medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. September) is the feast day of:
Elias the Speleote (d. ca. 960 [traditional]; ca. 930 [recent
scholarship]). Today's less well known saint of the Regno was a
Greek-speaking itinerant monk, thaumaturge, and monastic founder.
According to his late tenth-century Bios (BHG 581 plus a Latin
translation from ca. 1082), E. was born into a wealthy family of today's
Reggio di Calabria (RC) who provided him with a good religious
education. At the age of eighteen he crossed over into Muslim Sicily,
where he lived as hermit for about a year before going on to Rome, where
he paid his respects at the tombs of the Apostles and performed his
first miracle, rendering immobile a bunch of brigands who had unwisely
decided to attack him. Returning to Calabria, he attached himself first
to the saintly abbot Arsenios and later, after spending several years at
Patras in Greece, to St. Elias of Enna, then residing at the Saline near
today's Gioa Tauro (RC). When this Elias departed forConstantinople
never to return, he left his abode in the joint charge of his companion
Daniel and of our E. (who, however, is never mentioned in the
Daniel-influenced Bios of this other Elias).
E. moved on quickly to other places in Calabria, finally settling in a
set of caves at today's Melicucca' (RC) near Seminara, where he founded
what became a large and regionally famous Greek-rite monastic community.
He died on 11. September in what the Bios unreliably says was the
ninety-sixth year of his life and was buried in a tomb that he himself
had dug in one of the monastery's caves. Many miracles were attributed
to him in his lifetime and his grave, visited by numerous pilgrims some
of whom sought relief while they slept by the tomb, was the site of many
more. In some cases the incubation lasted more than a single night.
In the eighteenth century, when the monastery had long since been closed
and most of the caves were already filled in by the action of
earthquakes and by more regular geographic processes, E.'s tomb was
rediscovered and his cult was renewed. Today it is still a place of
pilgrimage, though (I believe) incubation is no longer practiced here.
For views of the site, see:
http://www.heliosmag.it/99/5/cenobioi.html
http://www.provincia.rc.it/pagine/itinerari.php?t=testo_foto&cat=22
A recently announced archeological study of the monastery at Melicucca'
and of other Italo-Greek monastic sites in Calabria is Francesca Zagari,
_L'eparchia delle Saline_ (Roma: Palombi, 2006). Has anyone on the list
seen it yet?
The later eleventh-century Latin translation of E.'s Bios, which
includes material not present in the Greek witnesses we have now, was
edited by Maria Vittoria Strazzeri as "Una traduzione dal greco ad uso
dei Normanni: la Vita latina di Sant'Elia lo Speleota", _Archivio
storico per la Calabria e la Lucania_ 59 (1992), 1-108. An important
recent article on the Bios (which latter is now being re-edited by
Enrico Morini of the Universita' di Bologna) is Stefano Caruso, "Sulla
cronologia della Vita di S. Elia Speleota da Reggio", _Byzantion_ 70
(2000), 25-56.
Best,
John Dillon
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