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Today, September 2, is the feast of:
Mamas/Mammas/Mames/Mammes/Mamete/Mamante of Caesarea (d. during 270-275, supposedly) The megalomartyr Mamas is a saint of Caesarea in Cappadocia of whom virtually nothing is known. Traditionally thought to have suffered under Aurelian and a patron of herdsmen and of others who work with animals, he is venerated widely in Eastern Christianity and regionally or locally in various places in the Latin West.
According to Sozomen, writing in the first half of the fifth century, a martyrial church in Caesarea said by St. Gregory of Nazianzus to have been built in Caesarea by the pre-apostate Julian and his half brother Gallus (so between 341 and 351) and to have suffered the collapse of its Julianic half was that of Mamas. Our first certain witness to Mamas’ cult, St. Basil of Caesarea's “Homilia 23” (ca. 370), presents him as an actual shepherd and shows that he was then celebrated on September 2. A sermon on Mamas by Gregory of Nazianzus adds that he milked wild does, a detail that would become - or perhaps already was - a fixture in Mamas’ legend. The latter constructs him as a sort of Christian Orpheus taming and tending wild animals on a mountain near Caesarea; in its developed versions it memorably associates him with a tame lion or lions.
He has a complicated hagiography. A now lost, very probably fourth-century Greek-language Passio seems to have given rise to two different legendary developments, one of which is represented in Latin translation by an early, fifth-century prose Passio (Mamas’ so-called encyclical Passio). The other development was an also now lost Greek-language Passio that made Mamas a scion of senatorial nobility at a place called Gangra and that probably early in the sixth century was conflated with elements from the other tradition to form an episodic Bios. That Bios in turn underlies various reworkings and adaptations in Greek, Syriac, and Armenian. In the ninth century it was known in the Latin West, as it underlies both Mamas' metrical Passio by Walafrid Strabo and a notice of Mamas by St. Rabanus Maurus; in perhaps the twelfth century it was translated into Latin by Gregory of Langres.
In the Latin West Mamas has generally been celebrated on August 17, the dies natalis given for him in his Latin Passiones. That is where he occurs in the Roman Martyrology. Today is the day in which this saint appears in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, and on which he is currently celebrated at Perreuse (Yonne) in Bourgogne, and in Orthodox calendars. The similarity of Mamas' name to words for "mother" has led to his further construction as a patron of maternity in its various aspects. (see Aug 17)
Mamas at right (Mercurius at left) in a fragmentarily preserved eleventh-century fresco on Crete (formerly in the church of Agia Varvara, Latziana, Kisamos, now in the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Collection of Chania; view is expandable): http://www.travel-to-crete.com/page.php?page_id=43
Mamas in prison, exposed to lions (1455-1460), a panel painting by Fra Filippo Lippi and workshop from the Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece now in The National Gallery, London: http://tinyurl.com/px8kjr
Mamas with wild animals, as depicted in an eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript of the Orations of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 239, fol. 27v): http://tinyurl.com/2fmfhon
Mamas as depicted in the eleventh- and twelfth-century frescoes of the Elmali (Apple) church at Göreme (Nevşehir province) in Turkey:
http://tinyurl.com/kpspoy . Since the color is off in that detail view, here's a view of the church showing part of the fresco in the arch to the immediate left (viewer's left) of the apse: http://tinyurl.com/ndgasy
Mamas (at right; at left an exterior view of the church) as depicted in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in a church of Agios Nikolaos in Kastania in Greece's Exo Mani (Messenia prefecture): http://www.zorbas.de/maniguide/scans/kastnik.jpg
Mamas as depicted (on a lion; to the left of St. George) in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7784598@N04/2152224538/sizes/o/ . There's a better view in this panorama of the frescoes in the
narthex: http://cyprus.arounder.com/asinou_church/CY000008416.html
Mamas at left (at right, St. John the Faster) as depicted in the September calendar portraits in the frescoes (betw. 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/2u6sx9b
Mamas’ martyrdom as depicted (at right, St. John the Faster) 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 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/2uzkeke
Mamas (at right) as depicted in a fresco (c1390-1400) in the originally eleventh-century but much rebuilt chiesa di San Mamete in Valsolda in Lombardy: http://tinyurl.com/my2tlg
Mamas as portrayed on a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Georgian tondo, formerly in the Gelati Monastery in Kutaisi and now in The State Museum of Fine Arts of Georgia (images in different lighting): http://www.photomuseum.org.ge/laboratory/01_en.htm and
Mamas holding his entrails (in the developed legend, he was mortally wounded there), as portrayed in a fifteenth-century ivory statuette now in the cathedral treasury at Langres: http://tinyurl.com/nwc2ca
Mamas in prison, exposed to lions, as portrayed in a panel painting by Filippo Lippi and workshop from the Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece (1455-1460) now in The National Gallery, London: http://tinyurl.com/px8kjr
Mamas (at left; at right, St. James), as depicted in a panel painting of 1455-1460, begun by Francesco Pesellino and completed by Filippo Lippi and workshop, from the Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece now in The National Gallery, London: http://tinyurl.com/o6bvwr
Mamas on his lion, as depicted in a fresco (1494) by Philippos Goul in the church of Timios Stavros tou Agiasmati near Platanistasa (Nicosia prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus: http://tinyurl.com/n8o3mb
Mamas with his lion before the Roman persecutor Alexander, as depicted in one of the eight tapestries executed by Jean Cousin the elder in c1543 for the cathedral of Langres (this one is now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris): http://tinyurl.com/nlvrc9
Mamas as depicted in a fresco of 1568 by George (Tzortzis) the Cretan in the katholikon of the Docheiariou monastery on Mt. Athos:
Theodota and her sons Evodius (Evodus), Hermogenes, and Callistus (d. c304, supposedly). The fourth-century Syriac Martyrology records for this day a feast of the three sons of Theodota, martyred at Nicomedia. The (ps-)HM enters Theodota and her sons three times, once for March 13, once for August 2, and once for today; none of its entries furnishes a location for these saints and only the entry for March 13 gives the number for the sons. That entry also adds that the entire group was martyred by fire, a detail that also occurs in a brief Passio. A more elaborate Passio of these saints that forms the third part of the Passio of the St. Anastasia of December 25, names one of the sons as Evodius and gives Nicaea as their place of martyrdom.
The names of the other two sons come from a mangled, apparently composite entry in the (ps.-)MH under April 25 and from Byzantine synaxary notices under September 1. In all of these Evodius is called Evodus. In the historical martyrologies from Bede onward and in the Roman Martyrology until its revision of 2001 the group was celebrated on August 2, with a location in Nicaea (the latter kept by the editors of the new RM when they returned the celebration to the day given in our earliest surviving source). Along with St. Anthony of Padua, Theodota is a patron saint of Felline, a frazione of Alliste on Italy's Salentine peninsula. At Felline she is called Deodata (a development from pronunciations of her name in Greek), is thought to have been a patron of the town's medieval Greek-speaking population, and is celebrated in a festival on June 10 & 11. (see Mar 13, June 10/11, Aug 2)
Scenes from the Passio of Theodota and her sons, as depicted in a (1463) copy from Paris of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 64v): http://tinyurl.com/2e4886c
Zeno of Nicomedia (d. c360) According to tradition, Zeno and companions were executed in Nicomedia during Julian the Apostate's persecution of Christians (?).
Antoninus of Apamea (d. 4th century, supposedly) The later eighth-century Weissenburg codex, actually at Wolfenbüttel, of the (ps-)HM records for September 3 a martyr Antoninus who suffered at territory of Apamea in Syria under Constantius (i.e. Constantius II, 337-61). A Greek synaxary notice fills out details, presumably from a lost Passio. This account makes him a young stonemason who violently reproached pagans of a nearby town for their idolatry, who later went back there and smashed their idols. He was asked by the bishop of Apamea to build a church dedicated to the Trinity and in the course of this labor was slain by some of the aforementioned pagans (who were very angry). Syrian and Armenian sources tell us of a memorial basilica to Antoninus at Apamea; Theodoret bears witness to Antoninus' feast there. This church is thought to have been destroyed when the city was under Persian rule in the seventh century.
The (ps.-)HM records Antoninus under today's date as well, noting his translation to Gaul. Today is also his feast in the Mozarabic Calendar. By the ninth century the monastery in today's Tarn-et-Garonne later known as Saint-Antonin-du-Rouergue claimed to have Antoninus’ head and other of his skeletal remains. By the later Middle Ages Antoninus had also acquired a legendary Inventio of relics at Palencia and a town in the county of Foix that had once been Fredelas was calling itself Appamia or Pamia (from “Apamia”, a medieval Latin spelling of Apamea) and claiming to be the place where its own native saint Antoninus has been martyred. Pamia is now Pamiers (Ariège) and its Antoninus has a rich legendary history of evangelizing in southern France and in Spain. He is the Patron of Palencia, Spain.
Antonius as depicted in a (c1414) breviary for the Use of Paris (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 318v):
Elpidius (4th century) is believed to have lived for 25 years as a hermit in a cave in Cappadocia. He attracted many disciples. His relics were later translated to Ancona in Italy.
Justus of Lyon (in French, Just) (d. late 4th century) has two Vitae, of which the longer seems to have been written shortly before 850 while the often very similar shorter one, though undated, could be an abbreviation of that text. According to both accounts, Justus had been deacon of Vienne before becoming a beloved bishop of Lyon, had after a period of civil unrest given up his episcopacy (after 31 years in office), and had, together with a young lector of Lyon named Viator, become an hermit in Egypt, where ultimately both died and whence his body was later translated to Lyon for burial. He had refused to return when his people found him. The longer account places Justus’ abdication after his participation in a council in Italy (thought to have been that of Aquileia in 381).
Some have thought that the unusual nature of a translation over so great a distance in the late fourth century makes it more probable that the wilderness to which Justus retired after his abdication was a lot closer to Lyon than Egypt. But the example of the also late fourth-century Paulinus of Trier shows that such a long-distance translation was at this time by no means impossible for a large Gallic town. Today is the date given by the Weissenburg codex of the (ps-)HM as that of Justus’ laying to rest at Lyon and of the (seemingly early seventh-century) dedication of his basilica. Ado, followed by Usuard, notes that Viator's remains were translated to Lyon along with those of Justus.
Expandable views of Justus as depicted in a late fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Langres are here (Chaumont, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 33, fol. 326v: http://tinyurl.com/5owrkz
Castor of Apt (d. 420) was a native of Nimes. He and his wife separated to join religious houses, and Castor founded a monastery at Manauque, becoming its first abbot, and was then drafted as bishop of Apt. Cassian dedicated the De institutis coenobiorum to him.
Nonnosus (d. c565) Gregory the Great tells us at third hand that Nonnosus was prior of a monastery located at the top of Mount Soracte near Rome who bore with equanimity the harshness of his abbot and whose gentle nature often softened through humility said abbot's wrath. He also tells us that N. was a thaumaturge. When the brothers needed space on the mountain for a vegetable garden, Nonnosus by his prayers displaced from the chosen site a rock so large that fifty teams of oxen could not move it. One another occasion, when Nonnosus dropped a glass lamp that he had been washing, causing it to shatter, he (fearful of abbatial ire) placed all the fragments before the altar and withdrew in prayer; returning, he found the lamp to be whole again. On yet another occasion, when the monastery had run out of oil, he had the brothers collect what little oil could be pressed from the at this time not very rich or numerous fruit of monastery's olive trees and place that in a small vessel before the altar: everyone withdrew, Nonnosus prayed, called the brothers back and instructed them to pour a tiny bit of the oil into each of many vessels, all of which on the next day were found to be full.
And that's what is known about Nonnosus, the mid-sixth-century prior on Mount Soracte, whose virtues and doings are highlighted in the RM for today and who has often been referred to as an abbot, though there is nothing in Gregory to confirm this. Gregory observes that the miracles of the rock and of the lamp have parallels operated by earlier Fathers, such as Gregory (the Thaumaturge) and Donatus (perhaps Donatus of Arezzo, if the later ascription to him of a parallel miracle is not merely inferred from the present passage). He does not add that the miracle of the oil is paralleled by Jesus' miracle of the loaves and the fishes.
Nonnosus entered the roster of the saints not from Italy but rather from the German-speaking world, where he appears in the later twelfth-century Magnum Legendarium Austriacum and in various later sources listing him for this day. By way of contrast, the Catalogus Sanctorum (c1375) of the Italian Petrus de Natalibus lists Nonnosus under saints whose feast day is not known. He is especially venerated at Freising, where he is a patron saint and where a twelfth-century Invention of his relics was grounded in a tale of a translation, about a century earlier, from the monastery to which the friend of Nonnosus who informed Gregory's informant is said to have belonged. A more plausible origin for this transalpine cult came to light in 1987 with the discovery in the Pfarrkirche St. Tiburtius in Molzbichl (Kärnten) in Austria of a late antique inscription identifying the burial site of a deacon Nonnosus who had died at an extremely advanced age on September2, 533. This development in turn clarified an eleventh-century (ca. 1055) addition to the festal calendar of the monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg listing under this day a feast of Nonnosus, deacon and confessor. Together these data permit the view that the details of Gregory's Nonnosus (whose day of death unknown) were at some time grafted on to the cult of his Vita-less synonym from Carinthia (whose dies natalis is today).
This view of Nonnosus' tomb in the cathedral of Freising: http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Nonnosus-Grab.jpg shows a space underneath through which devotees seeking assistance have crawled since the late Middle Ages in a ritual called the reptatio per cryptam.
Hieu (d. c657) Credited as the first nun of Northumbria, Hieu was veiled by Aidan and became abbess at Hartlepool. She later moved and founded a new convent, later called Healaugh after her.
Agricolus (d. c700) Agricolus became a monk at Lerins after his wife died (he was only 16!?), and was consecrated as bishop of Avignon after serving as coadjutor there for his father Bishop Magnus. Agricolus was famous for his preaching and care for the poor. He founded a daughter house of Lerins in Avignon, and also a nunnery. His tale is documented only from the fifteenth century. His most notable miracle was ending through his prayer an infestation of storks (!) in Avignon. He was named patron of Avignon in 1647. He is invoked there to bring changes in the weather.
Stephen of Hungary (1038) would disguise himself before going among the poor to do good works; pope Gregory VII ordered that his relics by translated to a chapel within the Buda church dedicated to Mary.
Lolan (d. 1034?) was a bishop in Scotland, perhaps at Kincardine near Stirling. Legend made him a fifth-century missionary from Galilee.
William of Roskilde (d. 1070) was an English (Anglo-Saxon) priest who was chaplain to King Cnut. He accompanied the king on a visit to Scandinavia and was so shocked by the ignorance and idolatry of the people he found there that he stayed as a missionary. Eventually William became bishop of Roskilde. One of the few known events of William's time in office is the confrontation he had with King Sweyn Estridsen who had some men killed in a church. William refused to admit Sweyn to his church until he had confessed and was absolved of his sin. Courtiers nearly killed William, but Sweyn did indeed confess and gave land to Roskilde church as a peace offering. He is named in Danish calendars, but has never had a liturgical feast in his honour.
Albert of Pontida/-of Prezzate (d. 1095 or 1099) and Guy/Guido/Vito of Pontida (d. later 11th century) Albert was a soldier who after being seriously wounded undertook a pilgrimage to Compostela and who in 1079 together with his companion Guy founded a Cluniac house at what today is Pontida in Lombardy. Guy became its first prior; upon his death he was succeeded by Albert. Both were interred in the priory church and remained there until after the latter's destruction by fire in 1373, when their remains were taken to Bergamo. They were returned to Pontida (now operating as a Benedictine monastery) in 1911.
Fragments of Albert's sarcophagus have been set into the altar of the modern basilica at Pontida: http://tinyurl.com/65vhnc
They are also shown in this engraving: http://www.ora-et-labora.net/image012.jpg
An expandable image of the relief with the equestrian figure is here: http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/aa32cf67.html
Margaret of Louvain (d. 1225) is described by Caesarius of Heisterbach in the sixth book of his Dialogue on Miracles; she is a popular saint without official canonization. Margaret, nicknamed "the humble," was a maidservant at an Inn who had resolved to enter a Cistercian convent (at least according to Caesarius). The inn was raided by robbers, who murdered her employers and abducted her. They killed her, too, when she fled and refused to give in to them/marry one of them. Her murdered body was found with the help of a supernatural light and angelic voices. She was buried in a special chapel in the churchyard of St Peter's collegiate church at Louvain. A cult developed after miracles were reported there. She was beatified in 1905.
Brocardus / Brocard / Burchard (blessed) (d. 1231 or 1234) According to his vita, Brocardus was born in Jerusalem in c1151. He joined the hermits on Mt. Carmel, succeeding St. Berthold as their prior. It was he who asked the patriarch Albert to draw up the Carmelite rule, thus creating the religious order. His rule is still followed by the Carmelites. Bocardus' cult was approved in 1628.
Last year we asked list member Paul Chandler to tell us more about Brocard :
"Brocard" is a later solution of the abbreviation "B." in the rule or formula vitae which the Latin hermits on Mount Carmel requested from Albert of Vercelli, patriarch of Jerusalem, sometime between 1206 and 1214: it is addressed to "dilectis in Christo filiis B. et ceteris eremitis qui sub eius obedientia iuxta fontem in monte Carmeli morantur". That's about it for what we know of "Brocard": his name started with B and in those years he was leader of the group of hermits which became the Carmelite order. He was never considered its founder. It's not certain that he was still around in 1226, pace Butler, for Honorius III's confirmation does not mention any names. It's possible of course that the later works which give his name preserve a genuine memory. Joachim Smet, author of the now standard history of the Carmelites, seems to think so. However, his name doesn't appear on the scene until the late 14th century (John Grossi, John of Hildesheim, Catalogus sanctorum); his legend is developed only in the second half of the 15th century (Thomas Bradley, Palaeonydorus, Arnold Bostius). Medieval Carmelites had much experience of invention and are probably not to be trusted even in so simple a matter as his name, not to mention the like of his papal embassy to Damascus, the healing of the vice-sultan of Egypt of leprosy and his baptism in the Jordan, etc. His cult was not prescribed till 1564, removed again in 1585, reintroduced in 1609, and has now again been suppressed.
Ingrid Elovsdotter (d. 1282 or 1288) was born in Schoningen, Sweden in c1235. She married at a young age, and after her husband's death devoted herself to the religious life. She founded the Dominican convent of Skenninge on her own estates, and entered the community herself after a long pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. The process of beatifying Ingrid was begun in 1418, but was never completed because of the Reformation. The Dominican order is again advocating her beatification.
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