medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. April) is also the feast day of:
George of Suelli (11th cent.). Sardinia's only early saint with a
largely plausible Life (BHL 3410; twelfth-century, as is also his
surviving Office), G. is said to have been the child of house slaves to
a wealthy, childless, and celibate woman in the judicate of Cagliari.
His own mother had been sterile before G.'s birth, which latter an angel
had miraculously foretold to her as she slept. So when G. was born the
whole household knew that he was something special and the mistress of
the house (we have her name: Greca de Surapen) saw to it that he had a
good education both in Latin and in Greek and gave him his freedom. G.
studied for the prieshood, practiced an ascetic life, and at age 22 was
named bishop of Suelli (or of the Barbagia, the rural district in whose
eastern part Suelli is located). He was noted for many miracles, one of
which being (shades of St. Lidanus of Sezze!) the silencing of noisy
frogs. The date of G.'s death is controversial: whereas this is
traditionally given as 1117 (sometimes varied to 1112), details of the
Life suggest rather an early eleventh-century ubpringing and a
mid-eleventh-century episcopate.
Suelli's ex-cathedral of San Pietro, rebuilt and added to several times,
retains much of its twelfth-century facade:
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria4/pages/3Suelli3.html
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/8dvtf
and (showing side buttresses):
http://www.immaginidellasardegna.it/chiese/galleria4/pages/3Suelli.html
TinyURL for this: http://tinyurl.com/7kszn
Attached to one side of San Pietro, and entered through it, is the late
eleventh-/early twelfth-century Sanctuary of St. George of Suelli.
Constructed in the form of a Greek cross (Sardinia's early medieval
church was essentially Greek, with latinization beginning only in the
later eleventh century), it rises over the spot where G. is said to have
been buried. In the aerial view shown here it is visible at the upper
right:
http://www.simplo.it/ihm-ichnusa/locali/suelli.jpg
G.'s cult was widely diffused in the archdiocese of Cagliari by the
early thirteenth century and was confirmed by pope Paul V in 1609.
Best,
John Dillon
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