medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. July) is the feast day of:
1) Praxedes (??). P. (also Praxedis, Praxidis) is the saint of a Roman church that is first attested from the fifth century as the _titulus Praxedis_. A systematizing and very legendary late antique or early medieval Passio (BHL 6988, etc.) makes her a virgin daughter of St. Pudens and the sister of the likewise virginal St. Pudentiana (both 19. May; the saints of another titular church whose successor is today's Santa Pudenziana). According to this tale, P. assisted imprisoned Christians, gave burial to martyrs' remains during a great persecution under an emperor Antoninus, and, worn-out by her labors, obtained the grace of dying very shortly afterward on 21. July of an undetermined year. She was venerated medievally as a martyr.
Though the seventh-century itineraries for pilgrims to Rome place the remains of P. and her sister in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria, the absence of earlier indications of their existence has been thought telling. They are first recorded liturgically from the eighth century. In the early ninth century pope St. Paschal I (817-24; a great devotee of the relics of Roman martyrs) erected on the site of an earlier church dedicated to P. today's since largely redecorated chiesa di Santa Prassede. An English-language account of this church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/ys627s
Two Italian-language ones are here:
http://www.romecity.it/Santaprassede.htm
http://www.medioevo.roma.it/saggi/chiese/prassede.htm
Two views of its entrance (on a side street near Santa Maria Maggiore):
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vas127af.jpg
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vas127ag.jpg
A ground plan:
http://tinyurl.com/26at29
Various views (expandable):
http://tinyurl.com/25bkbn
Two views of the apse mosaics (the figures to Christ's right represent Paschal I, P., and St. Paul):
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/prassede1.jpg
http://www.classicalmosaics.com/images/prassede2.jpg
Transcriptions of the dedication inscription in the apse do not always make it clear that this is verse. Here's a text:
EMICAT AVLA PIAE VARIIS DECORATA METALLIS
PRAXEDIS DNO SVPER AETHRA PLACENTIS HONORE
PONTIFICIS SVMMI STVDIO PASCHALIS ALUMNI
SEDIS APOSTOLICAE PASSIM QVI CORPORA CONDENS
PLVRIMA SCORVM SVBTER HAEC MOENIA PONIT
FRETVS VT HIS LIMEN MEREATVR ADIRE POLORVM
2) Victor of Marseille (??). V. is the legendary principal patron of Marseille, whose originally late fifth-century church dedicated to him later served a monastery often -- though unpersuasively in light of archaeological evidence -- said to have been founded by St. John Cassian (d. ca. 434). V. has a late antique Passio, the so-called Gesta symbolica (BHL 8568z) that makes him a soldier martyred for Christ and tortured in various ways. Whereas this text is almost certainly to be interpreted metaphorically (even V.'s name could be a posthumous appellation of a saint whose name in life had been lost), it was taken literally by the author of V.'s sixth-century or later Passio panegyrica (BHL 8570). Throughout the Middle Ages V. was viewed as soldier-saint whose martyrdom involved a violent death.
The abbey that grew up next to V.'s church in the early Middle Ages was destroyed by Muslims in the late ninth or tenth century and was rebuilt starting in the eleventh century, with its church dedicated in 1040. Its famous twelfth-century Parisian homonym was initially one of its dependencies. Pope Urban V (1362-70) expanded the abbey and fortified it. Herewith some views:
http://tinyurl.com/33qxj7
http://tinyurl.com/2lowkn
http://tinyurl.com/ypuymb
http://mkdata.dk/pctutor/software/images/victor04.jpg
This Wikipedia page has late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations of the abbey's then more extensive medieval remains:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbaye_de_Saint-Victor_de_Marseille
A view of the originally late fifth-century crypt, built into a late antique necropolis:
http://tinyurl.com/2ggohf
And a detail from one of the latter's later fourth- and fifth-century sarcophagi (sometimes used to push the foundation date to John Cassian's time):
http://tinyurl.com/2yy44e
3) Arbogast (d. 6th cent.?). A. is a poorly documented early medieval bishop of Strasbourg/Straßburg who is credited with building that city's first cathedral and with founding the monastery later named for him there. His Vita (BHL 656) attributed to Strasbourg's tenth-century bishop Udo IV makes him a noble from Aquitaine who became a hermit in the forest of Haguenau and whose subsequent ecclesiastical prominence was aided by the respect he had garnered from king Dagobert I. The legendary twelfth-century _Vita s. Florentii_ (F. of Strasbourg, A.'s supposed immediate successor) and the thirteenth-century Richer of Sens, falling back on another hagiographic topos, give A. an insular origin.
A. is the patron saint of Strasbourg and of several towns in Switzerland that once belonged to its diocese. Herewith two views -- one better for color, the other for detail -- of his window in Strasbourg's cathedral of Notre-Dame (Nave, north, top, window 5, section A, 3; CVMA: Beyer, N III):
http://tinyurl.com/2buk3o
http://ica.princeton.edu/images/metcalf/strasbourg/R309F6.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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