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In dealing with an ordinary mortal, it might be excessive to read to so much into such a slight change. But in this short, impassioned biography, Neal Gabler insists that, when it comes to a star of Streisand’s dimensions, no amount of interpretation is excessive. Indeed, biography is not quite the right word for what Gabler is up to. Really, he is writing at the intersection of cultural studies and hagiography, poring over the episodes of Streisand’s life in order to expose their symbolic importance. For in the 20th century, the star became what biblical or mythic characters had been in earlier times, a person whose life served to crystallize and dramatize the great themes of human experience. “In effect,” Gabler writes, his book is “as much a biography of the metaphor that we have come to know as ‘Streisand’ as of the woman herself … Streisand is so much more than Streisand.”
There are 3 messages totaling 181 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. FEAST - A Saint for the Day (May 7): St. Flavia Domitilla
2. FEAST - A Saint for the Day (May 7): St. Anthony of Kyiv
3. FEAST - A Celebration for the Day (May 7): The Appearance of the Holy
Cross over Jerusalem
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Date: Sat, 7 May 2016 06:04:11 +0000
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: FEAST - A Saint for the Day (May 7): St. Flavia Domitilla
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to Eusebius of Caesarea (_Historia ecclesiastica_, 3. 18. 4), Flavia Domitilla (d. 96?), a niece of the Roman consul Flavius Clemens on his sister's side, was exiled to the island of Ponza along with many other Christians during the fifteenth year of the principate of Domitian (81-96). We know from Suetonius (_Vita Domitiani_, 15), who was much closer in time and physical space than Eusebius to events in Rome in these years, that the consul in question, who was a member of the emperor's extended family, was executed in 95 for failing to recognize the gods of the state and that he had a wife named Domitilla. The often well-informed early third-century Cassius Dio (_Historia romana_, 67. 14) agrees that the executed consul's wife was named Domitilla, says that she was Domitian's niece, and has her exiled to the prison island of Pandateria (today's Ventotene; like Ponza, one of today's Isole Pontine off the coast of mainland southern Lazio).
It is not clear whether there were two exiled Domitillas or whether Eusebius got some of his details wrong. The Roman cemetery of Domitilla, often associated with her, may very well take its name from another person of this name. The late antique legendary Greek Passio of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus (BHG 1327; Latin-language offshoots at BHL 6058, etc.), who were buried there, makes Domitilla one of its characters and has her martyred by fire at Terracina along with female companions named Theodora and Euphrosyne / Eufrosina. Her commemoration on 7. April is not attested before the martyrology of Florus of Lyon in the ninth century. St. Ado of Vienne and Usuard of Saint-Germain also placed her under this day in their martyrologies. In 1595 Domitilla's name was added to the Roman Calendar celebration on 12. May of Sts. Nereus, Achilleus, and Pancras of Rome. Dropped from the Roman Calendar in its revisions promulgated in 1969, she is commemorated on 7. May in the revised Roman Martyrology of 2001.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Flavia Domitilla:
a) as depicted (her baptism) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1326-1350; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 231v):
http://tinyurl.com/27nxqqs
b) as depicted (in the miniature at right: her martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of books 9-16 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language vision by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1335; Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 123r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f251.item.zoom
c) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Agnes of Rome) by Andrea di Bonaiuto in a later fourteenth-century diptych (ca. 1365-1370) in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/zsad2mo
d) as depicted (in the miniature at left: her martyrdom) in a later fourteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1370-1380; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 15941, fol. 17r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449688c/f41.item.zoom
e) as depicted (in an initial 'A': preaching; below and to the left: her martyrdom) in the later fourteenth-century martyrology and obituary of the abbey of Notre-Dame des Prés in Douai (ca. 1376-1400; Valenciennes, Bibliothèque de Valenciennes, ms. 838, fol. 82r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht5/IRHT_092243-p.jpg
f) as twice depicted in a late fourteenth-century copy of the _Speculum historiale_ of Vincent of Beauvais in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1396; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 313, fols. 114v, 129r):
1) being blessed by pope St. Clement I (fol. 114v; miniature at left):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84557843/f234.item.zoom
2) preaching (fol. 129r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84557843/f263.item.zoom
g) as depicted (in the miniature at right: with either St. Nereus or St. Achilleus) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay followed by the _Festes nouvelles_ attributed to Jean Golein (ca. 1401-1425; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 242, fol. 115r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8426005j/f245.item.zoom
h) as several times depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1463; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 50, fols. 358v, 370v):
1) at lower left: being blessed by pope St. Clement I (fol. 358v):
http://tinyurl.com/26byca6
2) upper register at center and right: preaching, then in prison; lower register at left: her martyrdom (fol. 370v):
http://tinyurl.com/hb96c33
Best,
John Dillon
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 7 May 2016 06:17:28 +0000
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: FEAST - A Saint for the Day (May 7): St. Anthony of Kyiv
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
We know about the Ukrainian monastic founder Anthony of Kyiv (; d. 1073; also Anthony of Pechersk, Anthony of the Caves) chiefly from the late eleventh-century, Slavic-language Life of St. Theodosius of Kyiv by St. Nestor of Pechersk (Nestor the Chronicler) and from mentions in the _Russian Primary Chronicle_ (begun by Nestor). A native of Lubec in the Chernigov region north of Kyiv, he made an early pilgrimage to Mt. Athos and returned there in mid-life, entering the Esphigmenou monastery in about 1028. Later Anthony became a solitary in a cave at Pechersk, then outside of Kyiv but now part of that city. After he had attracted a small number of followers, he withdrew to a cave farther away, continuing to act as spiritual father to his little eremitic community but leaving day-to-day leadership first to St. Barlaam of Kyiv and then, after Barlaam had been called to lead a new monastery, to St. Theodosius of Kyiv.
Anthony, whose relics have never been found, is said to have been buried in his cave, the nucleus of what would be called the monastery's Far Caves. His cult was immediate. In the Ukrainian Orthodox churches and the Ukrainian Catholic Church, all of which follow the Julian calendar, Theodosius is celebrated on 7. May (= 20. May in the Gregorian Calendar). In the Roman Martyrology, which follows the Gregorian calendar, today (7. May) is Theodosius' day of commemoration.
St. Anthony of Kyiv as depicted (at right, flanking the Theotokos and Christ Child; at left, St. Theodosius of Kyiv) in the late thirteenth-century Icon of Sven (before 1288) in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow:
http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=182
Herewith a few English-language accounts of the Kyiv (Kiev)-Pechersk Lavra (a.k.a. the Monastery of the Caves):
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Monastery_of_the_Kiev_Caves
http://symeon-anthony.info/pilgrimage/lavra.html
http://tinyurl.com/d8gfgj
Best,
John Dillon
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------------------------------
Date: Sat, 7 May 2016 06:51:34 +0000
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: FEAST - A Celebration for the Day (May 7): The Appearance of the Holy Cross over Jerusalem
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 7. May 351, as reported in a letter to the emperor Constantius II usually attributed to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, the person to whom it was regularly ascribed in late antiquity, a luminous image of the Holy Cross appeared over Mt. Golgotha, reaching as far as the Mount of Olives and seen not by a few but rather by the whole city. According to Cyril (or, if one is so inclined, to pseudo-Cyril), the image was brighter than the sun and lasted for several hours. The fifth-century ecclesiastical historians Socrates and Sozomen add that the apparition led many to convert to Christianity. This holy event is celebrated on 7. May in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople, in other medieval Greek liturgical calendars, and in the modern Greek Orthodox church.
The Appearance of the Holy Cross over Jerusalem as depicted (at upper right in the panel at lower right) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from
Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 38v):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/38v.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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End of MEDIEVAL-RELIGION Digest - 6 May 2016 to 7 May 2016 (#2016-125)
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