medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (3. May) is the feast day of:
1) Philip and James (the Less), apostles (d. 1st cent.). P. comes fifth in lists of the apostles in the synoptic gospels and at Acts 1:13. Early tradition made him the evangelist of Phrygia, martyred at Hieropolis (today's Pamukkale in Turkey). J. is the James "cousin of the Lord" and, in Western tradition (for the most part), the son of Alpheus/Clopas (Eusebius and others distinguish these two, making the first the bishop of Jerusalem martyred in 62 and the second the apostle). He has a prominent position in Acts and is the traditional author of the Epistle that bears his name.
P. and J. have had a joint Western feast in early May since the sixth century. Until 1955, this fell on 1. May. Rome's much rebuilt church of the Santi Apostoli was built in the pontificates of Pelagius I (556-61) and John III (561-74) and dedicated to P. and J. Herewith some perhaps less familiar dedications to them:
The chapel of P. and J. in the remains of the royal pleasure place (twelfth-century; restored, 1990) of Maredolce at Favara on the outskirts of Palermo:
Plan:
http://tinyurl.com/2jebgu
Views:
http://tinyurl.com/34b6r9
http://tinyurl.com/363zjb
http://tinyurl.com/2rpnmp
http://tinyurl.com/39qol9
A brief, English-language introduction to the site:
http://tinyurl.com/3cxmrs
An illustrated, Italian-language one, with interior and exterior views of the chapel:
http://www.scuolamediaquasimodo.it/maredolce.htm:
Another former chapel dedicated to P. and J. is their originally twelfth-century church at Castellina (PT) in Tuscany, once serving a now vanished castle:
http://www.castellinadiserravalle.it/storia%20castelina.htm
From slightly later in the twelfth century is their church at Montecastelli Pisano (SI), also in Tuscany:
http://www.incontro-montecastelli.it/Montecastelli.html
http://www.cm-valdicecina.pisa.it/foto/MONTECA2.JPG
There's a brief account of it in Italian here:
http://tinyurl.com/3dy2tc
In this aerial view, it's just to the left of center:
http://tinyurl.com/23zkzv
A couple of really bad views of the originally eleventh-century old church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo, rebuilt from 1389 onward, at Verzuolo in Piedmont's Cuneo province (there's a new one as well, from the early eighteenth century):
http://www.ghironda.com/saluzzo/mista/mist3-04.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2mc7zv
http://tinyurl.com/2eatcp
This has some notable eleventh- and twelfth-century frescoes reproduced on the free Web only in a blur.
The church of P. and J. in Naz-Sciaves (TR; German: Natz-Schabs) in the South Tirol, consecrated in 1208 to Sts. Philip and Walburga and rebuilt in the fifteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/37grlz
http://www.natz-schabs.info/it/sehenswertes/images/altar.jpg
Today's church of San Francesco in Amelia (TR) in Umbria is said by a local chronicle to have been founded in 1287 with a dedication to P. and J.:
http://tinyurl.com/38as29
This church was Franciscan by the early 1330s. The facade dates from 1401-06.
2) Alexander (I), Eventius, and Theodulus (d. ca. 115). A. was the first pope of this name. He has a wholly legendary Passio (BHL 266) which exists in many versions. E. and T. are his companions in martyrdom in some of these as well as in his entries in the _Liber Pontificalis_ and the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. All three are said in the Passio to have been buried at their place of execution at the seventh milestone on the Via Nomentana. The LP and the (ps.-)HM repeat this location, where in the seventh century the _Itinerarium Malmesburiense_ told readers they still reposed.
A. became a saint of the Regno sometime between 1075 and 1102, the period during which his mausoleum was constructed at today's Corfinio (AQ) in Abruzzo next to the cathedral of San Pelino. That was, and is, a co-cathedral of the diocese of Valva (now the diocese of Valva and Sulmona), whose bishop at this time was the powerful abbot of San Clemente a Casauria. If the the abbey could have the remains of a martyred early pope, why not the diocese? Some exterior views of the mausoleum, sandwiched between the Torre Sant'Alessandro and the cathedral proper:
http://tinyurl.com/2m59k2
http://tinyurl.com/2rxpeo
http://tinyurl.com/326m2p
There's a brief, Italian-language description of the mausoleum here:
http://www.abruzzoheritage.com/magazine/2001_11/0111_a_it.htm
and a plan of both the cathedral and the mausoleum here:
http://tinyurl.com/3b464w
3) Juvenal of Narni (??). J. is the legendary protobishop of Narni (TR) in southern Umbria. According to his imaginative Vita (BHL 4614), he migrated to Italy from Africa and saved his city from North Italian invaders, descendants of previous occupants who had been driven out under Augustus. Their end is accomplished in truly spectacular fashion: not just rain, but also thunder and lots of lightning bolts, plus jets of water rising up from dry ground and, finally, the earth opening up and swallowing 3000 of them. Narni's originally twelfth-century cathedral is dedicated to J. Here's a view of this structure, consecrated in 1145 and reworked in the fifteenth century:
http://tinyurl.com/ywhgtt
Best,
John Dillon
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