Today, September 9, is the feast of:
Hyacinth, Alexander, and Tiburtius of the Sabina (?) The (ps-)HM enters under today the following notice: in Sabinis miliario XXX Jacinti, Alexandri, Tiburti; in various forms, this entry is repeated in historical martyrologies of the Carolingian period. The presence here of not otherwise attested Alexander and Tiburt(i)us has been considered erroneous. They were dropped from the RM in its revision of 2001. Hyacinth was retained, presumably thanks to his martyrial basilica recorded by the Liber Pontificalis in its notice of St. Leo III (795-816). This reported resting place makes him seemingly distinct from the Hyacinth of September 11's Protus and Hyacinth, martyrs of the Via Salaria vetus. A legendary Passio of yet another Hyacinth who is said to have been cast into the sea and to have survived only to be decapitated (Hyacinthus in Portu Romano) was used by Rabanus Maurus in his notice of today's Hyacinth.
Gorgonius of Rome (?) is listed, under this date, in the Depositio martyrum of 354 and in the (ps-)HM as a martyr of the Via Labicana. The latter adds that he was buried at the cemetery ad duas lauros and, uniquely in our surviving testimony, that this was called the cimiterium sancti Gorgoni. We know nothing about him. Neither, apparently, did pope St. Damasus (d. 384), whose epitaph for him (Ferrua no. 32) is altogether uninformative. Gorgonius’ grave near the church of St. Helen is routinely cited in the early medieval pilgrim itineraries for Rome. His feast entered for today in the Gelasian Sacramentary and in the historical martyrologies from Bede onward. In about 763 the enterprising St. Chrodegang of Metz had Gorgonius’ relics translated to the abbey he had founded at today's Gorze (Moselle) in the Lorraine, which may have been named Monasterium s. Gorgonii.
In the ninth century Gorgonius received a personality when Ado, under today's date, identified him with the Gorgonius of March 12, a martyr of Nicomedia under Diocletian, and averred that it was the latter's remains that had been placed in the cemetery on the Via Labicana. Ado's fairly circumstantial account (repeated in summary form by Usuard) follows Eusebius in making this Gorgonius a member of Diocletian's imperial household. Later he came to be viewed in the West as a soldier-saint. He is so depicted, for example, on medieval seals of the cathedral at Minden on the Weser (in today's Nordrhein-Westfalen), whither his relics are said to have been translated from Gorze in the tenth century. He is still the patron of what is now the Catholic parish church there (still called a 'Dom') of Sts. Peter and Gorgonius.
Here is a mid-fifteenth-century statuette of him (sword lacking), seemingly from a shrine: http://www.dom-minden.de/domschatz/figuren/gorgoniusstatuette.html
Dorotheus, Peter, and Gorgonius (d. 303) The story of these saints is recorded by Eusebius. They were favored eunuchs at the court of Diocletian. But when Christians were blamed for a fire that destroyed the palace in Nicomedia, the three were arrested and tortured; Gorgonius and Dorotheus were eventually hanged, Peter died while being grilled on a gridiron. The bodies of the three were thrown into the sea. Despite this early evidence of their lives and deaths, though, they didn't make the cut in the calendar reform of 1969, being confined to local calendars.
Isaac/Sahak the Great (d. 439) was a son of Nerses I, the Katholicos (sort of a patriarch) of Armenia. Isaac studied in Constantinople and married, but when his wife died young he became a monk. He became Katholicos of Armenia too, in 390, and he continued his father's work in bringing his church more in line with Byzantine custom and law; this meant that he himself became the last of the house of St Gregory the Enlightener to rule over his church. He won recognition of an independent Armenian Church. He ended the married episcopate, enforced canon law, fought Zoroastrianism, built churches and schools, and supported the translation of the Bible and other religious texts into the vernacular and established a national liturgy. He was forced into retirement when the Persians invaded Armenia in 428.
Ciarán/Kiaran/Kieran, etc./in Latin, Kiaranus, Queranus, etc. of Clonmacnoise (d. 549?) The Irish monastic founder Ciaran (sometimes called “the Younger” to differentiate him from Ciaran of Saighir) is known from several Latin Vitae and Irish Lives as well as from references and anecdotes in the Vitae and vernacular Lives of other Irish saints. His vita contains many great anecdotes; in a practical joke that he played against his mother, he made it so that the blue dye she was using became so strong that anything touching it (including dogs and cats) became entirely blue. Ciarán is said to have left his parents at a young age, in order to seek wisdom. He is said to have studied under St. Finnian at Clonard and under St. Enda on Aran. Whereas some may think this as legendary as just about everything else that's said of him, if we can trust the statement in Finnian's Office that he had three thousand students there seems little reason to suppose Ciaran might not have been one of them. According to tradition, Ciarán died at the young age of 33, perhaps of the plague that swept Ireland. According to the Irish Life of Ciarán, though, the cause of Ciarán's death was jealousy. The saints of Ireland envied Ciarán for his goodness, and all of them but St. Columcille prayed and fasted against their youthful rival, asking God to shorten Ciarán's life, lest he take over the whole island. Ciaran was remembered as a holy man of exemplary qualities and as the man who established the monastery of Clonmacnoise on the river Shannon in today's County Offaly close to the geographic center of Ireland.
His monastery flourished between the Norse raids of the eighth century and the English conquest of Ireland in the later twelfth, after which it went into a period of decline that lasted until the Dissolution in the sixteenth century. Here is an aerial view: http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1020079.jpg . The now seemingly slightly isolated structure near the center of the enclosure is called Temple Ciaran and is reputed to have been built over the site of the saint's grave. The present structure, which is thought to have succeeded a wooden one at the same spot, is originally of the tenth century, though much of its present fabric is later. Also from the tenth century is the monastery's Cross of the Scriptures, now kept in the Visitors Centre (with a copy exposed to the elements where the original once stood). It's carved on all four sides. There are expandable views of it in the first two rows of images here: http://highcrosses.org/clonmacnoise/index.htm . The two figures in the lowest panel shown here are thought to represent Ciaran and the Irish high king Diarmait mac Cerbaill planting the first stake in the erection of the monastery: http://tinyurl.com/5n9q5t
By some estimates there are as many as 26 early Irish saints named Ciara/n. The founding abbot of Clonmacnois is certainly the best-known. Ciara/n supposedly died in his early 30s. His reputation was fostered by the monks who came after him and made Clonmacnois one of the major centers of learning in its day. As part of his legend, Ciara/n is credited with writing down the major epic, Ta/in Bo Cuai/lgne, and other important early Irish tales from the mythological and Ulster cycles. As writing material, Ciara/n was said to have used pages reputedly made, at least in part, from the hide of the cow he brought with him from home when he first settled at Clonmacnois. Although not thought to be that old, this MSS., Lebor na hUidre (LU) or "Book of the Dun Cow" is one of the oldest and most important collections of early Irish literature. It is considered the oldest manuscript to be written entirely in Irish; it almost certainly came from Clonmacnois, but dates to several centuries (at least) after Ciaran's death (perhaps slightly before 1106). The manuscript contains an early (though incomplete) version of the Ta/in Bo/ Cuailgne, an important epic. The story of the Ta/in was said to have been lost and was recovered through poetic invocation of the dead upon which it was recorded for posterity. In most versions, a poet invoked the spirit of the hero, Fergus mac Roich, who retold the story. But in one version, Ciara/n did the invoking and recording. Ciaran is accounted one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.
Audomarus/Omer (d. c670) was born near Coutance. He and his father became monks together at Luxeuil and after twenty years Audomarus was named bishop of Therouanne (missionary bishop in the Pas-de-Calais). He reformed the place, cared for the poor, and founded the monastery of Sithiu. He was an active missionary, pulling in many monks to help with his work, some of whom became known as saints: Mommolinus, Bertrand, Gertinus. In old age, his blindness was cured by the relics of St Vedast.
Bettelin (8th century) was a disciple of Guthlac. After Guthlac's death he became a monk at Crowland. It is said that in his younger, not-so-saintly years, he almost slit St Guthlac's throat while shaving him, in the hope that he would succeed him. He is patron of town of Stafford.
Osmanna/Osmana/in French, Osmane (d. 8th century?) is a very poorly attested saint of west France and of the region around Paris, where she occurs under this day in a fourteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris and in a fourteenth-century missal for the Use of Saint-Denis, where she had a chapel. She may also be the Osmanna celebrated on August 16 in a twelfth-century missal for the Use of Tours. Legendarily, she is said to have been an Irish princess who, preferring virginity to an arranged marriage, fled to today's Saint-Brieuc in Brittany, where she lived out her life as an hermit. A similar story (but with Brie rather than Saint-Brieuc and with Osmanna becoming a nun, not a hermit) is told by Thomas of Cantimpré, in his Vita sanctae Lutgardis, of the saint Osanna of the abbey of Notre-Dame at Jouarre (Seine-et-Marne), who is honored in the crypt of its church with a thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century cenotaph topped by a gisant depicting her as a royal:
http://www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/1606-10922
Whether she (in French, Osanne and Ozanne) is the same saint as the Osanna venerated in Paris and at Saint-Denis (as her location in the Île de France would suggest) or else an originally different one with much the same legend is not clear.
In the early fifteenth century relics of Osanna were translated from Saint-Denis to an originally thirteenth-century church at Féricy (Seine-et-Marne) since known as the église Sainte-Osmane. The latter's proximity to Fontainebleau facilitated her veneration by the queens Anne of Austria and Maria Theresa of Austria. Osanna is the patron saint of Sainte-Osmane (Sarthe).
Wulfhilda of Barking (d. c1000) According to a great, if perhaps somewhat legendary account, Wulfhilda was brought up in the convent of Wilton (England). King Edgar discovered Wulfhilda when she was a novice and wanted to marry her, but she wanted to remain a nun. She was tricked by her aunt (the abbess of Wherwell) into going where the king was waiting for her, but escaped through the drains, pursued by Edgar until she reached sanctuary. Only then did Edgar renounce his desires and made Wulfhilda abbess of Barking. He took her cousin, Wulftrude, as a mistress instead). She was driven from her position for twenty years by Edgar's second wife, only reinstated in c993.
Wulftrude is also a saint, d. c988. She was a nun at Wilton when she became Edgar's mistress (in time bearing St. Edith of Wilton). After the child was born, Wulftrude went back to being a nun and was later abbess of Wilton.
Gaufrid (blessed) (d. 1139) was a disciple of Vitalis of Savigny, succeeding Vitalis as abbot in 1122. Gaufrid is responsible for the spread of the Savignac congregation in Normandy, England, and Ireland - numbering a total of 29 monasteries by the time of his death.
Seraphina Sforza (blessed) (d. 1478) was the daughter of the count of Urbino, married to Alexander Sforza, duke of Pesaro. Alexander treated her cruelly and finally drove her out. She took refuge at a local house of Poor Clares, eventually joining the community and becoming abbess.
Luisa da Savoia, widow (1503) established the first known poor-box, into which every person in her house who used foul language had to put a contribution.
Joseph of Volokolamsk (d. 1515) A Russian, Joseph became abbot of Borovsk in 1477. He was an ardent reformer, but his monks weren't interested in being reformed. So he finally left and founded a new monastery, Volokolamsk, which was dedicated to helping the broader community outside of the monastery - a new and controversial ideal for Russian monasticism. Joseph's views on proper monastic goals were accepted by the council of Moscow in 1503.
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