medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (3. November) is the feast day of:
1) Germanus, Theophilus, and Cyrillus (?). This group of martyrs of Caesarea in Cappadocia is part of the common fund of early saints shared by the later fourth-century Syriac Martyrology and the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, in both of which they are entered under today. Nothing further is known about them. Their entry in the (ps.-)HM adds the names of others who may have crept in from other commemorations. Florus of Lyon appears to have had a copy that was particularly messy at this point: he omitted Cyrillus but added a Caesarius (presumably in origin C. of Terracina, celebrated on 1. November) and a Vitalis (presumably in origin the V. of tomorrow's pair of Vitalis and Agricola). St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard retained the group as named by Florus and specified that they suffered in the Decian persecution.
2) Libertinus (?). Libertinus (in English also Libertine) is the very shadowy protobishop of Agrigento. He shares with St. Peregrinus venerated at Agrigento -- but in a very secondary fashion -- a legendary Passio from that city (BHL 4909; thought to be sixth- or seventh-century in origin) that places their martyrdom in the persecution of Valerian. Even less credibly, the late seventh- or early eighth-century Encomium of St. Peter's supposed disciple St. Marcian of Syracuse (BHG 1030) makes Peregrinus the latter worthy's own disciple and thus has both Peregrinus and Libertinus (whom this Encomium names as Peregrinus' companion in martyrdom) put to death in the first century. Modern guesses as to the specific persecution in which Libertinus will have perished range from that of Decius to that of Diocletian.
3) Papulus (?). Papulus (in French, Papoul) is a poorly documented saint of the vicinity of Toulouse, where his cult is first attested from 817. He has two legendary Vitae, one of the thirteenth century (BHL 6453) and one of the early fourteenth (BHL 6454, 6455; by the famous Dominican Bernard Gui). These make him an Antiochene who followed St. Peter to Rome and was then sent with St. Saturninus of Toulouse to evangelize in an area recognizable as the early medieval Visigothic kingdom, who during Saturninus' apostolate in Spain was martyred by decapitation at a place not very distant from Toulouse, and who then partook of the grand French tradition of cephalophory by picking up his head and putting it down at a nearby fountain. Buried there, he became the saint of an abbey named for him. Thus far Papulus' Vitae.
An illustrated French-language site (use the menu at upper left) and an illustrated Spanish-language page on the abbaye de Saint-Papoul at Lauragais near Castelnaudary (Aude):
http://www.saintpapoul.fr/fr/page7.xml
http://tinyurl.com/ygsvmlt
Other views:
http://tinyurl.com/24cj8k4
http://tinyurl.com/yfa7hmc
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evidences/3725782741/sizes/z/
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/14858489.jpg
http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/27430/img_0311.jpg
From 1317 until 1801 this abbey was also the seat of a diocese.
4) Acepsimas, Joseph, and Aeithalas (d. later 370s). These saints (Acepsimas is also called Aceptimas, Acepsius, or A[ce]pseas; Aeithalas' name is often given as Aethalas or as Aithalas; he is also called Haifal) are martyrs of Persia who suffered during the persecution of Shapur II. We have accounts of them in Syriac (the Passio BHO 22) and in Greek (Sozomen, _Historia ecclesiastica_, 2. 13; the partly preserved Passio BHG 2015; synaxary notices); these vary in details and assign them companions named and unnamed. Acepsimas was bishop of Hnaita / Naeson (to differentiate him from homonyms he is sometimes called A. of Hnaita, A. of Naeson, or simply A. the bishop), Joseph was a priest (in art he's sometimes shown as a deacon), and Aeithalas is variously said to have been a deacon or a priest. They are said to have been imprisoned for two years following their arrest and to have been severely tortured prior to their executions; the place of their suffering is given as Arbela (today's Erbil or Irbil in Iraq). Greek and other eastern-rite churches usually commemorate these saints today and / or -- and without Joseph -- on 10. or 11. December. Some Syrian churches celebrate them on 2. November. The RM, following entries in the ninth-century martyrologies of St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard of Saint-Germain, formerly commemorated them under 22. April as Azades, Acepsimas, and companions; they disappeared altogether in the revision of 2001.
An English-language version of Sozomen's account of the suffering of Acepsimas and his companions is here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.iii.vii.xiii.html
Aeithalas, Joseph, and Acepsimas (in that order) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321) in the inner narthex of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
Aeithalas: http://tinyurl.com/aooq93d
Joseph (attired as a deacon): http://tinyurl.com/b2fu4ey
Acepsimas: http://tinyurl.com/3y7yp44
Aeithalas, Joseph, and Acepsimas as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George in Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
Aeithalas: http://eikonografos.com/album/albums/uploads/servia/120.jpg
Joseph (at left, attired as a deacon) and Acepsimas:
http://www.eikonografos.com/album/albums/uploads/servia/440.jpg
Acepsimas (fuller view):
http://www.eikonografos.com/album/albums/uploads/servia/441.jpg
Acepsimas (upper left), Joseph (upper right, shown as a deacon), and Aeithalas (bottom center) as depicted in a November calendar composition in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/3hfvuqg
Aeithalas (at left, misidentified in the caption as Antimus; at right, St. Sergius of Sergius-and-Bacchus fame) as depicted in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes on an arch in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/y92r7eu
Joseph (lower register at left), Acepsimus, and Aeithalas (lower register at right) as depicted by Theofanis Strelitzas-Bathas (Theophanes the Cretan) in an earlier sixteenth-century fresco (1545 or 1546) in the katholikon of the Stavronikita monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/bypmlxt
Acepsimus (larger view):
http://tinyurl.com/3f9fvoz
Aeithalas (larger view):
http://tinyurl.com/3ppmj9c
5) Sylvia of Rome (d. ca. 591?). Sylvia was the mother of pope St. Gregory the Great; the very little we know about her comes from his writings. Widowed by 573, when Gregory turned his parents' house on the Caelian into his monastery of St. Andrew, she spent her final years in semi-monastic retreat in a little house on the Aventine (tradition places it in the vicinity of San Saba).
6) Pirminius (d. 753). According to his early ninth-century Vita prima (BHL 6855), Pirminius (also Pirminus; in German very often Pirmin) was the founder of the abbey of Mittelzell on the Reichenau in the Bodensee / Lake Constance, of the abbey of Murbach in Alsace, and lastly of the abbey of Hornbach in Rheinland-Pfalz, where he died and where the Vita was written, as well as of numerous other monasteries in Francia, Alemannia, and Bavaria; he is also the eponym of today's Pirmasens in Rheinland-Pfalz.
Still according to this Vita, Pirminius was previously bishop of/at a _castellum Meltis_ where he delivered his Sunday sermon _utraque lingua, Romana scilicet et Francorumque_ ("in both tongues, the Roman one and that of the Franks"), a datum that implies a location somewhere in the Romance/Frankish border zone. Thus, though it ordinarily signifies Meaux, Meltis here may refer instead to today's Medelsheim (Lkr. Saarpfalz) in Saarland, not far from Hornbach. The customary view of P.'s episcopacy today is that he was at that time a _chorepiscopus_ (regional bishop).
Pirminius is considered the apostle of parts of Alsace and today's southwestern Germany. A brief manual for the use of new converts, the _Dicta abbatis Pirminii de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus_, still widely attributed to Pirminius, is the earliest witness of the Apostles' Creed as it is known today.
To judge from his Vita prima, Pirminius' cult at Hornbach began shortly after his death. His feast on this day at Reichenau is first attested from the early ninth century. Here's Pirminius (lower left) depicted as Reichenau's founder in a late tenth-century manuscript from that abbey (Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aug. perg. 205, fol. 72r):
http://tinyurl.com/2egke4f
Pilgrimage to Pirminius' tomb at Hornbach ceased with that abbey's dissolution in 1558. Herewith a page of views of what's left of the abbey there:
http://tinyurl.com/2ey9533
The modern building is the Pirmin(i)uskapelle built over the remains of Pirminius' grave in the apse. A view of those structural remains:
http://tinyurl.com/c925tz2
Hornbach's last abbot brought Pirminius' relics to Speyer. From there they went on to Innsbruck in 1587 (_aliter_, 1576). They now repose there in a modern reliquary in Innsbruck's Jesuitenkirche zur Heiligsten Dreifaltigkeit (Jesuit church of the Most Holy Trinity):
http://tinyurl.com/2act4yr
In 1953 some of those relics were returned to Hornbach (with further distribution to Medelsheim and to Pirmasens) and to Speyer. Here's a view of Pirminius' very modern reliquary in Speyer's cathedral:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71256895@N00/3550983353/
7) Joannicius the Great (d. 846). Joannicius (also J. the Wonder-worker), an iconophile saint from the period of Byzantine second iconoclasm, has two contemporary Bioi (BHG 935 and 936) and a later one attributed to St. Symeon Metaphrastes (BHG 937). According to these sources he was Bithynian who in his youth had been a swineherd and who later was a soldier who took part in campaigns against the Bulgars. In about 795, at the age of forty, he left the world and entered the first of several monasteries he would inhabit on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. In about 806 he made his profession and received the tonsure. Joannicius would at times interrupt his monastic existence by becoming for a while a wandering hermit; miracles are ascribed to him and he is said to have had the gift of prophecy. Among the dignitaries who are reported to have visit him are St. Theodore the Stoudite and the patriarch St. Methodius.
Joannicius as depicted in a twelfth-century fresco in the chapel of the Theotokos at the monastery of St. John on Patmos:
http://tinyurl.com/7238gvt
Joannicius as depicted in the earlier thirteenth-century frescoes (1230s) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje (Zlatibor dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/yeduyu5
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/yewox6h
Joannicius as depicted in a perhaps late thirteenth-century fresco in the ex-chiesa abbaziale di San Mauro at San Mauro sulla Serra in Sannicola (LE) on Apulia's Salentine peninsula:
http://tinyurl.com/265879w
http://tinyurl.com/25mwtkn
Joannicius as depicted in the late thirteenth- or very early fourteenth-century frescoes, attributed to Manuel Panselinos, in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/25k9cjg
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/28ms7d3
Joannicius as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George in Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://www.eikonografos.com/album/albums/uploads/servia/14.jpg
Joannicius as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (betw. ca. 1338 and 1346) of the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2d5f2q7
Detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/23dxxul
http://tinyurl.com/25rlkk6
Joannicius as depicted in a November calendar portrait in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/2c9uua8
Joannicius as depicted in the mid-fourteenth-century frescoes of the arch between the intermediate and the western bay in the church of the Holy Apostles in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/ybutypp
Joannicius as depicted in an early fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1408) in the monastery church of St. Stephen at Koporin in Velika Plana (Podunavlje dist.) in Serbia:
http://tinyurl.com/2c9d2lb
8) Berardus, bp. of the Marsi (d. 1130). Today's less well known saint of the Regno was a scion of a leading comital family in Abruzzo that furnished not only several bishops of the Marsi but also at least two abbots of Montecassino as well as Atto, bp. of Chieti and his somewhat famous brother Transmundus, abbot of San Clemente di Casauria and bishop of Valva. Berardus studied at Montecassino during the abbacy of his kinsman Oderisius I and was called to Rome by Paschal II, under whom he filled various offices. One of these, an ecclesiastical governorship with the rank of count, led to his being briefly held prisoner in a well at Palestrina by a local lord who felt threatened by him. Paschal made him bishop of the Marsi (today's diocese of Avezzano) in about 1110. Berardus has a Vita by his former associate John of Segni (BHL 1176) and several collections of Miracula (BHL 1176b-h). He was canonized in 1802.
Berardus' cathedral was the now ruined and seemingly then already isolated Santa Sabina in the former _civitas Marsorum/Marsicana_, today's San Benedetto dei Marsi (AQ) in Abruzzo, shown and discussed (in Italian) here:
http://www.radicchio.it/sanbenedettodeimarsi/page4.html
In 1580 the episcopal seat of the diocese of the Marsi was transferred provisionally to the newly rebuilt church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Pescina (AQ), an arrangement made permanent, with royal consent, in 1630. In the following year Berardus' relics were transferred to this church. An illustrated Italian-language page on it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2jcyx7
Exterior views of this church:
http://tinyurl.com/38mpno
http://tinyurl.com/22rfr7l
http://tinyurl.com/22rfr7l
Inside, Berardus' relics are in the reliquary bust at the center of the rear wall of this chapel (also the final resting place of other bishops of the Marsi):
http://tinyurl.com/b65mt
This church too was badly damaged by the earthquake of 1915. Restored in the 1930s, it was damaged again by Allied bombing World War II. Much of what one sees is therefore restoration work.
9) Alpais (Bl.; d. 1211). The extreme ascete and visionary Alpais (also Aupes; in French, occasionally also Alpaide), a peasant woman of today's Cudot (Yonne), survived a horrific illness in late childhood but soon became a paralytic and was bedridden for the rest of her life. A great faster, she is said to have subsisted on the juice of small morsels of food that she chewed and then spat out and on the Eucharist that she received regularly. Alpais was already famous in her lifetime: our earliest account of her is a sketch _sub anno 1180_ by the Auxerrois chronicler Robert of Saint-Marien (d. 1212), a Premonstratensian. Cistercians especially promoted her cult: the earliest form of Alpais' Vita (BHL 306; several versions) was written by a priest of the nearby priory of Les Escharlis who had conversed with her; the likewise Cistercian Ralph of Coggeshall, writing in the 1220s, devoted to Alpais several pages of his _Chronicon Anglicanum_.
Alpais' cult was confirmed papally in 1874 at the level of Beata. Relics said to be hers are kept in Cudot's originally twelfth-century église Notre-Dame (restored in the later nineteenth century after A.'s formal beatification). Some views of this structure will be found on these two pages:
http://ut-pupillam-oculi.over-blog.com/article-19513184.html
http://ut-pupillam-oculi.over-blog.com/article-19513241.html
Alpais as depicted in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's _Nuremberg Chronicle_ (1493) at fol.CCVv:
http://tinyurl.com/2ey9533
Best,
John Dillon
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