medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (8. January) is the feast day of:
1) Severinus of Noricum (d. 482). According to what is practically the only source for S. in his lifetime, Eugippius' _Commemoratorium vitae s. Severini_, this future saint of the Regno appeared in Noricum Ripense and in eastern Raetia (the Danube valley area of today's Austria and Lower Bavaria) at some time after the death of Attila the Hun. He had been a hermit further to the east (so probably in Pannonia) but now he was active in establishing small monasteries in the vicinity of Roman towns and in tending to the spiritual and political welfare of the Roman populace, no longer protected by the Empire and pressured on all sides by unfriendly and often openly hostile Germanic peoples. He died peacefully at his monastery at Favianis (today's Mautern an der Donau). A page on Roman-period Favianis is here:
http://www.oeai.at/eng/inland/mautern.html
Personally very ascetic and credited with miracles, S. is said to have foretold that the remaining Romans would have to leave the area (under the circumstances, perhaps not such a tough guess). When in 488 Odoacer did organize an evacuation into Italy, the monks of Favianis, one of whom was Eugippius, took their saint's body with them. For a while they resided on a height generally considered to have been in the Montefeltro (in today's Marche near that region's border with the Romagna). During the papacy of Gelasius I (492-96), they moved, taking S. with them, to the seaside property of Lucullanum just outside of Naples (as it was then; the place is well within today's city, at the promontory now called Pizzofalcone). There Eugippius organized a new monastery and there, in 511, he finished his account of S.
In 902, it is thought, S.'s relics were translated under the threat of Muslim raids to the safety of a new monastery inside Naples itself. In short order (and after the translation from Misenum of the supposed remains of one of St. Januarius' companions in martyrdom), this foundation became known as that of Saints Severinus and Sos(s)ius. S. was medievally a patron of Naples and from there his cult spread widely in mainland southern Italy. At least four towns in the territory of the former Regno take or once took their names from S., sometimes indirectly: San Severino Mercato (SA), San Severino di Centola (SA), San Severino Lucano (PZ), and, formerly also a San Severino, San Severo (FG).
In 1806 the Neapolitan house of Santi Severino e Sos(s)io, still S.'s resting place, was included within the scope of a law secularizing monastic properties. A later fifteenth-century altarpiece from this monastery, portraying S. as a mitred abbot in the lower register's center panel, is now in Naples' Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. An expandable view is here:
http://tinyurl.com/wt8d2
In 1807 S.'s relics were translated to their present abode, the thirteenth-century church of San Sos(s)io at the nearby town of Fratta, today's Frattamaggiore (NA). An exterior view, showing that building's early modern facade (rebuilt in the nineteenth century) and belltower, is here:
http://tinyurl.com/nsvcp
Some interior views of this Italian national monument (both from before the disastrous fire that gutted it in 1945 and from after the medievalizing reconstruction that followed) will be found lower down on this page:
http://www.iststudiatell.org/fratta%20montanaro/sossio.htm
Other views (expandable) are here:
http://trionfo.altervista.org/Monumenti/frattasossio.htm
North of the Alps, S. is a patron of Bavaria and of the Austrian diocese of Linz. Dedicated to him at Passau is a medieval church built over a late antique one thought to have been the extramural basilica S. is said to have erected here. In its present state it is probably later fifteenth-century with later modifications; remains of Ottonian date are said to exist in the nave. Here are a couple of views:
http://tinyurl.com/2z8ra2
http://tinyurl.com/2yfejg
Here's a Roman-period funerary monument now serving this church as a font for holy water.
http://tinyurl.com/v4bmg
And here's a partial view of the church's fifteenth-century statue of S.:
http://www.stseverin.at/severin/kirche/heiligerseverin.php
This nearby city gate from 1412 is also named for S.:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Severinstor_Passau.jpg
Bibliographic information on Knoell's CSEL edition of Eugippius' _Vita sancti Severini_ (1886) and on Mommsen's edition of the same work in the MGH (1898) will be found here:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/severinus_03_appendix.htm
On the same page are a text and an English-language translation of a medieval Sapphic hymn in honor of S. as patron of Naples transmitted in a hymnary that until relatively recently was thought to have come from the monastery of SS. Severino and Sossio at Naples but is now considered to be of central Italian (Roman/Umbrian) origin.
2) Lorenzo Giustiniani (d. 1456). The theologian L., a member of one of Venice's leading families, had been one of the founding secular canons of San Giorgio in Alba and was their prior when in 1433 he was made bishop of Castello (as the diocese of Venice was then called). He was prolific writer and an habitual ascetic. In 1451, after the suppression of the patriarchate of Grado, L. became the first patriarch of Venice. He was buried in his cathedral, San Pietro in Castello, where since 1649 his remains have reposed in the main altar (his cult as a _beato_ having been papally confirmed in 1524). L.'s fellow Venetian Alexander VIII is said to have canonized him in 1690, shortly before his (A.'s) death; official publication of this act ensued only in 1727.
Here's L. as depicted by Gentile Bellini in 1465 (painting now in the Galleria dell'Accademia Veneziana):
http://www.giustiniani.info/slorenzo1.jpg
And here he is with other saints in a painting from ca. 1532 by Giovanni Antonio (Sacchis) da Pordenone, also in the Galleria dell'Accademia Veneziana:
http://www.giustiniani.info/slorenzo.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(Severinus of Noricum revised from earlier posts)
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