medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. July) is the feast day of:
1) Vitalian of Capua (??). The Epternach recension of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology commemorates on 3. September a Vitalianus martyred, it would seem, in Samnium: _in Caudis Vitalianus_. If _Caudis_ signifies ancient Caudium, the location would be in the vicinity of today's Montesarchio (BV) in Campania, on the Via Appia between Capua and Benevento. That this V. had an early medieval cult elsewhere in Campania is established by the early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, where a St. V. is commemorated on 3. September.
V.'s brief, legendary Vita (BHL 1254) makes him a bishop of Capua whose enemies sewed him up in a leather sack and threw him into the sea (rationalizers suppose that he will have been thrown into the river Garigliano and washed downstream), whence with divine aid he rowed all the way to Ostia (!). According to this account, V. then returned to Campania but not to Capua: instead, he settled on Monte Partenio (near today's Avellino), founded an oratory dedicated to the BVM, and finished his days there, with his body later being translated to Benevento. If you're up on your medieval Campanian toponomastics, you may recognize the site of V.'s oratory as that of today's Montevergine, whose famous abbey was founded in the first half of the twelfth century. The usual assumption is that the Vita was written late in that century to establish a Beneventan connection with this locale.
As V. is absent from the earliest diocesan calendar of Capua (also late twelfth-century), his association with that city in either its ancient or its central medieval and modern location could be an invention of this Vita. He is recorded for today in the twelfth-century Beneventan martyrology of Santa Maria del Gualdo and in later medieval calendars from Capua.
The Vita has V.'s enemies placing women's clothing and shoes in his bedroom one night in the correct expectation
that when he arose on the following day he would in the darkness dress himself in these and, so attired, celebrate Matins before the people and clergy. As the light grew, it became apparent to all (were there no candles in V.'s cathedral to facilitate earlier discovery?) how V. was dressed; it was widely assumed that V.'s sartorial embarrassment arose from unchaste behavior on his part. Were readers/hearers of V.'s Vita not expected to be familiar with the legends of St. Jerome, whence this incident is taken, or is V. being compared implicitly to this famous Father?
By the early fourteenth century V. was being honored in Catanzaro (CZ) in southern Calabria, whose cathedral contains relics of him that seem to have come directly from Montevergine and not from Benevento. The frequently repeated view that he was translated thither at the behest of Calixtus II in connection with his transfer to that city in 1122 of the see of Taverna (ancient Tres Tabernae) is possible but not established. V. is the patron saint of Catanzaro and, in Campania, of the medievally attested San Vitaliano (NA).
In light of last month's discussion of "body print" relics (see esp. 'saints of the day 18. June'), one may note in passing -- PURISTS, TAKE NOTE! THIS IS _NOT_ MEDIEVAL. -- the hoofmark-like indentation in this stone at Sala di Caserta (CE) in Campania, interpreted since at least the eighteenth century as having been made by the ass on which V. was riding when he journeyed from Capua to found an hermitage mentioned in the Vita:
http://tinyurl.com/36yt9a
2) Our Lady of Mount Carmel (1st cent./1251, supposedly). This Marian feast of Carmelite origin was instituted in the later fourteenth century in commemoration of the BVM's appearance to St. Simon Stock, believed to have occurred on this day in 1251. The early modern dates of the feast's papal approval and extension to the entire church (Latin-rite) are beyond the purview of this list. Herewith some views of originally fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Carmelite churches in various parts of today's Italy:
Orvieto (TR) in Umbria, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine (images expandable):
http://www.comune.orvieto.tr.it/I/39D109AF.htm
Mogoro (OR) in Sardinia, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine:
http://tinyurl.com/2r6zw5
http://tinyurl.com/3de6k2
http://tinyurl.com/2mpmjx
Pavia (PV) in Lombardy, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine:
http://tinyurl.com/3aysqm
http://tinyurl.com/2o568d
http://tinyurl.com/2qje5o
http://www.cantoambrosiano.com/DSC_0049.JPG
Modica (RG) in Sicily, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine, whose portal and rose window are rare survivors of the great earthquake of 1693:
http://www.guidemodica.it/luoghi_il_carmine.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2nhpym
http://www.tentatori.it/img/modica/grandi/carmine2g.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/34ttru
Sciacca (AG) in Sicily, Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine (in its present state, a contender for the Ugliest Church award):
http://tinyurl.com/yqpo4a
http://sicilyweb.com/foto/262/262-11-10-46-1310.jpg
Instead of Florence's much rebuilt Santa Maria del Carmine with its famous fifteenth-century paintings in the Brancacci Chapel, herewith two views of the remaining frescoes of the Chiesetta del Carmine at Oneta (BG) in Lombardy:
http://www.brembana.info/borghi/oneta/oneta4.html
http://www.brembana.info/borghi/oneta/oneta5.html
Best,
John Dillon
(Vitalian revised from an older post)
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