medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Herewith a revision of a notice that suffered from various inaccuracies taken over from potted notices upon which it drew. My thanks to Anthony John Lappin for corrections. Any remaining errors are of course down to me.
Dominic of Silos (d. 1073). Of noble birth, D. is said to have been a shepherd in his youth. Whether this were simply an instance of aristocratic participation in the pastoral economy of of D.'s region (La Rioja) or instead/also an imitation of the local saint Aemilian of the Cowl / Millán de la Cogolla (12. November) is not clear. He then became a cleric and was ordained priest by the bishop of Nájera. Briefly a hermit, at about the age of thirty D. became a monk of the great monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, whose priory in his home town of Cañas he then reformed. In 1038 D. was summoned to the mother house itself and quickly was named prior there. When he opposed a raid on San Millán's treasury by king Garcia (G. de Nájera) of Pamplona/Navarre, the latter had him demoted and subjected him to public ridicule. In about 1040, having had enough of this, D. moved on to Castile.
There, in 1041, D. was appointed abbot of the decayed monastery of San Sebastian at Silos. He reformed this house as well and with the aid of royal and other wealthy patrons converted it over the next thirty years into a flourishing spiritual institution and a home of art and culture. Postmortem miracles led to D.'s translation in 1076 from a tomb in the cloister to the church of the abbey, which later came to be called after him. D.'s earliest Vita (BHL 2238) was written by his disciple Grimaldo for his canonization; its _miracula_ were added to by a series of other hands. The oeuvre of the poet Gonzalo de Berceo (d. 1252), a monk of San Millán, includes a _Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos_. D.'s cult was confirmed in 1720 and in 1733; he entered the RM in 1748.
For Grimaldo's Vita of D. see Vitalino Valcárcel, _La "Vita Dominici Siliensis" de Grimaldo: Estudio, edición crítica y traducción_ (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1982). A recent study in English is Anthony John Lappin, _The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos_ (Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002).
Views of San Millán de la Cogolla were given in November's notice of that monastery's eponym. See:
http://tinyurl.com/276c4u
Some visuals, etc. pertaining to the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos), Castilla y León. Distance views (early modern structures):
http://tinyurl.com/yun8zt
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIS18453.jpg
Multiple views of the cloister and the chapter room:
http://www.astragalo.net/burgos/silos.htm
Multiple views (expandable), including various works of art:
http://tinyurl.com/2kg99l
Cloister (eleventh-/twelfth-century):
Spanish-language account:
http://www.abadiadesilos.es/claustro.htm
Individual views:
http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/silos2.jpg
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo_domingo_de_silos_cloister.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2vk7yg
http://tinyurl.com/tvw8x
http://catholicmusicnetwork.com/images/artists/silos2.jpg
Multiple views (expandable):
http://www.terres-romanes.lu/silos.htm
http://tinyurl.com/32c9or
Cloister pillar reliefs:
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-descent-from-.jpg
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo-domingo-burial.jpg
http://www.bornemania.com/civ/romanesque_architecture/santo_domingo_doubting_thomas.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/vf73c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Silos-Duda.jpg
D.'s former tomb in the cloister:
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/artesp/jpg/HIM18806.jpg
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/silos.html
http://www.arteguias.com/imagenes/tumbasilos.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/2l55eu
A page from the British Library on its richly illustrated ms. (Add. Ms. 11695), completed at this monastery in 1109, of Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on the Apocalypse:
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/themes/euromanuscripts/silos.html
Details of the enameled copper frontal (betw. 1165 and 1170) on D.'s tomb:
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/historia/obras/9322.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2w5wbr
A black-and-white view of an altar frontal (ca. 1400; in the form of a retable) dedicated to D., seemingly from Navarre and now in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao:
http://tinyurl.com/ytdrsr
There's a larger version of the same view in this account of the piece by Ana Galilea Antón:
http://www.euskomedia.org/PDFAnlt/arte/15449459.pdf
Bartolomé Bermejo's portrait of D. enthroned (ca. 1477; center panel of a retable) now in the Prado in Madrid:
http://tinyurl.com/2ycw2c
Best,
John Dillon
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