584) was a lawyer who became a monk, then a recluse. In 574 he became bishop of Albi. He was a friend of Gregory of  Tours. During the plague epidemic in his diocese, Salvius cared personally for the sick, finally catching the disease himself and dying. When he felt himself dying, he ordered his coffin to be made and changed his clothes before giving up the ghost.

Theodard of Maastricht  (d. 669) who was originally from Speyer, succeeded St. Remaclus as abbot of Stablo-Malmdey in 653 and became bishop of Maastricht sometime before 660. He complained to the king about pillaging of Church goods - and was attacked and murdered, by robbers, it was said. When he was held up by in the forest of Bienwald, he made a long speech to them, to which they replied with a quotation from Horace before killing him.

Aubert/Autbert/Autbertus/ in Breton, Alverzh of Avranches (d. c725) is the bishop of Avranches to whom the Archangel Michael is said to have appeared on October 16 in or around the year 708 and to have instructed, both then and in subsequent appearances, to erect a church in his honor on a seaside elevation called Mons Tumba ('Mount Tomb') and now known the world over as Mont-Saint-Michel. Legend reports that on three occasions he fell asleep on the Rocher de la Tombe and dreamed that the archangel Michael told him to do this. Aubert is further said to have obtained relics of Michael from his sanctuary on the Gargano peninsula of Apulia and within a year to have founded a monastic church on the site in question. The core of the story is found in the perhaps mid-ninth-century Apparitio Michaelis in Monte Tumba, was repeated in Aubert's own Vita, and became very widely known thanks to its adoption by Jacopo da Varazze in the Legenda Aurea.

   In 1012 Aubert's putative remains were discovered at Mont-Saint-Michel and most were then placed in a shrine and given a formal Elevatio at the monastery church. The skull was later sent to Avranches. Here is a view of it in its present reliquary at Avranches' église Saint-Gervais: http://www.ville-avranches.fr/tourisme/photos/tresor02.jpg This skull is a purported Michaelic relic. The oldest surviving inventory of the relics at Mont-Saint-Michel dates from 1396. According to the abbot who drew it up, Aubert's head (thought to have been part of the remains discovered in the early eleventh century) had been placed in a separate reliquary in 1131 by an abbot Bernard who had had engraved thereon (the reliquary, obviously, not the head) a statement identifying it as the head of the founder, blessed Aubertus, and adding that a hole in the head was proof of the angelic revelation (“Foramen sis certus revelatione angelica rei bonae”). In the 1396 inventory itself Foramen has become vestigium. The story is that Michael placed his finger on Aubert's head, creating the hole. It's now thought that the hole is the result of trepanning.

   A twelfth(?)-century statue of Aubert at the abbey: http://abbayedumontsaintmichel.cef.fr/images/aubert.jpg

      http://unesarthoise.blog50.com/media/00/01/384769830.JPG

   The images on this page (all expandable) are of the full-page illumination of Aubert's vision in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century cartulary of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel (Avranches, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 210, fol. 4v): http://tinyurl.com/5fhujb

      This detail shows Michael touching Autbert's head with a finger: http://tinyurl.com/5z2qsz

   Michael appearing to Aubert as depicted in a (1348) copy of the Legenda Aurea in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. Français 241, fol. 260r): http://tinyurl.com/nxeec8

    A fifteenth-century English alabaster statue of a St. Aubert said in the accompanying text to be today's saint: http://tinyurl.com/ms5bqr

Serlo (blessed) (d. 1158) was a Benedictine monk who in 1140 became abbot of the monastery of Savigny, which gave him charge of a monastic

confederation of over 30 houses in France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. In 1147 Serlo turned over the entire federation to the Cistercian order, specifically to Clairvaux, which became the mother house. Serlo lived from 1153 until his death as a simple monk of Clairvaux.

Cosmas of Aphrodisia (d. 1160) was a native of Palermo. He became bishop of Aphrodisia and, when the Muslims conquered his city, died of ill-treatment.

Oglerius/Ogerius/Ogier of Trino/-of Lucedio (blessed) (d. 1214) The Piedmontese Oglerius entered religion, probably as an early-teen oblate, at the nearby Cistercian abbey of Locedio (today's Lucedio), a daughter house of La Ferté founded in 1124. Together with his abbot, Peter II, he was employed as a papal emissary during the crusade preparations of Celestine III and Innocent III; when Peter (who was later archbishop of Thessaloniki and Latin patriarch of Antioch) became abbot of La Ferté in 1205, Oglerius succeeded him as abbot at Locedio. Oglerius is best known for his two surviving sermon collections, the Tractatus de laudibus Sanctae Dei Genetricis ("Treatise of Praises of the Holy Mother of God"; before 1205) and the Expositio super Evangelium in Coena Domini or Super Evangelium in Ultima Cena ("Exposition on the Lord's/Last Supper"; 1205-1214). The first, addressed to nuns, is an effective piece of spiritual writing in dialogue form, with the Virgin narrating events of her life in her own voice. One section of it, separately transmitted as Mary's Planctus ("Lament"; there are varying fuller forms of this title), was soon attributed to St. Bernard, as was also the Expositio (re-attributed to Oglerius only in 1653). His remains are in the parish church of San Bartolomeo at Trino. His cult was confirmed in 1875.

Nicolas of Tolentino (d. 1305) Nicolas was born in c1245. Prompted by an angelic dream-visitation, his parents had made a pilgrimage to the church of St. Nicholas at Bari to obtain that saint's intercession in overcoming the aging mother's apparent sterility; while they were there, St. Nicholas appeared to them in a dream, told them on the authority of Christ that they would have a son and that his name would be Nicholas in honor of the saint who had assisted them.  Early Lives of our Nicolas tell us this; that by Peter of Monterubbiano is clearly and elegantly written and repays reading. At perhaps the age of fourteen N. became an oblate at the Augustinian convent in his native town; he studied both here and later at Cingoli. In 1275 he left his native region (Sant' Angelo in Pontano) for Tolentino, where he became a priest. After his ordination he made a vow to preach publicly every day, which he proceeded to do for thirty years, with enormous success. His daily sermons attracted large crowds, and already in his lifetime Nicolas was regarded as a saint - a belief encouraged by many miracles. He also appears to have been good at converting notorious sinners. He spent the remainder of his life as a spiritual counselor and confessor in nearby Augustinian houses, working principally with the poor and the infirm; for approximately thirty years until his death he was based at the Augustinian convent at Tolentino. Nicholas' canonization process began immediately after his death, but was not completed until 1446 because of the Great Schism. When he was canonized in 1446 over 300 miracles were attributed to him. His cult was restricted to local calendars in 1969.

   By 1320 the Augustinians of Tolentino had built a large hall (the so-called Cappellone di San Nicola) over Nicolas’ gravesite, attaching it to their thirteenth-century church and richly decorating it with frescoes executed over the next five years by artisans from Rimini. Shortly after his canonization in 1446 an altar and a wooden cult statue of Nicolas were added to the Cappellone. Here is a panel painting of him by Lorenzo di Bicci (late fourteenth-century) : http://www.carismi.it/opencms/la_banca/arte/san_nicola.html

   Panel painting (Nicolo di Pietro Gerini; ?early fifteenth-century): http://tinyurl.com/5s47lx

   Statue (Francesco di Valdambrino; 1407): http://tinyurl.com/6564cw

   Panel painting (Piero della Francesca; betw. 1454 and 1469): http://tinyurl.com/3xe8dog

   Fresco (Pietro da Saluzzo; betw. 1469 and 1480): http://tinyurl.com/62bsoq

Happy reading,

Terri Morgan

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“The nice thing about studying history is that you can always find people who are a lot weirder than you are.” – Delia Sherman