medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. February) is the feast day of:
1) Archelaus, venerated in the diocese of Oristano (d. 100, supposedly). A. is the patron saint of the diocese of Oristano in Sardinia, celebrated today in the cathedral as well in the city Oristano (of which he is also the patron saint and where today is an official holiday). Unattested in any surviving ancient or medieval sources, he is a product of the early seventeenth-century "corpi santi" episode in Sardinia, when early Christian gravesites were excavated for human remains associated with an inscription conducing to the identification of a saint. In 1615 A. turned up in the archbishop of Oristano's search for the remains of the attested St. Luxurius (Lussorius, etc.) in the crypt the latter's church at today's Fordongianus (OR), anciently Forum Traiani. His sepulchral inscription (CIL X. 1120*) read as follows:
Hic iacet b.m. Archelaus presbiter obit
quarto Kal(endas) septembres
to which some idiot added "an. 100", causing the entire inscription to be stigmatized as a probable forgery when it was edited early in the last century for the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_ (hence the asterisk in its CIL number). As was customary during this episode, the "b.m." of the inscription was interpreted not as _bonae memoriae_ but rather as _beatus martyr_.
Within a few days of their discovery A.'s remains were taken to the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta at Oristano, where today they are housed in the chapel shown here:
http://blogs.dotnethell.it/images/10831.jpg
http://blogs.dotnethell.it/images/10830.jpg
Much rebuilt, Oristano's cathedral retains a little of its early twelfth-century (1130) original construction in the rear:
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=214/014
and at the base of the fifteenth-century tower (with eighteenth-century cupola):
http://tinyurl.com/23zvxz
http://www.lamiasardegna.it/web/000/foto.asp?url=214/015
The cathedral has this nice fifteenth-century monstrance:
http://www.diocesioristano.it/pic_display.asp?id=942
A.'s translation to the cathedral of Oristano is thought to have taken place on 11. February. Why his feast now occurs on 13. February is not clear. At Fordongianus, where A. is the co-dedicatee of the modern church of Santi Pietro e Archelao, he is celebrated on 29. August (his date of death recorded in the inscription).
OK, so that wasn't very medieval. By way of compensation, herewith an Italian-language account (with good photographs) of the originally late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century church of San Lussorio in which A.'s remains were found:
http://web.tiscali.it/romanicosardo/mioweb4/fordongianus.htm
Exterior views of the church and views of the crypt and its restored frescos are here:
http://www.forumtraiani.it/index1.html?/gchiesaest1.html
(for the second page, click on the arrow at lower right). The last three photographs on this page
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/guysca/fordongianus.htm
are expandable views of the crypt showing more detail.
2) Polyeuct of Melitene (d. ca. 259, supposedly). P. is a martyr of the Roman garrison town of Melitene in Armenia, today's Malatya in southeastern Turkey. According to his earliest surviving Acta (BHG 1866-67), he was a formerly pagan military officer who publicly refused to enforce Valerian's persecution edict, saying that Christ in a dream had removed his Roman military garb and had replaced it with that of the celestial host. Officialdom promptly effectuated his transfer.
In the Syriac Martyrology, in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology, and in the martyrology of Bede, P.'s feast falls on 7. January; in most eastern churches it ocurs on 9. January. A second listing (perhaps for another saint of this name) in the HM on 14. February caused Florus to list P. there. Ado, followed by Usuard, moved him up to today's date. P. appears to have been dropped from the RM in its latest version (2001).
In the early sixth century (524-27) a very large church dedicated to P. was erected at Constantinople by Anicia Juliana, whose foundation epigram survives as _Anthologia Graeca_, 1. 10. Gregory of Tours goes on about this at length in his _In gloria martyrum_, 1. 102, noting that P.'s relics there prevented acts of false swearing (whence P. has become the traditional patron saint of vows and treaties). The remains of this church were discovered 1960; that in turn led to the identification of certain carved stones now in Venice as having once been part of its fabric. Some views follow.
Plan, distance view of the ruins, various carved stones:
http://tinyurl.com/39n2md
Interior piers ("pilastri acritani" now displayed outside the south facade of San Marco in Venice):
http://tinyurl.com/2ply3k
http://www.ou.edu/class/ahi4263/byzslides/036.jpg
3) Peter I of Vercelli (d. 997). The first of two sainted bishops of the Piedmontese city of Vercelli to be named Petrus, our P. commenced his episcopate in 978. Although nothing of his earlier life is known, his apparently faithful adherence to the Ottonian cause in Italy has led many to suppose that he may have been German.
In 997 P. was put to death at the order of Arduin of Ivrea, not yet proclaimed king of Italy but already a thorn in the imperial side. His body, laid to rest in his cathedral, became the focal point of a cult unfavorable to Arduin, who retaliated by having the building set on fire. A purely local saint, P. is celebrated liturgically only in the Archdiocese of Vercelli. Unlike Adelpretus II (Albert) of Trent,
another bishop seemingly slain for political reasons, he is not listed in the new version (2001) of the RM.
Vercelli's present cathedral is largely neoclassical. But its belltower is not:
http://www.valsesiascuole.it/crosior/1medioevo/comune65.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/39gq3f
http://tinyurl.com/2pndct
And it does have this lovely thirteenth(?)-century silver crucifix:
http://tinyurl.com/38o8ja
Some of the Archdiocese's early medieval treasures are shown here (incl., for students of Old English, a page from the Vercelli Book):
http://www.archeovercelli.it/duomo.html
More medieval in appearance than the cathedral is Vercelli's formerly abbatial church of Sant'Andrea:
http://tinyurl.com/9xw95
http://www.valsesiascuole.it/crosior/1medioevo/comune66.jpg
Two entire pages on this monument are here (most views expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/2vznff
http://tinyurl.com/3y3jom
Best,
John Dillon
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