medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (15. September) is the feast day of:
Nicomedes of Rome (??). N. is a poorly documented but much venerated
martyr, absent from the _Depositio Martyrum_ of 354 and from codices of
the early family of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. Our earliest
testimony of him, a Passio (BHL 6062; later revision, BHL 6237) thought
to be originally of the fifth or sixth century, is not a separate piece
of writing but rather a segment of the much larger Passio of Nereus and
Achilleus (BHL 6058). The latter provides highly fictional stories for
a number of saints some of whom we know to have been real because their
burial places are archeologically attested. While there is always the
possibility that N. is a complete fiction, it does seem probable that
when in this account (which makes him a priest martyred under Domitian)
he is said to have been buried on the Via Nomentana outside the city
that much at least is accurate and that at the time of its writing he
had a _memoria_ of some sort in that vicinity. Boniface V (619-25)
erected here a basilica in his honor that is a fixture in the
seventh-century pilgrim itineraries for Rome and that was restored by
Adrian I (772-95). A feast on 1. June for the the dedication of this
church occurs in the Gelasian and the Gregorian sacramentaries, in the
historical martyrologies, in the expanded version of the (ps.-)HM, and
in the epitomes of the latter. All of these also list N. for today. A
later Passio (BHL 6238), thought to be no earlier than the seventh
century, gives 1. June as N.'s _dies natalis_ and makes him a martyr
under Maximian.
N.'s relics are said to repose in Rome's church of Santa Prassede. But
all in Parma know that in 876 bishop Wibod brought them to today's
Salsomaggiore Terme (PR) in Emilia, where they were used for the
dedication of a new church in his (N.'s) honor. This was replaced by
one of the twelfth century, reworked in the fourteenth with later
modifications and with remnants of the ninth-century original in the
lower portions of the walls. Two brief, Italian-language accounts of
it are here:
http://tinyurl.com/zx8xd
http://tinyurl.com/glb2l
Some more single views:
http://xoomer.alice.it/paleosito/foto/vis_nicomede.JPG
http://turismo.parma.it/allegato.asp?ID=207997
http://xoomer.alice.it/paleosito/foto/vis_cripta.JPG
and a page of multiple views:
http://www.rccr.cremona.it/monografie/luna/gita3c.htm
N. is second from left in Benedetto Bembo's Polyptych of Torchiara
(1462) formerly in the Oratorio di San Nicomede in the Castle of
Torrechiara at Langhirano-Torrechiara (PR) and now in Milan's Castello
Sforzesco:
http://tinyurl.com/fbfs2
There's a much clearer, black-and-white view of N. alone from this
composition in the _Bibliotheca Sanctorum_, vol. 9, col. 982.
Best,
John Dillon
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