medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
1) Emilius and Priam (??). The (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology lists for today a group consisting of Emilius, Felix, Priamus, and Felicianus (sometimes given as Licianus or Lucianus), said in most witnesses to have been martyred in Sardinia. Twentieth-century hagiographical scholarship usually views this entry as a garbled doublet of that for for the Roman martyrs Primus and Felicianus of 9. June and interprets the "In Sardinia" part as a mistake. Sardinians have been more accommodating but even so only Emilius and Priam seem to have been venerated on the island.
Here E. and P. are the patrons of the city of Bosa (NU) and of its homonymous diocese (E. is Bosa's traditional protobishop). The city's cathedral is dedicated to the BVM and to E. and M., whose statues decorating the high altar are garlanded with flowers today. At Villanova Truschedu (OR) and at Tortolì (OG) E., here called Gemiliano, has a civic patronal festival and present or former church dedications. At Lanusei (OG) there is a small sanctuary dedicated to P.
Whereas much of this recognition appears not to antedate the later sixteenth century, in the diocese of Cagliari the churches dedicated to E. (as Gemiliano/Mamiliano) at Sestu (CA) and at Samassi (VS) are originally from the latter half of the thirteenth century. Each replaced an earlier church at its site and at least at Samassi the predecessor, attested in a charter of 1119, was also dedicated to E. The same diocese has a parish of San Priamo at San Vito (CA) with a twelfth-century chapel adjoining its early modern church now dedicated to St. Andrew. As the churches at Sestu and Samassi no longer appear on the diocesan list of parishes and other institutions and as the parish of San Priamo is based on a church no longer dedicated to him, one could infer that in this diocese official veneration of E. and P. has ceased. But at all of these places one or both is still the focus of a civic patronal festival.
An Italian-language site, with exterior photographs and a floor plan, on the rural church of San Gemiliano at Sestu is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/itgnervi/gemiliano.htm
Most of the photographs are at the bottom of the page.
The link below that ("Torna Chiese Romaniche") brings one to a page with links to similar treatments of other (mostly also small) "romanesque" churches in the area.
Another Italian-language page on this church, with three photographs (incl. an interior view of the late sixteenth-century Catalan Gothic front portico), is here:
http://www.ilportalesardo.it/monumenti/casestu.htm
An Italian-language account, together with a photograph, of the church of San Gemiliano at Samassi occupies the lower portion of this page:
http://www.hellosardinia.it/dicembre99.htm
2) Germanus of Paris (d. 576). According to Venantius Fortunatus, the author of our earliest account of him (BHL 3468), G. was born in the territory of Autun, was educated there, and served as deacon and then priest in its diocesan clergy before being named abbot of its monastery of St. Symphorian in the year 540. In the mid-550s king Childebert I made him his arch-chaplain and then bishop of Paris. Personally ascetic, G. was known for his learning, for his kindness to the less fortunate, and for his miracles. When he died he was buried in the monastery he had founded, since known as Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His cult was immediate.
In 755 G.'s remains were translated to the high altar of the abbey church in the presence of Pepin the Younger and his sons Charles (not yet the Great) and Carloman. There they remained until their destruction during the French Revolution. Herewith a few views of the abbey church, starting from the front with its massive late tenth-/early eleventh-century belltower and working back to the twelfth-century chancel and ambulatory:
http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1507e/
http://p.vtourist.com/2589455-St_Germain_des_Pres-Paris.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2fjjet
http://tinyurl.com/ytbvqw
http://tinyurl.com/yuqcgd
http://tinyurl.com/yok4b6
http://tinyurl.com/2ccrxd
http://tinyurl.com/2xxamw
3) Ubaldesca (Bl.; d. 1205). The most authentic form of U.'s Vita is a sixteenth-century Italian translation of a lost Latin original seemingly written written shortly after 1261; the latter also served as the base for two expanded early modern Vite, also in Italian, that underlie most of accounts of U. circulating today. According to this translation, probably written before 1586 and first published in 1996, U. was born of humble parentage in the Pisan suburb of Calcinaia. At the age of fourteen she entered the convent of San Giovanni in Pisa's Chinzica quarter. She spent the remainder of her life there, seemingly as a lay sister, living a life of virtue and of extreme self-denial and interacting with the Pisan public when begging for alms on the city's streets. Late in life, U. was regarded as a living saint; post-mortem miracles expanded her cult among her fellow Pisans.
By 1207 San Giovanni had come under the control of the Hospitallers of the nearby church and convent of San Sepolcro. Later in the thirteenth century it was functioning as a women's hospital and, though the Vita gives no indication of this, it may already have done so in U.'s lifetime. When U. was in extremis, her monastery's chaplain, a priest of San Sepolcro, made arrangements for her exequies and for the burial of her remains at the latter church. U. was henceforth both a city saint and a Hospitaller one, celebrated liturgically on 28. May. Though she seems never to have been canonized, Sixtus V recognized her as Blessed when in 1586 he authorized the translation of some of her relics to Malta. Pisan calendars, etc. consistently call her Saint.
U. is also Calcinaia's patron saint. In 1924, her relics at San Sepolcro were translated to Calcinaia's church of San Giovanni Battista, where they are kept in the effigy shown here:
http://santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90595/90595A.JPG
Stile Pisano's illustrated page on Pisa's San Sepolcro, with many expandable images at bottom and with links to other collections of views higher up, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2z5dhb
Best,
John Dillon
(Emilius and Priam considerably revised from an earlier post; Ubaldesca edited down from last year's entry)
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|