medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (5. February) is the feast day of:
Agatha (d. 250 or 251, supposedly). The virgin martyr A. is said legendarily to have perished at the age of fifteen in the Decian persecution. She is particularly associated with the Sicilian city of Catania, both as the site of her imprisonment, torture, and death and as the place she has protected from repeated eruptions of nearby Mt. Etna. During his evanescent early eleventh-century reconquest of eastern Sicily the East Roman general George Maniakes had what were said to be her remains removed to Constantinople. In 1126, with Sicily again under Christian rule, a pair of Latins -- one French, the other Calabrian -- brought these, or what they had been assured were these, back to Catania (less a breast that got left at Gallipoli in Apulia), thereby engendering two minor monuments of medieval Sicily's Latin literature: abbot-bishop Maurice's engaging account of this event and the later and very lovely sequence for the feast of A.'s translation from Constantinople.
Here's A. in the sixth-century apse mosaics (north spandrel) of the Basilica Eufrasiana at Poreč (Parenzo) in Croatia:
http://nickerson.icomos.org/porec/u/ug.jpg
And here are a few views and Italian-language accounts of A.'s originally very late fifth-century basilica (Sant'Agata Maggiore) at Ravenna:
http://www.aboutromania.com/Ravena30.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2gfktu
http://tinyurl.com/3cfjbk
http://tinyurl.com/322ohx
A noteworthy later medieval work of art associated with A. is her reliquary bust at Catania. Commissioned in 1373 by a bishop of Catania who hailed from Limoges, and executed by the Sienese master Giovanni di Bartolo, it was completed in 1376. The base is early modern and most of the jewelry with which the bust is bedecked is also post-medieval adornment. An illustrated, English-language account is here:
http://www.goldsmith.it/us/culturale/storia/sagata/sagata.html
Another view:
http://www.siciliainfoto.it/s.agata.JPG
Further views of this object and views of her fifteenth-century silver shrine and of various body-part reliquaries (the one that resembles a monstrance is a breast reliquary) are here:
http://www.cataniaperte.com/santagata/reliquie/reliquie.htm#busto
The building in which these are housed, Catania's cathedral of St. Agatha, is chiefly an eighteenth-century replacement for a twelfth-century structure destroyed by the earthquake of 1693. Surviving from that predecessor are part of the transept and the three apses. A partial view (exterior) is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2tf82o
And a view and discussion of the cathedral's tribune is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2bk528
Catania's relics of A. also include her veil, a strip of flame-colored cloth that in various forms (it has suffered losses and has been repaired several times) has been protecting the city since the year following her martyrdom, when -- so says the legend -- Christians removed it from A.'s grave and displayed it in a successful defence against lava flows issuing from Etna. A view of this relic being carried in procession is here:
http://www.cataniaperte.com/santagata/foto/33.htm
Florence also has one, presented in 1439:
http://xoomer.alice.it/whpar/radici/sa_sa_velo.html
As noted above, one of A.'s breasts (in the legend, these were cut off as part of her torture) was left in today's Gallipoli (LE) in Apulia. For the miracle that it operated there, causing it to be given to that city, see abbot-bishop Maurice's account of A.'s translation from Constantinople. It is now housed in Gallipoli's early modern cathedral dedicated to A. There are several views of the relic on this page (the ones at the bottom expand):
http://tinyurl.com/j5jmz
Piero della Francesca's Polyptych of Sant'Antonio (in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria)
http://www.abcgallery.com/P/piero/piero49.html
shows A. at lower right holding on a platter these evidences of her torment:
http://tinyurl.com/37v93r
Best,
John Dillon
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