medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Further to St. Lucy (or Agia Loukia):
Lucy (d. 304, supposedly). This L. (there are others) is an early martyr of Syracuse in southeastern Sicily. Her cult is first attested from the late fourth- or early fifth-century epitaph in Greek of Euskia, a woman of about twenty-five years of age who was laid to rest at Syracuse in the Christian cemetery now known as that of San Giovanni and who, in the words of her husband, _anepauseto te heorte tes kyrias mou Loukias_ ('died on the feast of my lady Lucy'). Here's a view of the epitaph:
http://www.kairos-web.com/images/iscrizione.jpg
A reproduction of the inscribed text with the letters made more distinct:
http://tinyurl.com/nr5p796
The inscription is no. 20 in Santi Luigi Agnello, _Silloge di iscrizioni paleocristiane della Sicilia_ (Roma: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1953), with the edited text on p. 23 (and in preceding Tavola I) and commentary on pp. 65-66.
Seemingly from the fifth century is the oldest known version of L.'s Passio (BHG 995). This likewise Greek-language text presents her as an affianced young woman of Syracuse who had vowed in secret to remain virginal and who made a pilgrimage with her mother to the tomb of St. Agatha at Catania. At L.'s suggestion the mother, who suffered from an incurable flux, touched the tomb and was healed. Agatha appeared to L. in a vision and revealed that it was really L.'s faith that operated her mother's cure. L. revealed to her mother her desire to remain virginal and began to live in poverty as well. This turn of events displeased L.'s fiancé, who -- the Great Persecution being now under way -- reported her to the authorities as a Christian. L. was arrested, refused to sacrifice to the gods of the state, predicted the downfall of Diocletian and Maximian, was sentenced to serve in a brothel (but a team of bullocks was unable to pull her there), underwent torture, and was decapitated. A church was built over her grave. Thus far the Passio.
In the sixth century L. appears along with St. Agatha in the procession of virgin martyrs in Ravenna's basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (mosaics dated to ca. 561) and seems already to have been included in the _Nobis quoque_ of the Roman canon of the Mass (first documented from the seventh century in a form that had undergone revision; according to St. Aldhelm, Agatha and Lucy were added by pope St. Gregory the Great). By that century's end there were monasteries dedicated to L. in Syracuse and in Rome. By the end of the seventh century a Latin version of her Passio had come into being (BHL 4992; adapted by Aldhelm in his _De virginitate_). A Mass for L. first appears in the Gregorian Sacramentary.
BHL 4992 became standard in the medieval Latin West. Although it usually is faithful to its Greek predecessor, it changes the manner of L.'s death to a sword blow that allowed her to live long enough to receive the Eucharist before expiring. In the ninth century L. was the subject of a kanon (a lengthy hymn form) by St. Methodius I, a native of Syracuse and Sicily's only patriarch of Constantinople, and in the same century her Greek Passio was revised and expanded at Syracuse in a form (BHG 995d) that seems generally not to have supplanted its predecessor. In the eleventh century another kanon honoring L. was composed by St. Bartholomew of Grottaferrata. An Italian-language translation of that is here:
http://tinyurl.com/29prrt4
The story whereby L. blinds herself in order to deter a persistent suitor (to whom she then sends her eyes) is first attested from the fourteenth century. To judge from early references, some version was already in existence before then. L. occurs three times in Dante's _Commedia_ (_Inferno_ 2. 94-117; _Purgatorio_ 9. 52-63; _Paradiso_ 32. 136-38); in the first two instances L.'s eyes are singled out for attention. The Latin noun _lux_, _lucis_ denotes 'light' but has extended meanings of 'insight' and 'eyesight'; all of these were associated with L., either spiritually or metaphorically or in connection with problems with one's eyes. A similar progression is observable in the case of the Greek St. Photini ('Luminous', 'Enlightened'), who like L. became a patron of those with disorders of the eye.
In the year 970 relics alleged to be L.'s were translated to Metz. According to Sigebert of Gembloux writing over two centuries later, these were brought over the Alps by bishop Dietrich I of Metz, who had obtained them at ruined Corfinium in what is now Abruzzo (perhaps the putative remains of this honourable list's co-patron St. Pelinus, who in the traditional view will already have been reposing in Corfinium, weren't thought worth taking). Sigebert's contemporary the Cassinese historian Leo Marsicanus reports that in 1039 the Byzantine general George Maniakes during his evanescent conquest of eastern Sicily had L.'s remains removed from her tomb at Syracuse and sent to Constantinople.
Remains believed to be those translated in 1039 were brought to Venice at some time in the twelfth or thirteenth century (the report that doge Enrico Dandolo had them sent after the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 is late and problematic). They're still there. Here are some views of the putative L. reposing in Venice's chiesa dei Santi Geremia e Lucia (the silver mask was added in 1955 by the then patriarch of Venice, Angelo Roncalli, better known today as pope St. John XXIII):
http://www.herenciacristiana.com/necrocatolisismo/imagenes/santal4.jpg
http://www.herenciacristiana.com/necrocatolisismo/imagenes/santal5.jpg
http://www.kathpedia.com/images/a/a8/SantaLucia.jpg
These views are from when L. was on loan to the Archdiocese of Syracuse in December 2004:
http://tinyurl.com/2cm243
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Santa_lucia_ve_2.JPG
The Archdiocese of Syracuse has its own body relic of L. (left upper arm and shoulder joint):
http://tinyurl.com/k34l74b
http://tinyurl.com/nfqylsk
In the early twelfth century, with Syracuse in Latin Christian hands, her extramural martyrial basilica was built anew. Now called Santa Lucia al Sepolcro (or S. L. Extra Moenia) and shown here <http://tinyurl.com/2ul6lt>, it is a three-aisled, three-apsed basilica that underwent substantial reconstruction in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and again in the seventeenth century when the portico so prominent in that photograph was added. The sanctuary houses a pillar against which L. is said to have been tortured (in these views it's against the pilaster at right):
http://tinyurl.com/2qyrnu
http://tinyurl.com/lt34acn
A side view shows in the right foreground the octagonal, seventeenth century Tempietto del Sepolcro designed to house body relics of L. that never arrived:
http://affitto-vacanze-lavoro-siracusa.oneminutesite.it/files/1-3913299PHOTO.jpg
This structure is built over the traditional site of L.'s ancient tomb and displays what is said to have been her loculus:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/First_tomb_of_St_Lucy.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
On 12/13/14, Matt Heintzelman wrote:
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> Finally finished making the first batch of Christmas peanut brittle, washed the dishes, got the laundry in the machine … Now I can go to my computer …
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> https://www.facebook.com/604882972899463/photos/a.624764970911263.1073741830.604882972899463/747379411983151/?type=1&theater
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> “Then Paschasius summoned procurers and said to them: “Invite a crowd to take their pleasure with this woman, and let them abuse her until she is dead.” But when they tried to carry her off, the Holy Spirit fixed her in place so firmly that they could not move her. Paschasius called in a thousand men and had her hands and feet bound, but still they could not lift her. He sent for a thousand yoke of oxen: the Lord’s holy virgin could not be moved.” (Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend. Princeton, 2012 reprint. Page 29)
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> Peace,
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> Matt H.
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