medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (7. February) is the feast day of:
1) Lawrence of Siponto (d. ca. 550, supposedly). Today's less well known saint of the Regno first comes to light in three seemingly eleventh-century Vitae, two in prose and one in verse from an Office for him. All of these make him out to be the unnamed sixth-century bishop of Siponto in northern Apulia who in the principal foundation account of the nearby sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel on the Gargano peninsula, the late eighth- or ninth-century _Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano_ (BHL 5948), is chosen by Michael to be present at the dedication of the sanctuary, which latter the archangel himself had miraculously brought intop existence.
These texts and their later reworkings, though differing in their details, all celebrate a figure of legend and reaffirm through him, in different political contexts, the diocese of Siponto's traditional supervision of this famous sanctuary and pilgrimage destination. Independent evidence has not been found either for the existence of a late antique or early medieval bishop of Siponto named Lawrence or for that of a bishop of Siponto who in the sixth century did any of the things that are ascribed to L. Antonio Papagna's careful _Il Cristianesimo in Puglia fino all'avvento dei Normanni (1071)_ (Bari: Levante, 1993) hesitates to grant L. any historical standing.
In 1099 relics said to be L.'s were discovered during excavations in a chapel in Siponto. In 1117 these were solemnly transferred to that city's newish cathedral of Santa Maria and reinterred there under the high altar. Views and Italian-language descriptions of this building are here:
http://www.garganonline.net/Siponto/SMaria.htm
http://www.mondimedievali.net/Edifici/Puglia/Foggia/Manfredonia.htm
http://tinyurl.com/4ggw9
An illustrated, English-language account of it is here:
http://www.itineraweb.com/english/grandtour/5ci6s6.htm
A whole page of expandable views is here:
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/cultura/s_siponto/siponto/index.htm
Three pages of expandable views (black-and-white) from the archeological campaign of 1953, including details not otherwise shown, are here:
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto1/index.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto/index.htm
http://www.manfredoniaeventi.it/archeologia/siponto/index_2.htm
And an illustrated Italian-lanugage account of its crypt is here:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Siponto/Costruzione.htm
with plan:
http://www.enec.it/Cripte/Siponto/Planimetria.htm
In the later thirteenth century, when subsidence had made an already earthquake-damaged Siponto increasingly swampy and malaria-ridden, L.'s putative remains were transferred to the cathedral of Manfredonia, the nearby port founded as a replacement by king Manfred in 1256. They were lost in 1620 when a raiding party of Turks destroyed the building. Its successor, the present cathedral, is dedicated to L. Two recent studies on L'.s Vitae are:
Tiziana Catallo, "Sulla dataztione delle 'Vitae' di Lorenzo vescovo di Siponto", _Studi Medievali, 3. serie, 32 (1991), 129-57.
Ada Campione, "Lorenzo di Siponto: un vescovo del VI secolo tra agiografia e storia", _Vetera Christianorum_ 41 (2004), 61-82.
2) Luke the Younger (L. of Stiris, L. the Wonderworker; d 953). According to his later tenth-century Bios (BHG 994), L. while still in his early teens left his home near Delphi and entered a monastery in Athens. Released on the request of his mother, he soon withdrew to a nearby mountain where, with the exception of perhaps a decade spent near Corinth in the company of a stylite, he lived as a hermit for many years. In the early 940s, prompted in part by Hungarian raids, he moved several times but in 946 he settled down on a mountainside in Phokis and attracted followers. Miracles occurred at his grave. Within a century of L.'s death the oratory that he built here had been transformed into the art-historically significant monastery named for him, Hosios Loukas. L.'s tomb is in the crypt of its katholikon. Here he is, overlooking an entrance to the complex:
http://tinyurl.com/26yp7v
A few illustrated, English-language pages on Hosios Loukas:
http://www.distomo.gr/english/osios_loukas_en.htm
http://www.culture.gr/2/21/212/21201a/e212aa02.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosios_Loukas
http://www.ou.edu/class/ahi4263/byzhtml/p06-01.html
http://home.att.net/~hagardorn/hossias_loukas.htm
The two churches (the mid-eleventh-century katholikon on the left, the earlier Panagia church on the right):
http://tinyurl.com/yrxnf6
http://tinyurl.com/2dl3bm
The katholikon:
http://tinyurl.com/2774rp
http://tinyurl.com/22ylxe
http://tinyurl.com/3dpr9r
http://tinyurl.com/yu3cga
http://tinyurl.com/ypknap
http://www.ou.edu/class/ahi4263/byzhtml/p06-02.html
http://12koerbe.de/mosaiken/hlukas.htm
http://www.arch-hist.net/gal/Greece/img/cryptOsiosLoukas.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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