medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. June) is also the feast day of:
Nicander, Marcian, and Daria (d. 303). Today's less well known saints
from the Regno are the chief personae of a Greek Passio (BHG 1330) that
makes them martyrs of Durostorum in the Roman province of Moesia
Inferior. Their cult is first recorded -- without Daria -- in the
fourth-century Syrian Martyrology, where they appear on 5. June, the
traditional date for the commemoration of Marcian, Nicander, Apollonius
and others, martyrs of Egypt. It spread to southern Italy where it was
localized in Venafrum (today's Venafro [IS] in Molise) and, so
localized, was transmitted in Latin translations/adaptations of their
Passio whose earliest surviving versions (BHL 6070, 6072) come to us in
codices of the eleventh century.
One of these versions (BHL 6072) is summarized by Herbert Bloch as
follows:
"a moving tale of two soldiers, who, obeying the call of the Lord,
leave the Roman army to spread the Gospel and immediately tangle with
the Roman authorities. The 'praeses Maximus' tries to reconvert them
to the Roman religion but without success; on the contrary, Nicander's
wife Daria so strongly encourages him in his stand that she is sent to
prison, where she is joined by the two soldiers. Maximus gives them
twenty days to change their minds, but in vain, and they are sentenced
to death. Whereas Daria does everything to hearten her husbnd,
Marcianus' wife only bitterly reproaches him, and he asks that she be
led away. At the execution site Marcianus kisses her and blesses his
small child. The two martyrs embrace each other, and Daria ... bids
[Nicander] goodbye without a word of self-pity. Then they are
beheaded. Their bodies are buried in Venafro where they had found
martyrdom, and a church is built there in their honor."
--Herbert Bloch, _The Atina Dossier of Peter the Deacon of Monte
Cassino: A Hagiographical Romance of the Twelfth Century_ (Citta' del
Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1998; Studi e Testi, vol.
346), p. 88.
The church in question is that of St. Nicander at Venafro, attested
since the eighth century (when, however, it may have been dedicated to
the now shadowy St. Nicander of Capua). The present structure of this
name is variously said to be of eleventh-/twelfth-century origin or to
have been begun in the late thirteenth century and has been much
rebuilt. See the photo on this page, where even the facade is mostly
modern (the result of a medievalizing "restoration" in 1950-60):
http://www.pagus.it/progetto/comuni/venafro/snicandro/index.htm
Here's how the same church appeared in 1905:
http://www.venafro.info/index.php?showimage=187
By the year 1110 there was a church of St. Marcian at Atina in today's
Lazio; within a few decades this was claimed by Peter the Deacon in his
version of the martyrs' Passio (ed. Bloch, pp. 189-206) to have been
their burial place. But though the cult spread widely in southern
Italy, its primary locale remained Venafro, where in the early modern
period Nicander's alleged remains were discovered in what had been
Venafro's Roman cemetery.
BHL 6072 was edited by Erich Caspar in his _Petrus Diaconus und die
Monte Cassineser Faelschungen_ (Berlin: J. Springer, 1909), pp. 226-29.
In 2003 there appeared a richly illustrated volume commemorating the
seventeenth centenary of the martyrdom of Venafro's patron saints; for
details see:
http://www.vitmar.com/monumentalia/nicandromarcianoedaria.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post, lightly revised)
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