medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. September) is the feast day of:
Marinus (Marinus of San Marino; Marinus the Dalmatian; 4th cent.,
supposedly). The eponym and patron saint of the Republic of San Marino
is known to us from a Life whose earliest witness is a tenth-century
manuscript from Bobbio now in Turin and whose most widely available text
is the one printed in the _Acta Sanctorum_ based on twelfth- and
fifteenth-century sources (BHL 4830, 4831). According to this account,
M. was an eloquent man from the Dalmatian island of Arbe who together
with his compatriot St. Leo arrived at Rimini in the time of Diocletian
and Maximian and who, though skilled in all the arts, at the command of
these emperors spent three years toiling as a stonecutter on nearby
Monte Titano (San Marino's highest mountain). That labor finished, he
returned to Rimini and preached the faith until a woman from Dalmatia
falsely accused him of being her absconding husband. Whereupon he
returned to Monte Titano and, establishing an oratory in honor of St.
Peter, lived there as a hermit. M. and Leo (who in the interim had been
living similarly on one of the other mountains) came to the attention of
the bishop of Rimini, who ordained Leo as priest and M. as deacon. This
pair then spent the rest of their lives separately combating idolatry in
their adopted homeland.
According to Eugippius' Life of Severinus of Noricum, there was a
monastery on Monte Titano in about the year 500. In 756 a _castellum
Sancti Marini_ existed in the vicinity; our first surviving testimony of
the monastery's being named after M. comes from the year 885. In the
tenth century the surrounding area was being called the parish of
Sanctus Marinus and from that the rural commune that became today's
republic took its name.
There are few visual medieval remains of M.'s cult. In this
fifteenth-century painting by Luca di Frosino, M. is on the right in
his deacon's dalmatic and holding a stonecutter's tool:
http://tinyurl.com/cghfu
The fellow on the right is Leo. His attire reflects his standing as the
legendary proto-bishop of Montefeltro.
M. is one of those saints who imposed a punishment of labor service upon
a wild beast (in this case, a bear) that had killed his beast of burden
(a donkey). In the absence of medieval images of M. and the bear,
herewith some modern ones:
http://tinyurl.com/7emxf
http://tinyurl.com/9cy8s
http://tinyurl.com/drorv
http://tinyurl.com/89xnz
An Italian-language account of M.'s hagiography through the centuries is
here:
http://www.libertas.sm/libri/libera/lib_2.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post, lightly revised)
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