medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Today (26. May) is the feast day of:

1)  Quadratus, "of Athens" (d. 2d cent.).  Q., a Christian living in Asia Minor, wrote and delivered to the emperor Hadrian (seemingly in the year 125) a defense of the Christian faith, thus becoming the earliest known Christian apologete.  Eusebius quotes from Q.'s now lost writing at least once and seems to draw on it in several places.  St. Jerome identified Q. with a Kodratos mentioned by Dionysius of Corinth as a bishop of Athens.  Though this identification is no longer universally accepted, Jerome's authority was enough for Ado to record Q. on this day as bishop of Athens as well as _discipulus Apostolorum_ (the phrase is Jerome's, in his version of Eusebius' _Chronicon_).  Usuard followed suit, without naming Jerome as his source.

In the absence of a visual of Q. to which to link, herewith a view of Hadrian's mausoleum.  Some may know it better under another name:
http://tinyurl.com/2ud7we


2)  Eleuther(i)us, pope (d. ca. 189).  Traditionally the thirteenth bishop of Rome after St. Peter, E. is said in the Liber Pontificalis to have come from Nicopolis in Epirus.  He had been a deacon of the Roman church under pope St. Anicetus, whose successor pope St. Soter he succeeded in ca. 173.  He was the pope to whom St. Irenaeus of Lyon in 177 or 178 brought a letter from the persecuted churches of Lyon and Vienne announcing their travails and at the same time urging the pope to tolerate the Montanist movement (which latter will then have had sympathizers in Gaul).  It is thought that E. was the pope whom the pro-Montanist Tertullian says initially wished to have good relations with Montanist-influenced churches in Asia Minor but afterward condemned that movement.  The frequently encountered statement that E. died a martyr appears to have no reliable foundation.

Various legends have attached themselves to E.  According to a version of the perhaps originally sixth- or seventh-century Passio of St. Felician of Foligno that was used medievally at Hamburg and at Minden an der Weser (BHL 2850), E., recognizing Felician's promise, had his archdeacon and successor pope St. Victor I oversee the saint's Christian education.  In both the _Liber Pontificalis_ and Bede's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_ a British king named Lucius, wishing to be made a Christian, sent a letter to E. requesting that missionaries be sent to him; the request was granted.  This story was differently elaborated in the late eighth- or early ninth-century Vita of St. Lucius of Chur (BHL 5024) and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century _Historia regum Britanniae_.  For a modern retelling in which E. sends Welsh-named missionaries to St Mellons (in Cardiff) see:
http://tinyurl.com/3uj99z

Although scholars now think that E. died a confessor and that, like many early popes, he probably was laid to rest at Old St. Peter's on the Vatican, the church of Santa Susanna in Rome not only considers him a martyr but informs fact-starved readers of its English-language site that he was originally laid to rest in the catacombs.  See:
http://www.santasusanna.org/ourUniqueHistory/popes.html
In 1587 Camilla Peretti, the sister of Sixtus V, moved remains believed to be those of E. and the actor-saint Genesius (a victim of the Great Persecution) from the church of San Giovanni della Pigna, where they had recently been discovered, to Santa Susanna, a church then under her patronage.  Here's a view of the putative E.'s present resting place there (along with Sts. Susanna, Gabinus of Rome, Felicity of Rome, and Genesius):
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/147964549_80ff6d92c2.jpg?v=0
 

3)  Priscus of Cociacus (d. ca. 273, supposedly).  P. is said in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology to have been martyred in the vicinity of Auxerre along with a large number of companions, at least some of whom came from Besançon.  He has a legendary Passio (BHL 6930; perh. later eighth century) that makes him and his fellows victims of a persecution under Aurelian and later secretly buried in a large cistern whose location was revealed in a dream to St. Germanus of Auxerre (d. 448).  A martyrology from Corbie (Paris lat. 5280), derived from an exemplar at Auxerre, attributes this Inventio to Auxerre's early seventh-century bishop Desiderius.

Cociacus (the site of P.'s martyrdom) has been identified with today's Saints-en-Puisaye (Yonne).  The village of St-Bris le Vineux in the same département takes its name from its church, dedicated to P. and once possessing what the diocese of Sens-Auxerre accepts as having been the martyr's skull.  Herewith a couple of views of the present church (twelfth-/sixteenth-century):
http://tinyurl.com/ytk2ug
http://tinyurl.com/2ddfl2
Have a Chablis in P.'s honor!


4)  Desiderius of Vienne (d. ca. 608).  One of the correspondents of St. Gregory the Great, D. was educated at Vienne, whose bishop he became in 596.  The Frankish queen Brunhild, not amused by his his low opinion of the morals at her court, is said to have had him stoned to death.  D.'s very first Vita (BHL 2148) was written by the Visigothic king Sisebut in 610 as a piece of anti-Merovingian propaganda.  Prior to its revision of 2001, the RM entered D. under 23. May.


5)  Guinizo of Montecassino (d. ca. 1050).  Today's less well-known saint of the Regno was a Spaniard who become a monk at Montecassino.  His present name form is down to Peter the Deacon; abbot Desiderius II (a.k.a. Bl. Victor III), writing some seventy-five years earlier, calls him Gumizo.  G.'s sanctity was revealed when, while on abbey business at a smithy in Aquino, he miraculously retrieved with his bare hand a piece of hot iron that had fallen from the forge and presented it without injury to the smith.  An ascete without appearing to be one, G. withdrew from the abbey and became a hermit during its unfortunate period of exploitation in the 1030s by Pandulf IV, prince of Capua, operating through the hated abbot Basil.  His remains were later brought to the abbey, where they survived the Allied bombardment of 1944.  G. appears never to have graced the pages of the RM.


6)  Lambert of Vence (d. 1154).  According to his contemporary Vita (BHL 4695), L. was came from a noble family and was oblated at Lérins, where he was educated and made his monastic profession.  In 1114 he was chosen bishop of Vence (in today's Alpes-Maritimes; the diocese was suppressed in 1801).  L. was remembered for his sweetness of character and for his miracles.  His cult was immediate.  An illustrated, English-language page on Vence's former cathedral, which holds L.'s relics and which has an originally twelfth-century tower named for him, is here:
http://www.vence.fr/Our-Lady-of-Nativity.html

Best,
John Dillon
(Quadratus "of Athens", Priscus of Cociacus, Desiderius of Vienne, Guinizo of Montecassino, and Lambert of Vence lightly revised from earlier posts)

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