medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (1. February) is the feast day of:
1) Severus of Ravenna (d. after 342). S. is the first bishop of Ravenna of whom we have any knowledge apart from questionable local tradition. He took part in the council of Serdica/Sardica (342/43), to whose canons and letters his name appears as a signatory. Both the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and S.'s ninth-century biographers give his _dies natalis_ as 1. February. His burial chamber in a house (perhaps that of his family) at Classe became a memorial chapel. In the later sixth century a funerary basilica was erected next to this in the remains of the previous structure and S.'s relics were translated into this new church. The latter no longer exists, but it has been the object of intermittent archeological excavation. An aerial view of what's left of it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/9oohh
An illustrated, Italian-language report on the campaign of 2006 is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2ykptu
And another is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2ylffl
S. also appears as one of the four bishops (and as one of the pair of these specifically called _sanctus_) in the apse mosaics of Sant'Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna. A partial reproduction of this portrait graces the announcement here:
http://www.turismo.ra.it/contenuti/index.php?t=eventi&id=861
Skira's own announcement of the associated catalog
http://tinyurl.com/2o92gr
has a detail view:
http://www.skira.net/zoom.php?isbn=8876246711
At Ravenna, 2006 was the Year of San Severo.
By the ninth century a legend had developed about S. Reflected in the _Libellus pontificum_ of Agnellus of Ravenna (shortly after 831) and in S.'s Vita by one Luitolf (BHL 7681; shortly after 856), this included both a funerary miracle involving his recently deceased daughter Innocentia and his not so recently deceased wife Vincentia and a bilocation miracle in which while present at Mass in Ravenna S. was also at Modena for the passing of his friend, the recently celebrated St. Geminian.
According to Luitolf, S.'s remains were translated to Mainz in 842. Later they went on to Erfurt, where the late thirteenth-century Severikirche became a center of his cult. In the view shown here, the Severikirche is on the right:
http://tinyurl.com/2cae6v
More exterior views:
http://tinyurl.com/7sgtb
http://www.wilnsdorf-niederdielfen.de/erfurt02.htm
http://www.erfurt.de/ef/de/erleben/sehenswertes/dom/21110_1.shtml
http://www.kunsttrip.nl/images/erfurt/HPIM9472.jpg
This brief, German-language account of the church includes a view of the nave:
http://www.thueringen.info/index.php?id=485
An expandable view of a remnant of S.'s fourteenth-century shrine in the Severikirche is here:
http://tinyurl.com/e346x
This shows S. between his wife and his daughter (both of whom were also regarded as saints).
2) Brigid of Kildare (d. ca. 524; also Brigid of Ireland). A great figure of legend and the subject of many Vitae, B. was the founding abbess of the double monastery (principally a house for women) at Cill Dara, today's Kildare. The Matrix' page on the monastery is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2e32rx
The early thirteenth-century cathedral of Kildare (Church of Ireland; restored in the nineteenth century) is dedicated to B. Some views:
http://knotek.blog.sme.sk/blog/3415/50298/Tower_1.jpg
http://knotek.blog.sme.sk/blog/3415/50298/Kildare_2.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~eby/kildar02.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~eby/kildar01.jpg
Irish missionaries and other Irish emigrants brought B.'s cult to the Continent. Here are some views of the eighth-/tenth-century chapelle Sainte-Brigide at Fosses-la-Ville (Namur) in Belgium:
http://tinyurl.com/2vewfd
http://www.chinel.be/Chapelle_sainte.jpg
In Italy B.'s cult is closely associated with her ninth-century countryman St. Donatus (bishop of) of Fiesole, who in 850 granted to the monastery of Bobbio (founded by St. Columban) an existing church at Piacenza dedicated to her with the stipulation that it be used to provide hospitality to Irish travelers and to whom is ascribed a metrical Vita of B. written for a Continental audience (BHL 1458-1459). The latter's account of B.'s hanging her cloak on a sunbeam to dry is shown here in one of its four surviving witnesses of Tuscan provenance, Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Mugellanus (de Nemore) 13, fol. 78:
http://www.florin.ms/brigid3a.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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