medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (21. August) is the feast day of:
Luxurius (d. ca. 304, supposedly). L. (Sardinian: Lussurgiu; Italian:
Luxorio, Lussorio; by a common phonetic variation, also Ruxurius,
Ruxorius, Rossore) is entered in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology
both for today, where the earlies text reads _In sardinia luxurii. traiani_
and for 26. September, where the corresponding text is _Et in sardinia.
Luxurii_. Modern scholars, aware that 21. August is also given as L.'s
_dies natalis_ by the sixth-century inscription noted in the next paragraph,
resolve the doublet in today's favor. _traiani_ is understood to be the
textual remnant of a reference to ancient Forum Traiani in central western
Sardinia, today's Fordongianus (OR), specified in L.'s Passio (BHL 5092,
5092b and c) as his place of martyrdom. This Passio, whose oldest
witness is of the early twelfth century, makes L. a Christian soldier
decapitated during the Great Persecution and gives him two companions
in martyrdom, the newly baptized little boys Cesellus (Cisellus, Cisillus)
and Camerinus.
L.'s cult is of considerable antiquity. In the late sixth century Gregory
the Great, writing to the bishop of Cagliari (_Ep._ 9. 197), refers to a
Sardinian monastery dedicated to saints Gabinius and Luxurius but does
not give a location for it. L.'s originally early twelfth-century church at
Fordongianus is built over a late antique (4th-/5th-cent.) crypt with an
attached U-shaped burial passage that in the sixth century received
a surviving memorial inscription proclaiming this the place of L.'s
martyrdom; a supplementary line records a renovation of the seventh
century or slightly later. A view of the inscription adorns the upper cover
of the dust jacket of P. G. Spanu, _Martyria Sardiniae. I santuari dei
martiri sardi_ (Oristano: S'Alvure, 2000), whose pages 97-114 discuss the
archaeology of this crypt in some detail and with copious illustrations.
Spanu, whose introductory matter offers a valuable survey of the
documentation for all the martyrs treated in his book, reprints at pp.
189-92 the three versions of the Passio that have been published thus
far (the relatively early one in Vat. lat. 6453, fols. 81-82, remains largely
unpublished). Toponymic evidence of uncertain validity has been used to
support the view that L.'s cult was widespread on Sardinia by the year 1000.
An Italian-language account (with good views) of L.'s church at
Fordongianus is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/romanicosardo/mioweb4/fordongianus.htm
One should take with several grains of salt the statement that this church
was built by the Victorines of Marseille. Exterior views and views of the crypt
and of its restored frescoes are here:
http://www.forumtraiani.it/index1.html?/gchiesaest1.html
(for the second page, click on the arrow at lower right).
The last three views on this page (all expandable)
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/guysca/fordongianus.htm
show the crypt in somewhat greater detail.
Cesellus and Camerinus are unknown before L.'s Passio. In the 1080s
the putative remains of all three saints were translated to Pisa and placed
in a newly founded monastic church outside of Pisa dedicated to either to
them or to L. alone (the monastery was once called that of San Luxorio
and the place is now the Pisan _frazione_ of San Rossore). A Pavian
inventory of 1236 records the presence of all three bodies in that city's
church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (famously the resting place of St.
Augustine of Hippo, said in the later Middle Ages to have been translated
from Sardinia by king Liutprand in the eighth century). The usual view is
that C. and C. are part of a fiction connecting L.'s martyrdom with
Pisan-dominated Cagliari (which is where all three are said to have been
arrested and where the two boys are said to have been executed).
In 1274 L.'s monastery at Pisa was assigned to the Umiliati. In the early
1420s, with Pisa now under Florentine control, the skull believed to be L.'s
was brought from this monastery to the Umiliati's church of Ognisanti in
Florence. Sometime between 1422 and 1427 Donatello made for that
relic a gilt bronze reliquary bust now in Pisa's Museo Nazionale di San Matteo.
Some views of this object:
http://www.bramarte.it/400/img/don7.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2bg6qp
http://www.thais.it/scultura/sch00038.htm
Best,
John Dillon
(older posts considerably revised)
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