medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 01/07/12, I wrote (inattentively):

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7. January is also the feast day of:

Eustratius the Thaumaturge (d. earlier 9th cent.).  We know about this victim of Byzantine second iconoclasm chiefly from his Bios (BHG 645) and from one of the latter's primary sources, the Bios of St. Joannicius the Great by the monk Sabas (BHG 935).  A native of the Tarsia in Bithynia, at the age of twenty he entered the monastery of the Agauroi on the Bithynian Mt. Olympus.  There he became a close friend of Joannicius and later succeeded his own uncle Gregory as the community's hegumen.  In the reign of Leo V the monastery was purged of iconophiles and Eustratius was forced to leave.  He returned after the emperor's assassination in 820 but not, apparently, as hegumen.  By the time he died a little short of the age of one hundred he was credited with miracles; his cult was immediate.

Not so: Eustratius the Thaumaturge's day of commemoration in the RM is 9. January, not 7. January.

7. January is also the feast day of:

1)  Crispin of Pavia.  It is unclear from his laterculus whether the Crispin commemorated under 7. January in the RM as a bishop of Pavia is Crispin I (d. 466 or 467?) or Crispin II (d. 541?), both of whom were in the later Middle Ages regarded as saints.  But to judge from much greater attention paid to him in the thirteenth-century _Cronica brevis de sanctis episcopis Ticinensibus_ and in the earlier fourteenth-century _De laudibus Papie_ of Opicino de Canistris, the saint in question is probably the former.  His _dies natalis_ is unknown; he is said to have ruled for thirty-seven years, to have freed a man demonically possessed, to have built a bridge over the Ticino, to have paved some streets, to have been buried in a church of St. Martin, and later to have been translated, with accompanying miracles, into the city's cathedral of St. Mary Major.  According to Opicino, this translation occurred in the pontificate of the John (III) the Good (traditionally said to have died in 924).  Of Crispin II, the author of the _Cronica brevis_ says that he could not find this bishop's _gesta_, that he ruled for twenty years, and that he built the city's church of St. Cosmas and Damian.  Crispin II's _dies natalis_ is recorded elsewhere as 30. October.


2)  Tillo (d. 702?) .  Tillo (also Hillonius, Tillonius; in French: Til, Till, Tilman, Théau) is a saint of the former abbey of Solignac (Haute-Vienne).  His late and -- to put this diplomatically -- seemingly not entirely reliable Vitae (BHL 8291, 8292) identify him with St. Eligius of Noyon's similarly named house slave of Saxon origin who in that saint's Vita is said to have worked with him in the fabrication of precious objects and to have lived a venerable life (BHL 2474, cap. 10).  According to BHL 8291, Eligius bought Tillo as a boy in a redemption of captives, gave him to the monastery at Solignac to be educated, and later trained the exceptionally pious, virtuous, and studious lad in metalwork.  With Eligius' sponsorship Tillo was ordained priest; still later, Eligius named him abbot at Solignac.  But Tillo withdrew from that house in order to be an hermit, lived austerely, fought the Enemy, and in time gathered disciples for whom he built a monastery at today's Brageac (Cantal).

Later Tillo returned to Solignac, where he built for himself a cell honoring St. Eligius.  Feeling that his end was near, he both predicted the day of his death and, from a distance, obtained the cure of the bishop of Limoges who was thus enabled to travel to Solignac, where he buried the recently departed saint.  Tillo operated other miracles, lifetime and posthumous.  Thus far his Vita.  Tillo's dates and that of the founding of the Benedictine house at Brageac are entirely traditional and depend upon inferences drawn from his Vitae.  He was celebrated not only at the monasteries in question but also in the dioceses of Tulle, Limoges (both on 7. January), and Saint-Flour (11. February); further afield (but still in the Benedictine world), he was celebrated in at least the later Middle Ages at Saint-Germain-des-Prés and at Sankt Gereon in Köln (both on 5. January).

Some illustrated pages on the abbey of Solignac and on its earlier twelfth-century église abbatiale Saint-Pierre:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbaye_de_Solignac
http://tinyurl.com/7s5ymcp
http://www.romanes.com/Solignac/
http://tinyurl.com/7tqokh9
http://tinyurl.com/6rozmnc

A distance view of the originally twelfth-century église Notre-Dame at Brageac and some pages of views of that church:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olibac/4866252746/
http://tinyurl.com/7sa32qo
http://www.art-roman.net/brageac/brageac.htm
http://www.art-roman.net/brageac/brageac2.htm

Best,
John Dillon ********************************************************************** 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