medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (20. April) is the feast day of:
1) Anicetus, pope (d. ca. 166). A. was the tenth bishop of Rome after St. Peter, According to the _Liber Pontificalis_ he came from Emesa (today's Homs) in Syria. According to Eusebius, he was bishop for eleven years. Early in his pontificate he hosted the elderly St. Polycarp of Smyrna. A. must have had contact with St. Hegesippus when the latter came to Rome and it would be surprising if he had not known St. Justin Martyr, who had been teaching in the Eternal City during the pontificate of his immediate predecessor, St. Pius I. A. may well have been the pope (the LP says it was Anacletus) who built the martyrium for St. Peter on the Vatican. Here are two views of his portrait (1480 or 1481) in the Sistine Chapel:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Anicetus.jpg
http://www.tuttipapi.it/TombeMausoleiRitratti/10-Aniceto.jpg
2) Marcellinus of Embrun (d. 374, supposedly). M. has a Vita (BHL 5227) of undetermined age that makes him an African who arrived at Rome in the brief pontificate of pope St. Eusebius and whom E. sent into today's France with two companions. Arriving at Nice, they evangelized in the Alpes Maritimes and later in the Dauphiné as well. E. was consecrated bishop of Embrun in about 365. The Vita credits him with being a thaumaturge; Gregory of Tours informs us of a perpetually burning lamp at his tomb whose oil had miraculous healing powers. In the tenth century M.'s putative relics were translated to Digne, where later they were burned during the Revolution.
Here are some views of the "romanesque" belltower of the mostly late fifteenth-century église St-Marcellin (et St-Pélade) variously said to be at Névache (Hautes-Alpes) or in adjacent La Salle les Alpes in the same département:
http://tinyurl.com/3cb2d3
http://www.alpes-guide.com/images/sites/zoom/s0212_1.jpg
There are a number of expandable views of the same church towards the bottom of this page:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Salle_les_Alpes
3) Cædwalla (d. 689). C. was the violent king of an Anglo-Saxon tribal group, the Gewisse, who extended his rule over other kingdoms south of the Thames, killing their rulers and many others and treating the survivors very harshly. In his first campaign against Sussex he encountered St. Wilfrid, then in exile and ministering to the South Saxons. It is said that C. was so impressed by him that he started spreading Christianity and enriching the Church from the proceeds of his conquests. Badly wounded in his conquest of the Isle of Wight (the last "pagan" kingdom), the still young C. (he was only about thirty at his death) abdicated in 688 and went as a pilgrim to Rome. He is the first Anglo-Saxon king known to have gone there.
Pope Sergius I baptized C. on Easter Sunday of 689, giving him the name Peter. Today is is his _dies natalis_. C. (P.) was buried in St. Peter's; Bede (_H. E._, 5. 7) gives the verse epitaph on his tomb, a rare specimen of literary craft from the Eternal City in the century following the death of St. Gregory the Great.
4) Hildegund of Schönau ("Bl."; d. 1188). H. (also Hildegundis) was born at Neuß am Rhein. Her mother is said to have died giving birth to her. Her father made a vow that if H. lived he would undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When she was old enough to travel he fulfilled his vow. H., with her hair cut and dressed as a young man, accompanied him, taking the name of Joseph. The father died at Tyre on the way back and after a year H.-Joseph returned to Germany, where, still passing for male and using the name Joseph, she entered the Cistercian abbey of Schönau in the Odenwald near Heidelberg. Her true sex was discovered only after her death (so how did the Cistercians of Schönau learn to call her H.?). H. was included in sixteenth-century expanded editions of Usuard. But her cult has never been approved by Rome.
5) Agnes of Montepulciano (d. 1317). At the age of nine A. entered a Dominican convent where she immediately displayed an extraordinary piety. After barely five years she was selected to found, along with her mistress of novices, a new house in the diocese of Acquapendente and at the age of sixteen she was named its superior. In 1306 A. founded another Dominican convent at her native Montepulciano in southern Tuscany. She spent the remainder of her life at this house, operating miracles and being very pious.
In 1365-66, Bl. Raymond of Capua wrote a Vita of A. (BHL 155). Raymond later became confessor to (and biographer of) St. Catherine of Siena, who in 1377 had visited the convent at Montepulciano to pray at A.'s tomb and while there had experienced a vision of her performing again her most famous miracle (covering the church's altar with manna). A. was canonized in 1726. Her relics remain in her former convent church, now dedicated to her, at Montepulciano. An illustrated, Italian-language account of that building is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2yx7ld
A less flattering exterior view of the same church:
http://tinyurl.com/3yehho
Best,
John Dillon
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