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Today, November 21, is the feast of:
The Presentation of Mary in the Temple. Originally a commemoration of the dedication of the church of S. Maria Nova in Jerusalem in the year 543, by the 8th century the eastern church had adopted this day to celebrate the Virgin Mary being turned over to the Temple at a young age. The Presentation of Mary is first recorded in the Protevangelium of James (dated as early as the second half of the second century), an apocryphal infancy gospel dedicated more to Mary's birth and upbringing than to Jesus’, and in the infancy gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. The feast is thought to be probably of Syrian origin. In the early (pre-Byzantine) liturgical calendar from Palestine preserved in a Georgian-language version in the tenth-century Codex sinaiticus the feast is entered under November 20. In the Greek church it is first documented from the eleventh century; it is said to be first recorded in witnesses of the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople (e.g. the so-called Menologion of Basil II). By the later twelfth century it was important enough in Constantinople that the law courts did not sit during it. The feast spread to the Latin West in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was definitively included in the Roman Calendar by Sixtus V in 1585.
Some depictions:
Mosaic, katholikon of the monastery of the BVM at Daphni in Attika (late eleventh-century):
http://www.eikonografos.com/album/displayimage.php?pid=5915&fullsize=1
Manuscript illumination (Paris, BnF, ms. Grec 1208, fol. 87v; twelfth-century), upper register: http://tinyurl.com/ygyxgfr
Giotto, fresco in the Arena Chapel (Cappella dei Scrovegni), Padua (1303-1305): http://tinyurl.com/6ccv6o
Fresco (c1312-1321) in the sanctuary of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo: http://tinyurl.com/yam5dg9
Fresco (c1313-1320) in the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in southern Serbia: http://tinyurl.com/yezz9d3 , Detail (the Theotokos before Zechariah): http://tinyurl.com/y88ar7f
Mosaic, Chora Church, Istanbul (between 1315 and 1321), vault in the esonarthex: http://tinyurl.com/yebthnd
Icon (14th-century) formerly in the church of the Peribleptos at Ohrid, now in the Icon Gallery in the same complex: http://www.soros.org.mk/konkurs/019/eng/i38.htm
Guariento di Arpo, Coronation of the Virgin Altarpiece (1344), now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA:
http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/browse_title.php?id=M.1987.3.18.P
Manuscript illumination in a later fourteenth-century Speculum humanae salvationis produced at Bologna (Paris, BnF, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. Arsenal 593 [fols. 1-42], fol. 7r), at left: http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=07907102&E=1&I=147863&M=imageseule
Manuscript illumination in a fifteenth-century Speculum humanae salvationis produced at Basel (Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 512, fol. 6v), at left: http://tinyurl.com/yhf9kew
Rufus, disciple of the Apostles (d. 1st century) is the Rufus living at Rome to whom, as well as to his mother, St. Paul sends greetings at Romans 16:13. He could be the Rufus named at Mark 15:21 as a son of Simon of Cyrene. Later tradition makes Rufus a bishop somewhere in the east.
Maurus of Parentium /Mavro of Poreč (d. probably late 3d or very early 4th century) is Istria's first historically attested bishop. He is the local saint of Poreč in Croatia, where he is depicted as a martyr in the apse mosaic of its famous mid sixth-century Basilica Euphrasiana:
http://www.omniplan.hu/2000-Croatia/11-Opatija-Porec-Pula/388-Porec.jpg & http://www.porec-appartements.de/images/basilika2.jpg
As the ancient Roman name of Porec was Parentium, it seems better so to identify Maurus than to follow the practice of recent "western"-language accounts whose listings of him as “Maurus of [Italian-language] Parenzo”. In the seventh century Pope John IV, who was of Dalmatian origin, removed to Rome Maurus' relics along with those of other Istrian and Dalmatian saints. Maurus is said to be among the saints depicted in the Lateran Baptistery's Chapel of St. Venantius, though he is not one of the figures of its apse mosaic: http://www.santamelania.it/arte_fede/giovbatt/thumbs/img02.jpg
Agapius of Caesarea (d. 306) We know about Agapius from Eusebius, who tells us that he had been arrested in the second year of Diocletianic persecution and that he had been kept in prison at Caesarea in Palestine for two years, was frequently tortured, and was on several occasions threatened with execution by being thrown to the beasts. Finally Agapius was brought out into the amphitheater in the presence of the emperor Maximinus (Daia), refused an opportunity to apostatize, was exposed to a bear that mauled him and towards which he is said to have run, survived, and was drowned in the sea on the following day. (see Nov 20)
Gelasius I (d. 496) was born in Rome (of African descent) and eventually became an assistant and advisor to Pope Felix II. He succeeded Felix in 492. He had a very vigorous five-year pontificate. Gelasius continued his predecessor's policy of opposing the Christology of the patriarchs of Constantinople from Acacius onward, considered by western Chalcedonians to be monophysite, even referring to the bishop of Constantinople as 'an unimportant suffragan of Heraclea'. In the course of this activity he wrote his De duabus naturis in Christo and other treatises as well the letter to the emperor Anastasius I for which he is now best known and in which he affirmed the primacy of the ecclesiastical over the secular power. He was an active opponent of the Pelagians and Manichaeans. He insisted on communion in both kinds due to Manicheans' regard of wine as unlawful, and their abstinence from the eucharistic cup. Gelasius also set his face against the revived festival of Lupercalia in Rome, getting it cancelled permanently. Many of his writings are still extant. Neither the so-called Gelasian Decree attempting to establish a canon of Holy Writ nor the Gelasian Sacramentary are now considered artefacts of Gelasius' papacy, though their nomenclature bears witness to the once standard nature of these attributions.
Here's Gelasius at left, with pope St. Gregory I at right, in the later ninth-century Sacramentary of Charles the Bald:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Gelasius_I-Karl-Gregor_I.jpg
Columbanus (d. 615) was born in Leinster in 543. According to his hagiographer, the saint left his family home after being tempted by women, stepping over the prostrate body of his mother who had laid down in the doorway to keep him from going. Columbanus went first to the monastery of Gleenish, on Lough Erne, then to Bangor, where he remained as a monk for about 25 years. In 587, though, Columbanus decided to go in peregrination to the Continent. On arrival in Brittany with twelve followers, he founded the monastery of Annegray and wrote his own monastic Rule (which is much harsher than Benedict’s). Soon he received support from the Merovingian King Childebert of Burgundy, and with royal assistance founded the monastery of Luxeuil in c590. However, the saint quarreled with Childebert's successor Theuderic II. Theuderic's grandmother, Brunhild, had called on Columbanus to bless Theuderic's bastard children. The saint refused, cursing them instead. As a result, Columbanus and his Irish followers were deported in 610. They were sent toward Ireland, but while still in Frankish territory they escaped from their guards after their ship ran aground. Columbanus spent some time in the Frankish kingdom of Neustria, then went on to northern Italy, where he the Lombard king gave him a ruined church and some land at Bobbio, between Genova and Piacenza. There, he founded the monastery of Bobbio in 612.
His feast date is uncertain, Butler and Attwater says the 23rd, while Farmer is more specific: November 21, the 23rd in Ireland'. Cappelli's Cronologia agrees with Farmer. The 13th century Ordinary of Chartres Cathedral says Columbanus is celebrated with 3 lessons on November 21.
Maurus of Cesena (later 9th - earlier 10th century?) Peter Damian's eleventh-century Life of Maurus tells us that he was the nephew of a pope (once identified as John IV, more recently as John X) who made him bishop of today's Cesena in the Romagna. With papal permission he created for himself on a wooded hill not far from that city, a solitary retreat for meditative rest from his episcopal duties and built here a little basilica next to which he was buried in a stone coffin. A Benedictine monastery dedicated to the BVM later arose on the site. Maurus' coffin was miraculously rediscovered and other miracles caused it to become a venue for pilgrimage, so that local bishops acting in concert had the coffin containing his remains ceremoniously reinterred in the monastery church, after which time other miracles have continued to give proof of the saint's merits.
In the sixteenth century Maurus' remains were transferred to Cesena's then new cathedral of San Mauro. They now repose in a transparent coffin in the cathedral's late twentieth-century crypt. A Roman-period (2d-century) sarcophagus thought to be the stone coffin of which Peter Damian speaks in his Life of Maurus now serves as an altar in the crypt of the abbey church of Santa Maria del Monte.
Hilary of Volturno (d. c1045) served as abbot of St. Vincent’s monastery at Volturno from 1011 to 1045, winning fame for reviving the renown, prosperity, and practices of the place, which he made into an important center of learning.
Nicolas Giustiniani (Blessed) (d. c1180) was not formally canonized, but venerated in Venice up to the present. Nicolas was born in c1110 to the Venetian noble family of Giustiniani. He decided at an early age to become a Benedictine monk, entering the Lido. But all of his brothers died in the battle of Constantinople, so the Doge requested papal permission for Nicholas to leave his monastery and marry. Nicolas and his wife produced six sons and three daughters, whom Nicolas raised to adulthood and then passed on their inheritance to them. At an advanced age he returned to his monastery, and his wife became a nun.
Albert of Louvain /of Loewen (d. 1192) was the son of Duke Godfrey III of Brabant and Margaret of Limburg, born in 1166 in Keizerberg (near Louvain, Belgium). He was raised for high Church office, and at the age of 12 became a canon of Liege. When he was 21, he renounced his benefice and became a knight. It is unclear why, but it is thought that he wanted to go on the Third Crusade, as he had taken the crusading vow. But he never went and then Albert went on to be archdeacon, the provost of Liege, and at the age of 25 (in 1191) the clergy of the city elected him bishop. Unfortunately, Emperor Henry VI wanted the job for his wife's uncle, and contested the right of appointment to the see. Albert fled to Rome to appeal, dressed as a servant to get past imperial troops, and the pope duly confirmed him as bishop of Liege. So Albert returned, only to find his opponent installed in office. At papal order, Albert was consecrated bishop anyway, in a ceremony at Rheims. Ten weeks later, outside the walls of that city, he was murdered by 3 (or 8) German knights, agents of Henry. He is regarded as a martyr. Lothar (the anti-bishop) was excommunicated and exiled; Emperor Henry was forced to do penance.
We know about Albert from his immediately posthumous Vita and from entries in various chronicles. His cult was approved papally for Louvain/Leuven, Malines/Mechelen, and Liège/Luik in 1613, with his feast set at November 21 (still his day in Belgium). In 1919 Albert's remains were discovered in Reims' cathedral and were then returned to Brussels, whence parts thereof were later distributed both within Belgium and back to Reims. (also Nov 24, his dies natalis)
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