medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (26. January) is the feast day of:
1) Timothy and Titus (d. 1st cent.). Today's joint feast (a Memorial) honoring these disciples of St. Paul is a creation the Great Rearrangement of 1969. Previously, this was the day of the feast (also a Memorial) of St. Polycarp, now celebrated on 23. February, his _dies natalis_. Timothy had been celebrated on 24. January, Titus on 6. February. Orthodox churches treat these recipients of the Pastoral Epistles as apostles. Herewith a brief consideration of each.
A) Timothy. Thanks to Eusebius (_HE_, 3. 4. 5), T. has been widely considered the first bishop of Ephesus. A legendary Passio (BHG 1847; early translation into Latin, BHL 8294), supposedly written by a second-century successor at Ephesus, has him martyred there under Domitian but later changes this to place his death on a 22. January in the principate of Nerva (96-98). In the fourth century T.'s supposed remains were forcibly translated from Ephesus (where he had a martyrion) to the basilica of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. They were venerated there until their disappearance during the Unpleasantness of 1204 and following. In 1205 two teeth said to have been his were donated as Eastern relics to a monastery at Soissons.
For the most part, though, T. became a saint of the Regno. In 1238-39, during a rebuilding of the cathedral of Termoli in today's Campobasso Province of Molise, a loculus was created beneath the crypt to house the body of the Blessed Timothy, disciple of Paul the Apostle. These remains, less a skull whose presence is first recorded from 1592, were rediscovered in 1945 some ninety centimeters below the level of the floor as it was then. A view of this site's inscribed tombstone is here:
http://tinyurl.com/33gwxq
Termoli is an Adriatic port but a much smaller one than the more southerly and much more commercially important Bari and Brindisi, which latter boast the remains, respectively, of St. Nicholas of Myra and St. Theodore of Amasea. Whatever gain it achieved from the presence of such a potentially major saint as T. must have been very fleeting. The aforementioned skull is housed in reliquary said to be of thirteenth- or fourteenth-century manufacture. Here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/2syyd3
Here's an illustrated, Italian-language account of Termoli's cathedral of Santa Maria della Purificazione:
http://tinyurl.com/yptnke
An illustrated, Italian-language account of the facade:
http://tinyurl.com/ywjjub
A distance view of the twelfth-century facade (upper portion repaired in 1456) and thirteenth-century portal:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immagine:Termoli_Cattedrale.jpg
Page of views:
http://tinyurl.com/2wbq45
B) Titus. Ancient tradition, reflected in the Epistle to Titus (now generally not thought genuinely Paul's) and more explicitly in Eusebius (_HE_, 3. 4. 6), makes T. the first bishop of Crete. He too has lgendary Acta. Substantial remains of the originally Justinianic church dedicated to him may still be seen at Gortys (also Gortyn, Gortyna):
http://tinyurl.com/2nkww3
http://tinyurl.com/2snphh
http://www.interkriti.org/gortys/105.jpg
http://kreta.rovnou.cz/images/fotky/kreta-gortis-titos.jpg
And the originally late medieval church dedicated to him at Heraklion has a skull said to be his:
http://www.wdbydana.com/crete/titushead.JPG
An account of this relic's medieval, early modern, and modern travels is here:
http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/titus.htm
Here's Titus as depicted in the late fourteenth-/early fifteenth-century Breviary of Martin of Aragon (Paris, BNF, ms. Rothschild 2529):
http://tinyurl.com/28egfp
Titus appears in the Martyrology of Ado without a fixed feast. He is said to have entered the RM only in 1854. Orthodox churches celebrate him on 25. August.
3) Eystein of Nidaros (d. 1188). The perhaps Paris-educated E. (also spelled Øystein; latinized as Augustinus) Erlendsson, a member of a well connected noble family in Norway, had been chaplain and steward to king Inge Krokrygg before the latter appointed him archbishop of Nidaros (today's Trondheim) in 1158 or 1159, an action confirmed by pope Alexander III in 1161 when E. was in Rome. E. promoted the adoption of canonical life by Norwegian parish priests, officiated at Norway's first royal coronation (that of Magnus Erlingsson, a minor), and fostered the cult of king St. Olaf (buried in E.'s cathedral), whose liturgical Office he wrote and whose Miracula he expanded. During the years 1881-1883, when Magnus had been dislodged from his throne in a civil war, E. was an exile in England.
Miracles were reported early at E.'s tomb. He was proclaimed a saint at a Norwegian synod in 1229. Attempts in the Middle Ages to have him canonized papally were unsuccessful. E. entered the Roman Martyrology in 2001 with the designation _sanctus_.
Apart from the _Passio sancti Olavi_ (part of Olav's Office), E.'s chief monument today consists of the chapter house and the lower portions of the transepts of the since much added to and rebuilt Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. An English-language account of this structure is here (click on 'Cathedral history' for the building's various stages):
http://www.nidarosdomen.no/english/nidaroscathedral/
This view of the cathedral from 1857 shows the north transept and, next to the choir, the chapter house (the latter with a nineteenth-century neo-romanesque addition):
http://tinyurl.com/38r9fl
Here's a view of the north transept's porch:
http://tinyurl.com/2x9jmv
Best,
John Dillon
(Timothy and Titus lightly revised from last year's post)
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