 |
 |
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Justa's cult is attested medievally at several places on Sardinia, most notably at the city of Santa Giusta (OR) near Oristano in what until 1410 was the judicate of Arborea. She has no Vita or Passio earlier than the one by the early modern canon of Oristano, Antonio Martis. Published in 1616 and supposedly drawn from an ancient document, this was shown in the eighteenth century to be a melange of oral tradition and of matter from the Acta of another saint of this name. Martis' account makes Justa (in Italian, Giusta) a virgin martyr put to death under Hadrian along with her maids Justina and Henedina (Giustina, Enedina) at the very spot where later was built the crypt of the cathedral of the town of Santa Giusta. A variant known to the sixteenth-century Sardinian historian Giovanni Fara made the saints confessors rather than martyrs and identified Justina and Henedina as Justa's sisters. The year of their death has been conjectured very dubiously as ca. 131. In the early seventeenth century, during the Corpi Santi episode when remains of presumed early Christian martyrs were being unearthed all over Sardinia, relics identified as those of Justa, Justina, and Henedina were found in Cagliari's Cripta di Santa Restituta and were re-located next to those of Restituta herself. Presumed destroyed during the Allied bombing of Cagliari in 1943, they were found in 1997 -- still in their seventeenth-century chest -- in Cagliari's church of Sant'Anna. In 2004 they were translated to Santa Giusta and placed in that city's ex-cathedral dedicated to this saint. Here they are on display in the crypt: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2317/2477293179_19947c3fe9_o.jpg Today (14. May) is Justa's and Henedina's day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. Justina was commemorated there as well until the revision of 2001 when she was dropped, perhaps in the belief that she's really just a doublet of Justa. Santa Giusta's Basilica di Santa Giusta, consecrated in 1144, was the cathedral church of a homonymous diocese that was incorporated into that of Oristano in 1503. In 1226 this church was the site of an all-island synod (the last until the twentieth century) whose constitutions are a major document in the history of the church in medieval Sardinia. The building is thought to have been erected in the 1130s and 1140s and has not been rebuilt. An Italian-language account of it, with bibliography, is here: http://tinyurl.com/pn8w2 Exterior views (expandable) are here: http://www.madeinsardinia.org/Oristano_%20Santa_Giusta/index.html Others, and one interior view, (not expandable) are here: http://www.ilportalesardo.it/monumenti/orsantagiusta.htm A better view of the interior: http://tinyurl.com/296s56o Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: subscribe 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: unsubscribe 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/medieval-religion