medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (4. December) is also the feast day of the following rather legendary female saints:
1) Emerita (d. 195, supposedly). Said to have been the sister of yesterday's Lucius of Chur, E. appears in liturgical sources from the diocese of Chur from the eleventh or twelfth century onward. A martyr's death by fire is reported for her at today's Trimmis in Graubünden. When Chur's monastic Kirche St. Luzi was rededicated in 1295 following a reconstruction, E. was designated its co-patron. Other churches in the diocese had/have relics believed to be hers. The diocesan treasury at Chur preserves the fourteenth-century reliquary bust of E. shown here:
http://www.bistum-chur.ch/kat_domschatz_index.htm
E. has not graced the pages of at least recent editions of the RM.
2) Barbara (?). B. is an originally Eastern saint absent from the late antique martyrologies and calendars, East and West. Her Passio, which exists in many versions, is obviously legendary. She has no readily identifiable late antique cult site. She was localized in several places, most notably Nicomedia in Bithynia, Antioch on the Orontes, and a Heliopolis said to have been in Paphlagonia but possibly the one in Egypt, as it was from Egypt that the emperor Justin was said to have removed her relics to Constantinople.
B.'s first appearance in a Western martyrology comes in the ninth century. Ado, followed by Usuard, lists her under 16. December and purveys a version of her Passio that makes her a martyr of Tuscany. She is listed for today in the early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples. In the ninth century chapels were dedicated to her in Rome. In the later Middle Ages she became one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In the 1960s she was removed from the Roman Calendar but she still has an entry in the RM, albeit a grudging one: "It seems she was a virgin martyred at Nicomedia."
In widely known versions of her Passio, B. is a virgin shut up in a tower by an aggressively pagan father who discovers that she has turned Christian (in some texts, the three windows representing the Trinity that B. had inserted in the tower were a dead giveaway) and who either turns her over to officialdom for torment or kills her himself. In some of these accounts he is then said to be killed by a lightning bolt. B. is the patron saint of miners, artillerymen, and of people struck by lightning (or who must go out in lightning-rich weather conditions). Herewith some visuals:
B.'s since rebuilt eleventh-century church in Cairo (a rebuilding of a late antique predecessor dedicated to someone else):
account:
http://tinyurl.com/yenko6
views, etc,:
http://touregypt.net/featurestories/cairovision9.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/barbara.htm
http://www.ask-aladdin.com/barbara.html
B.'s eleventh-century rupestrian church (Barbara Kilise) at Goreme in Cappadocia:
http://www.suffragio.it/suffragio/immagini/Turchia3/cappa7.jpg
http://www.photocompetition.it/reportages/reportage_36_16.jpg
B.'s rather less impressive ninth- or tenth-century rupestrian church at Matera (MT) in Basilicata:
account:
http://www.finesettimana.it/abbazia_monastero.asp?id=00709
view (frescos are fourteenth-century):
http://www.arcobaleno.net/turismo/basilicata/materaSBarbara.jpg
plan:
http://www.netsystem.it/luc_sis/images/psbar.gif
B. is also depicted in the better preserved frescoes of San Nicola dei Greci at Matera (also rupestrian). Go a little more than halfway down the page here:
http://www.sassiweb.it/sngmdv/
On that church, see:
http://tinyurl.com/2nc5kn
Eleventh-century fresco of B. as a bejewelled princess in the chiesa di Santa Maria della Croce at Casaranello, a _frazione_ of Casarano (LE) in Apulia:
http://www.lytos.altervista.org/italiano/barbara.jpg
Discussion of the mosaics and frescoes:
http://www.lytos.altervista.org/italiano/Casaranello.htm
http://www.comune.casarano.le.it/casaranello.htm
B.'s twelfth-century church at Erimos in Mani (southern Peloponnese), no. 5 here with expandable exterior view:
http://www.mani.org.gr/en/villages/oitilo/drand/drand.htm
Church of Our Lady of Ljeviska, Prizren (Kosovo province), Serbia (1310), fresco of B. (lower down on pillar):
http://www.coe.int/t/DG4/Expos/expoprizren/en/epic2019.htm
The originally early fourteenth-century palatine chapel dedicated to B. in the Castel Nuovo at Naples (upper portions rebuilt after the earthquake of 1456):
Illustrated, Italian-language accounts:
http://tinyurl.com/yo933d
http://tinyurl.com/2eqvpj
Single views:
http://www.danpiz.net/napoli/images/MaschioAngioino09.jpg
http://www.napoletanita.it/foto/napoli106.jpg
http://www.napoletanita.it/foto/napoli107.jpg
Fourteenth-century mural paintings of scenes from B.'s Life in the Eglise Notre-Dame at Savigny (Manche), about halfway down the page here:
http://perso.orange.fr/police.daniel/Riboul/Savigny.htm
The late fourteenth- or early fifteenth century church of Agia Barbara near Agia Napa (Famagusta) in Cyprus:
http://www.sotira5390.com/IMAGES/Ekklisies-Agia-Barbara.jpg
The mostly late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century Chapelle Sainte-Barbe at Le Faouët (Morbihan) in Brittany:
http://www.villard.de/cb/56/Faouet1.html
http://tinyurl.com/2kpvy6
http://tinyurl.com/yq8xvj
B.'s mostly late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century cathedral church (Sv. Barbory; restored, nineteenth century) at the Czech mining town of Kutná Hora:
http://tinyurl.com/38mn9k
http://www.pbase.com/ianm_au/image/34082215
http://www.topbicycle.com/H-KutnaHora.htm
http://www.casa-chia.org/passportjournal.org/Billings/Europe/images-gk/St.html
Jan van Eyck's celebrated portrait of B. (1437?):
http://korkos.club.fr/saintebarbe-06grand.jpg
Late fifteenth-century statue of B. on the église Saint Saint Pantaléon at Troyes:
http://vieuxtroyes.free.fr/t/stpan/stpan20.JPG
B. in a later sixteenth-century book of hours now at Syracuse University:
http://library.syr.edu/digital/collections/m/MedievalManuscripts/ms03/143v.jpg
Description of the ms. and links to other views:
http://tinyurl.com/ymd3op
Best,
John Dillon
(Barbara revised and slightly expanded from last year's post)
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