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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Today, September 18, is the feast of: Oceanus (?) is a martyr of Nicomedia in Bithynia (today's İzmit in Turkey's Kocaeli province) entered under today both in the fourth-century Syriac Martyrology and in the rather later (ps-)HM. Other than that, we know nothing about him. Ferreolus (in French, Ferréol) of Vienne (d. 250 or 251, supposedly) There are at least five French saints named Ferreolus. This one's cult is attested in the fifth century by St. Sidonius Apollinaris, by St. Gregory of Tours, who reports that his contemporary bishop St. Mamertus of Vienne translated his remains, and by Venantius Fortunatus. He has a legendary Passio that makes him a military tribune (according to legend, Julian of Brioude’s commanding officer) stationed near Vienne and arrested in the Decian persecution. He offered himself as a substitute for another man who had been condemned. He was imprisoned in a latrine pit, escaped through the sewer, but was recaptured and beheaded. The eighth-century crypt of his former church in Vienne was rediscovered in 1859. He is the patron of prisoners. Methodius of Olympus (d. c311) According to Jerome, Methodius was bishop of Olympus (Lycia) and then Tyre. He was a famous preacher and scholar. He was an important philosopher-theologian: his Banquet of the Ten Virgins is a Christian take-off of Plato's Symposium, and he wrote several treatises including a refutation of Origen's teaching on the resurrection. He was martyred at Chalcis, Greece. Eustorgius I, bishop of Milan (d. c350) According to the testimony of Athanasius the Great, Eustorgius was a vigorous opponent of Arianism. His cult seems to have begun very shortly after his death; Ambrose already speaks of him as a confessor. The (ps-)HM gives today as the date of his laying to rest. His Vita is no earlier than the eleventh century, probably of the twelfth, and quite unreliable. A late sixth- or early seventh-century funerary inscription in verse relates a miracle of his, indicating that by this time Eustorgius was already quite legendary: his sepulcher was originally constructed for an emperor whose oxen could not move it but he (Eustorgius) was able to draw it where he wished with the aid of two small heifers. He also had the church in Milan later named S. Eustorgio built, for which he acquired the relics of the Three Kings (or so it is averred). Sinerius/Synerius/Senarius/(in early modern texts) Senator/(in French) Senier or Sinier (d. later 6th cent., supposedly) is traditionally one of the first four bishops of Avranches. In that city's medieval lists of these worthies his place varies. By the later sixteenth century, though, it seems to have become accepted that he had succeeded the fairly well dated bishop St. Paternus (d. c565). A breviary for the Use of Rouen from 1578 contains a brief, legendary Vita of Sinerius divided into nine lections (BHL 7575). This presents him as a holy man of the territory of Coutances who once he had succeeded to the see of Avranches operated several miracles, including curing a blind man, expelling three demons from a woman, and healing the badly putrescent sexual organs of a girl. Ferreolus of Limoges (d. late 6th century; perhaps after 591) St, Gregory of Tours reports that as bishop of Limoges Ferreolus calmed a riot that had broken out there in 579 and that he rebuilt the fire-destroyed basilica of St. Martin at today's Brive-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze). He is also recorded as a participant in the council of Mācon in 583. A Vita of St. Aredius of Limoges (earliest witness is of the late ninth or early tenth century) has Ferreolus aid this abbot who died in 591 and says that he presided at the latter's funeral. Eumenes (7th century) was bishop of Gortyn (Crete). He opposed the imperially-sponsored doctrine of monothelitism (that Jesus has only one will), for which he was exiled to the Egyptian Thebaid. He died there, but his relics were returned to his diocese, where so many miracles were associated with them that Eumenes got the nickname "wonderworker." Richardis (in French, Richarde) (d. c895) Conjectured to have been a daughter of a count of Alsace, she married in about 860 a Pippinid named Charles who was a younger son of Louis the German and at the time count of the Breisgau. In 865 Charles became king of Alemannia (Swabia and Raetia) and set about creating a capital for himself at Sélestat in Alsace. In about 880, using property of her own, Richardis, who had become a patron of monasteries, founded nearby an abbey for women at today's Andlau (Bas-Rhin). On February 12, 881, having succeeded his brother Carloman in Italy and Bavaria, Charles was crowned emperor (we know him as Charles III or, less neutrally, Charles the Fat) and Richardis received the title Augusta. She used the occasion to have the abbey at Andlau placed under papal protection. After Charles’s deposition in 887 (or perhaps a little before that - see the next paragraph), Richardis withdrew to the abbey at Andlau, where she died and was buried. The early tenth-century chronicle of Regino of Prüm reports that in 887, while he was yet emperor, Charles accused Richardis of adultery with one of their familiares who was now bishop of Vercelli. Richardis proved not only that the accusation was untrue but that she had maintained her virginity through the twelve [sic] years of her marriage to the emperor, and then she withdrew to Andlau. This story remained alive throughout the Middle Ages and was supplemented by a legend that Richardis had vindicated herself by successfully undergoing an ordeal by fire in the form of walking across red-hot plowshares (the locus classicus is in the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik). In the 1030s and 1040s the abbess of Andlau was a cousin of bishop Bruno of Toul, an Alsatian better known to history as pope St. Leo IX. It was during this time that the abbey's church of Sts. Peter and Paul received the earlier part of its present crypt. In 1049 the newly consecrated pope performed an Elevatio of Richardis, placing her in a new grave in this crypt. This was not simply an act of patriotic piety: Leo also transferred the abbey from papal protection to that of his family, the counts of Eg(u)isheim, and persuaded his younger relative Henry III to elevate it to the status of an imperial abbey. Richardis, of course, was the abbey's saint. In legend, Richardis, sited the abbey on a place where she saw a she-bear digging a hole in the ground. The crypt has both a statue of the bear and an opening in the pavement corresponding to the hole of the legend: http://tinyurl.com/5xwj5k . There's also a bear on the facade: http://tinyurl.com/4sg8xp . In around 1350 her relics were placed in a new, raised tomb (a Hochgrab). Though the abbey is no more, the church is still a church and pilgrims are said still to come to Richardis' resting place. Lantpert / Lambert of Freising (d. 957) became bishop of Freising in 937. His time in office was a difficult period, thanks to large-scale Magyar raids, and he apparently won a reputation for preserving his flock. This grew to a folk cult; a fifteenth-century legend reports that in 955 the Magyars were prevented from attacking Freising by several days of dense fog that appeared at Lantpert's prayer. Lantpert is also reported to have stopped the burning of his city by the Magyars with his prayers. Simon of Crespy (d. c1080) was count of Crespy in Valois, brought up at William the Conqueror's court. He was converted to a religious life by the sight of his own father's decomposing body, and set of on a pilgrimage to Rome. But he stopped at the monastery of St. Claude in the Jura, where he became a monk. Gregory VII summoned him to Rome in 1080 to enter papal service, but he died at Rome. Happy reading, Terri Morgan -- “The nice thing about studying history is that you can always find people who are a lot weirder than you are.” – Delia Sherman ********************************************************************** 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