medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Zachariah & Elizabeth
York Minster nXXII, panel showing the Naming of John the Baptist:
_http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5018008477/_
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5018008477/)
Gordon Plumb
In a message dated 05/11/2011 06:36:23 GMT Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
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_ (http://tinyurl.com/2c3sb74) and
_http://www.prolocobovino.it/AgendaInTasca/images/P1010002.JPG_
(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_
(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_ (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.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Bathilde-Kleid.jpg)
_http://www.encyclopedie-universelle.com/images/Image926.gif_
(http://www.encyclopedie-universelle.com/images/Image926.gif)
_http://pics.livejournal.com/thealater/pic/00029ys6_
(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_ (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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