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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture 28. April is also the feast day of: Maximus, Dadas (in English also Dada), and Quintilianus (d. 304, supposedly). Absent from the later fourth-century Syriac Martyrology and from the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, these martyrs of Durostorum (or Dorostolon) in Moesia, now Silistra in northeastern Bulgaria, are known principally from their legendary Greek-language Passio (BHG 1238). According to this text the lector Maximus and his brothers Dadas and Quintilianus withdrew from Durostorum when imperial officials there started to enforce what is now known Diocletian's fourth edict of persecution, the one requiring citizens to gather in public places and to offer collective sacrifice to the gods of the Roman state. When their absence was reported, they were found, arrested, imprisoned, and tried. Refusing various inducements to apostasize, the brothers were tortured over several days, received a comforting angelic visitation, and soon were taken out to the nearby wood to which they had previously withdrawn and where they had property. There they were executed by decapitation on 28. April. Much later their angelically revealed relics were translated to Constantinople. Thus far the Passio of Maximus, Dadas, and Quintilianus. The origin of these saints' cult is obscure. Their Passio underlies synaxary notices for them under 28. April (principal feast) and 2. August (translation to Constantinople). There is no indication of their veneration in the Latin West prior to Molanus' inclusion of them in his sixteenth-century expanded edition of Usuard's Martyrology, whence they entered the RM in the 1580s. The martyrdom of Maximus, Dadas, and Quintilianus as depicted in a March calendar composition in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija: http://tinyurl.com/7uqmboe 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