medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Yesterday (18. April) was once, and in some places may yet be, also the
feast day of:
Eleutherius, bp. of Illyricum, and his mother, Anthia (d. ca. 125,
supposedly). An Eleutherius celebrated on 18. April occurs in the late
fifth-century (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, in the early
ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, and, it is said, in the
Mozarabic Calendar. Medieval dedications to a saint of this name are
widespread in central and southern Italy. Some of these are to our E.,
though others commemorate the pope of this name and still others (in a
much later-arising cult centered on southern Lazio) honor a pilgrim
celebrated in late May.
An Eleutherius commonly celebrated in Eastern-rite churches on 15.
December has a quite legendary sixth- or seventh-century Greek Passio
(BHG 568-571b) that makes him a Roman native and son of a highly placed
woman named Anthia and has him consecrated bishop by a certain Anicetus
and sent to Illyricum to take up his ecclesiastical office, only to be
sent to Rome for trial. Here, after a colloquy with the emperor Hadrian
and an impressive series of failed execution attempts, he is put to
death along with Anthia on 15. December of some unspecified year. One
of this text's Latin translations (BHL 2451-52), said to be earlier than
the eighth century, adapts the legend to the E. of 18. April by changing
his martyrdom to that date; it also makes him a less well-known saint of
the Regno by substituting Aeca (the predecessor of Troia in northern
Apulia) for Illyricum. In 1105 two monks from Troia removed from their
burial place near Velletri in Lazio and brought back to their home town
the supposed remains of pope saint Pontianus and of a saint E.
identified by the Troiani as their former bishop; E. has been a patron
saint here ever since. (Troia is an eleventh-century Byzantine
foundation on the ruins of Aeca; lacking a continuous tradition of
settlement, it had to go elsewhere for the bodies of its local saints.)
By the middle of the fourteenth century the E. of 18. April had also
joined the pantheon of local saints at Porec (Italian: Parenzo) in
Croatia, where he shared a tomb with the local martyr-bishop Maurus
(yes, this is the same M. whose presumed remains had by this time been
in the Lateran Baptistery for centuries) and where of course he was
remembered as a bishop of Illyricum. In 1354 this tomb and its contents
became spoils in the Genoese sack of Porec; they stayed in Genoa until
1933, when they were returned to Porec.
A version of the Passio of the E. of Aeca and of his mother A. was known
to Florus of Lyon in the ninth century, who when listing these saints
for 18. April substituted 'Messana' for 'Aeca' as the name of E.'s
Apulian town. This odd error led to later cults of E. and A. at Messina
in Sicily and at Mesagne on the Salentine Peninsula (the heel of the
Italian boot). Prior to its latest version (which omits them entirely),
the RM listed Messina as the place of martyrdom for our E. and A.
Curiously, there is also an Anicetus remembered about the same time as
our E.: pope saint Anicetus, celebrated on 17. April.
Web-based visuals of medieval origin relating to the E. of 18. April are
not numerous. A view of the facade of Toia's cathedral of Santa Maria
Assunta (1093-1119) will be found here:
http://www.arte-argomenti.org/schede/troia/troia.html
The architrave (_sensu Italiano_) / lintel over the main portal is
replete with carvings (said to have been reworked in the sixteenth
century). In the view of it on this page:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/guidoiam/arte/guidoiam/porta_centrale.htm
, E. is the saint at the far left.
The second saint from left in this late fourteenth-century panel now in
the diocesan museum at Velletri is our E. and the pope at the far right
is E.'s fellow abductee to Troia, saint Pontianus:
http://tinyurl.com/mdeqn
Nepi (VT) in northern Lazio had a medieval church dedicated to our E.
"Restored" in the sixteenth century, it is now deconsecrated and houses
an art gallery:
http://tinyurl.com/r3a3n
Best,
John Dillon
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