medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today, November 5, is the feast of:
Mark of Aeca/-of Troia (?)is a very shadowy early bishop of Aeca (also Aecae), the Roman-period predecessor of the originally early tenth-century Troia in northern Apulia, whence he is also known as Mark of Troia. He first comes to light in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, where under November 5 one reads in Ecas Marci episcopi. Mark is already a figure of legend in the later eighth-century, synthesizing Passio of Sts. Donatus, Felix, and companions (the Beneventan "Twelve Brothers"; BHL 2297), which ascribes to him the recovery of the bodies of Donatus and Felix, supposedly martyred under Maximian, and their burial in his city. The similarly legendary and synthesizing eleventh- or twelfth-century Passio of St. Castrensis (BHL 1644, 1645) includes him in its roster of African bishops who survive Vandal persecution to become saints of different locales in southern Italy.
At different times in the central Middle Ages Mark (commemorated either on November 5 or on October 7 [the latter is also the feast day of pope St. Mark]) was considered an early bishop of, respectively, Frigento, Benevento, and Naples in Campania and, in Abruzzo, a bishop of the Marsi (today's diocese of Avezzano). He is thought by some to be the original of Peter the Deacon's purported St. Mark of Atina in what is now southern Lazio (whose church dedicated a Mark was in Peter's telling dedicated on October 5). Mark's own undated Vita (BHL 5301) is preserved only in an early sixteenth copy taken from that great hagiographic repertory of Vitae and Passiones of south Italian local saints, the since mutilated thirteenth-century sanctorale of the chapter library of what is now Bovino in northern Apulia. This transforms him into a bishop of Lucera and gives him a dies natalis of October 7. Until recently, that was Mark's principal feast day in Bovino.
Bovino claims to possess Mark's relics; guesses as to when and under what circumstances they arrived vary considerably. In the late twelfth century a church dedicated to Mark and housing his putative remains was built adjoining the town's cathedral of the BVM. Dedicated on May 18, 1197 and given an external entrance of its own but also accessible by means of a stairway from within the cathedral's transept, it is now known as the cappellone ("big chapel") di San Marco. Herewith two views of the exterior portal, with bishop Mark figured in the center of the portal lunette: http://tinyurl.com/2c3sb74 and http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/P1010002.JPG . In this aerial view Mark's church is partly visible behind the cathedral's right transept: http://tinyurl.com/2em59pm
Zachary/Zacharias and Elizabeth (first century) were the parents of John the Baptist. According to the gospel account, they were elderly, past the time they could expect offspring. When an angel announced the upcoming birth to Zacharias, he was incredulous, and as a result was struck dumb until after John's birth. According to legend, Zacharias was later killed by Herod in the Temple in Jerusalem. Several Fathers declared Zachary died a martyr; Peter Damian (third sermon on the birth of Mary) said that to inquire about things the evangelists chose not to recount about these two shows an improper and superfluous curiosity. There doesn't seem to be any extra-biblical tradition about Mary. They are celebrated on February 11 in the Eastern Church.
Galaction/Galation/Galakteon and Episteme/Epistemis (d. 250 or 251, supposedly). Like the recently celebrated Zenobius and Zenobia of Aegae in Cilicia, Galaction and Episteme are absent from the early martyrologies, are not known to have received an early cult, and are the subjects of a legendary Passio that exists in premetaphrastic and metaphrastic versions (BHG 665, 666) and upon which synaxary notices of their joint commemoration today seem to depend. Galation was so named due to his milk-white complexion (Galakteon), Episteme/Epistemis (=knowledge).
According to this tale, Galaction was the son of a couple in Emesa (today's Homs in Syria) who had been childless until a monk whom they had been sheltering during a persecution persuaded the wife to convert to Christianity, whereupon she straight away became pregnant. When this news was conveyed to the husband, he too became a Christian. When Galaction, who had been bought up as a devout Christian, was of marriageable age his father wished him to marry the pagan Episteme; Galaction demurred at first but agreed once Episteme, perceiving the nature of his reservation, accepted baptism. The two then agreed to live chastely and apart. The two then sold all of their possessions and lived in chastity and finally separated, Galation to be a hermit and Epistemis to join a community of virgins (in at least one version, in Sinai). In the Decian persecution Galaction was arrested; his faithful Episteme learned of this in a vision and joined him in confinement. When her clothes were ripped off her, the 53 officers who were watching became blind; the two were then beheaded at Emesa, having been tried, tortured, and executed together.
Thus far the Passio of Galaction and Episteme, whose affinity to Greek romances is signaled by the names of Galaction's parents, Clitophon and Leucippe (the title characters of a widely read ancient Greek romance). Galaction and Episteme entered the RM under cardinal Baronio and left it in the revision of 2001. They are still celebrated in Orthodox churches and in Eastern-rite churches in communion with Rome.
The martyrdom of Galaction and Episteme as depicted in a November calendar scene in the frescoes (betw. 1335-1350) of the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć: http://tinyurl.com/23kvldr
A small monastery in Sinai in the vicinity of St. Catherine's is named after Episteme; its present buildings appear to be fairly recent. The mountain on which this monastery sits is variously called that of Episteme or that of Galaction.
Domninus of Caesarea (d. 307) We about Domninus from Eusebius' Martyrs of Palestine. A young, learned physician, he was a prominent victim of the Great Persecution at its outset. After several years of hard labor in the mines of Palestine he was executed by being burned alive. Domninus is entered under today in the (ps-)HM. Prior to its revision of 2001 the RM commemorated with him other martyrs of Palestine not known to have suffered with him: Sts. Theotimus, Philotheus, (both now commemorated on November 5 in a separate elogium along with a companion named Timotheus), Silvanus (commemorated on May 4), and companions.
Theotimus, Philotheus, and Timotheus (d. c307?) are martyrs whose feast today is recorded in Byzantine synaxaries. Reasons for the former association of the first two, who are not named in Eusebius' De martyribus Palaestinae, with Domninus of Caesarea are not clear. J.-M. Sauget (s.v. "Donnino, Teotimo, Filoteo, Silvano" in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol.4, cols. 812-13) thought that these may have been the three unnamed martyrs whose sentence to death by pugilism is recorded at De martyribus Palaestinae, 7. But Ti. may be instead the Ti. of Gaza whom the same Roman governor is said in De martyribus Palaestinae, 3 to have ordered to be tortured and then slowly burned to death.
Fibicius (d. early 6th century) is a very poorly documented bishop of Trier whose cult is first recorded, under today's date, in an eleventh-century calendar from St. Simeon at Trier. He is first said to have been the city's bishop in the originally late 11th or early 12th century Gesta Treverorum; this treats him as the immediate successor of Maximianus and the immediate predecessor of Abrunculus (d. 526). Some identify him with the otherwise unrecorded bishop of Trier named Felicius who ordained St. Goar priest according to the latter's mid- 8th-century Vita by a monk of Prüm. From at least the 13th century onward the abbey of St. Maximinus of Trier asserted that Fibicius had been its abbot before his elevation to the episcopate.
Bertila/Bertilla/Bertilia/Bertille (French) of Chelles (d. c705) According to her 10th century Vita, she was born near Soissons and became a nun at Jouarre (near Meaux, France), where she rose to the position of prioress. There she won such a great reputation for humility and service that she was appointed the first abbess of the double monastery of Chelles when it was re-founded by Queen Bathild(is). She served for fifty years, making the new foundation a great success that even attracted a large number of English monks and nuns. She sent nuns under her charge to help with the foundation of monasteries by Saxon kings in Britain, and exemplified numerous monastic virtues, becoming renowned for her holiness. Royal women such as the widows Hereswitha and Bathildis joined the nunnery under her leadership. Her relics were raised in 1185.
The Musée Alfred Bonno at Chelles possesses several objects from a packet of clothing associated with the bodily relics of Bertila and of Bathild, most notably a front of a tunic embroidered so as to depict various jewels:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Bathilde-Kleid.jpg
http://www.encyclopedie-universelle.com/images/Image926.gif
http://pics.livejournal.com/thealater/pic/00029ys6
A fibula and a shoe both said to have come from the same packet of clothing are shown on this page: http://www.baladeenpaysbriard.com/article-6837070.html
Trofimena (d. before 838) Condemned to death for refusing to sacrifice at pagan altars, Trofimena fled her Sicilian parents but died at sea; her body, laid to rest in a sepulcrum of some sort, was guided by an angel to Minori (Campania; on the Amalfi Coast), where it was discovered on the shore by a woman doing her wash. Miracles indicated that this was something special. Ecclesiastical authorities were called, examination of the sepulcrum led to the discovery of an inscription on it giving in brief the story of this virgin martyr, a decision was made to bring her to the town, but her heavy yet rapidly moving sepulcrum, drawn by or perhaps drawing two white heifers that had been yoked to it for this task, came to a complete stop at the spot where her church was subsequently built over it.
Thus far the details of our source document for the legend, the Historia inventionis ac translationis sanctae Trophimenae (Acta Sanctorum, ed. novissima, Iulii tomus secundus, pp. 231-40), which goes on to recount various early translations through Trofimena's return to Minori in 839 (she had been in Amalfi when prince Sicard of Benevento seized that town in 838 and removed her to his capital; his successor Radelchis I returned half of her putative remains via Salerno early in his reign). Usually thought to be of the early 10th century but sometimes dated to the late 11th or early 12th, this account has been praised by Massimo Oldoni for its narrative structure and stylistic elegance. Although some are less taken with the verses said to have been carved on the sarcophagus (in the text called a sepulcrum), these too have their moments, esp. the final lines:
Membra dedit Reginniculis, animamque Tonanti. ("Her body she gave to the people of Minori and her soul to God.
Hinc Christi inter odoriferas depascitur aulas. Henceforth she is nourished in Christ's sweet-smelling halls.")
Trofimena has been Minori's patron ever since. Its ex-cathedral (from 987 to 1818 Minori had a bishop of its own) is dedicated to her and houses some of her remains. Half of her corpse (divided longitudinally, apparently) was retained at Benevento when she was returned from there in 839; in the early modern period she was equated with the Febronia venerated at Patti (Sicily) and some of her remains were transported there to satisfy Patti's desire for relics of its own similarly legendary saint.
At Minori her main liturgical feast is today but she has others here as well: her patronal feast on 13 July (formerly celebrated on December 10 in commemoration of Minori's fortunate escape from a Muslim raid) and, on or about November 27, the celebration of the discovery of her relics (now combined with a civic Holiday festival in which Trofimena announces the coming of Christmas). Because of her identification with Febronia and/or with other saints named Trofima or the like, she will be found in differing places and under differing headings in calendrically ordered books of the saints and in other works of reference.
The early medieval Amalfitan community in Salerno was centered on a street named the vicus Trophimenae. Trofimena's little church there, rebuilt in the twelfth century and again in the seventeenth, has recently been restored. Its parish, relocated in 1853 to the fourteenth(?)-century chiesa dell'Annunziata (itself rebuilt in eighteenth century), continues to bear witness to her as Santa Trofimena nella Santissima Annunziata.
Emeric/Emerich/Imre (Hungarian)/Hemericus (Latin) of Hungary Emerich (Imre) (d. 1031) was the son of Stephen and Gisela of Hungary, born in 1000 or 1007. Emerich was raised as a Christian and is supposed to have shown great virtue at an early age. Stephen wanted to make his son co-ruler, but a few days before the coronation Emerich suffered a fatal accident while hunting. He was canonized in 1083. His cult spread beyond Hungary to Germany in the late Middle Ages. (see Nov 4)
Gerald/ Guiraud (French) of Beziers (d. 1123) was an Augustinian canon regular who was prior at today's Cassan (Hérault) and who rebuilt the priory church there (consecrated in 1115). He became bishop of Béziers (southern France) in 1122. He spent all his revenues caring for the poor of his diocese and died on this date just one year later.
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
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