medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Thanks, John. This was a particularly moving collection of bones to
see, in part because it is from "my" period [in Venetian Greece], but
mostly because you can look at those skulls and start working out
features, spotting specific injuries, identifying the young,realizing
that these were very real men, and that many of those who collected the
bones knew them by name.
Meanwhile, the mosaic floor [nice links below] is one of the most
amazing things I have ever seen & definitely not to be missed. The
lovely local wines make the train trip down along the eastern coast,
plus the changeover to a bus, well worth the time & trouble.
For S. Pietro, much tinier than the photos suggest, the definitive work
is Linda, Safran, S. Pietro at Otranto: Byzantine art in South Italy,
also, San Pietro ad Otranto: arte bizantina in Italia meridionale.
All the books available on either church, the frescos & mosaics, are by
the same priest who loves them dearly but for whom scholarship is not a
primary consideration. Some extraordinary assertions in the big pricey
book on the mosaics.
DW
John Dillon wrote:
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>Today (14. August) is the feast day of:
>
>The martyrs of Otranto (d. 1480), blessed.
>
>In late July 1480 the little port city of Otranto on the Salentine
>peninsula (the heel of Italy's boot) was besieged by a Turkish invasion
>force that had crossed the Adriatic from Valona in today's Albania.
>Only lightly garrisoned and poorly provisioned for a siege (an expected
>invasion in the vicinity of Brindisi had drawn northward most of the
>Kingdom of Sicily's defense forces in the region), the city held out
>behind its walls for about two weeks before being taken on 11. August.
>Most of Otranto's civic and religious leadership perished either in the
>final assault or during the sack that followed.
>
>Three days later, the captors took the bulk of the city's surviving
>adult males (perhaps 600 in all; unreliable accounts from long afterward
>put the number at about 900 and make it include virtually the entire
>population regardless of sex or age) to a hill outside of town and there
>executed all of them, supposedly by decapitation, one by one, all day
>long. A few wealthy people had been allowed to convert to Islam and
>were therefore spared; the remainder are said to have been martyred for
>their faith (though whether they were really offered a choice remains an
>open question).
>
>A cult of the martyrs sprang up as soon as circumstances permitted.
>When in the following year the city was recaptured by the kingdom and
>its allies (chiefly forces from anti-Islamic confrontation states from
>Portugal to Hungary), bones of the victims were collected on the order
>of the victorious commandar, the duke of Calabria and future king
>Alfronso II. These were brought to the capital, Naples; other bones
>were tended reverently by the population of Otranto, who clearly had
>not all perished. Alfonso ordered a huge reliquary to be made, at
>Crown expense and in the form of a transparent glass cylinder, for the
>bones that been brought back to Naples; this is visible today in
>Naples' church of Santa Caterina a Formiello, designed for Alfonso as a
>memorial to his triumph. After several years of failed attempts to get
>a subvention from the Crown, the citizens of Otranto had a virtually
>identical reliquary made for them at their expense and installed it in
>their cathedral, where it can be seen today in exactly the same
>position within the building as that occupied by Alfonso's reliquary in
>Naples.
>
>Civic authorities at Otranto proclaimed the martyrs patrons of their
>city as early as 1539. But, despite promotion of their cause by several
>bishops, it was not until 1771 that they (the marytrs, not the civic
>authorities) were officially beatified.
>
>A few views, etc. of Otranto's late eleventh-century cathedral:
>
>Italian-language site, multi-page, text and image:
>http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Lecce/Otranto.htm
>
>Facade views (facade restored after 1481):
>http://www.salentoviaggi.com/vedutacatotrantoimg.htm
>http://tinyurl.com/q34jf
>
>Interior, showing mosaic floor:
>http://www.comprensivotranto.it/secondario/fotocattedrale.htm
>http://tinyurl.com/npzyx
>The floor as seen from above:
>http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep5/ep5-scala.htm
>http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep5/mosaic2.jpg
>Details:
>http://www.comprensivotranto.it/otranto/mosaico_2.htm
>Detail (REX ARTVRVS):
>http://www.salentoviaggi.com/mosicdepl.jpg
>The ceiling (not medieval; appealing nonetheless):
>http://tinyurl.com/fa9gh
>
>Barely visible at the end of the right aisle here is a chapel
>containing the city's late fifteenth-century reliquary of the victims:
>http://images.world66.com/in/te/rn/interno_della_catt_galleryfull
>But the big collection is in the eighteenth-century Cappella dei
>Martiri at the end of the left aisle:
>http://www.otrantonelmondo.com/galleria/martiri.jpg
>http://strungupby.altervista.org/rusticadelica/OtrantoMartiri.jpg
>http://tinyurl.com/fyode
>
>Views, plan, etc. of the crypt:
>http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Lecce/otrant11.jpg
>http://tinyurl.com/zm9vj
>http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Otranto/Costruzione.htm
>Fresco of the BVM in the crypt (main apse), spared by the Turks in
>1480/81:
>http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Otranto/Madre.jpg
>
>
>Also in Otranto is the ninth-/tenth-century Greek church of San Pietro,
>with extensive frescoing:
>http://www.comprensivotranto.it/otranto/san_pietro.htm
>http://www.otranto.biz/foto-otranto/images/otranto-sanpietro.jpg
>http://www.otranto.biz/foto-otranto/images/otranto-sanpietro-2.jpg
>http://tinyurl.com/hlcwh
>http://loloieg.free.fr/photos/24_07_05_otranto/affich_photo?id=3&id2=4
>http://loloieg.free.fr/photos/24_07_05_otranto/affich_photo?id=3&id2=3
>
>Best,
>John Dillon
>
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