medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (23. May) is the feast day of:
1) Ephebus (Ephebius, Euphebius; d. early 4th cent.?). According to the late eighth- or early ninth-century first part of the _Chronicon episcoporum sanctae Neapolitanae ecclesiae_, today's less well known saint of the Regno was the eighth bishop of Naples, "beautiful in body, more beautiful in mind" (_pulcher corpore, pulchrior mente_). _Ephebus_, sometimes given in its pronunciation spelling _Ephevus_, is the form of E.'s name regularly transmitted in our earliest sources. Underlying the chronicler's _mot_ about E.'s exterior and interior beauty is the common association in Latin of the Greek loan-word 'ephebus' ('young man') with male prettiness. _Euphebius_ is E.'s standard late medieval and early modern name form.
The early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples gives today as the feast of E.'s deposition. E. was buried in a catacomb outside the city. His remains are said later to have been translated to the Stefania (the episcopal basilica preceding today's cathedral). The late ninth- to eleventh-century _Libellus de miraculis S. Ephebi_ (BHL 2705) relates three stories about E.'s post-mortem tutelary presence at a church in his honor outside the walls, presumably located above E.'s catacomb. The first of these, which is prosimetric (in prose with embedded verse), relates how E. blinded members of a Muslim raiding party in order to protect both his church and a priest who was saying mass within it. Upon the leaving the church the priest passed safely through the raiders, smiting a number of them dead with a mere touch of E.'s pastoral staff (which he had taken with him from the church) and causing the others to flee in terror at the sight of their falling comrades.
By the sixteenth century E. had become one of Naples' seven major patrons. In that century (but not earlier, as far as one can tell) relics said to be those of E. and of his two immediate successors, saints Fortunatus and Maximus, were said to repose beneath the extramural church of Sant'Eufebio (now S. Eframo Vecchio), located between today's Botanical Garden and the Tangenziale di Napoli (the A56). In 1589 a formal Invention of these remains was followed by their translation to the church's high altar, where they remain today. An adjacent catacomb was (re-)discovered in 1931 and promptly designated as the Catacomba di Sant'Eufebio.
2) Desiderius of Langres (d. prob. ca. 356). D. (in French, Didier), bishop of what is now Langres (Haute-Marne), is named by St. Athanasius of Alexandria as one of the subscribers to the Acts of the Council of Serdica/Sardica (343). He is said to have been his city's third bishop. According to his early seventh-century Passio (BHL 2145) by Warnaharius of Langres, when his city was attacked by Germanic marauders (W. calls them Vandals), D. left the safety of the walls to admonish the enemy to desist lest divine punishment be visited upon them. Captured and brought before the barbarian chief, he offered his life in return for sparing the city. In W.'s account, the enemy leader had D. decapitated and then took Langres, sacked it, and slew all its Christians.
In the earliest witness of the probably early seventh-century (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology D. is entered under 11. February. Ninth-century and later versions enter him under today, as does also Usuard. Legend made D. both a cephalophore and a native of a small town near Genoa, in whose former republic he has been widely celebrated from at least the eleventh century onwards.
Here are two views of the chapelle St-Didier at Langres' now deconsecrated, originally twelfth-century church of St-Didier:
http://tinyurl.com/2qvhvn
http://tinyurl.com/33tqbq
The building houses the extensive antiquities collection of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Langres.
The originally twelfth-/thirteenth-century church of Autrey lès Gray (Haute-Saône)
http://la-haute-saone.com/images/eglise_autrey-1427.jpg
preserves this fifteenth-century polychrome statue of D. (the village's patron saint):
http://la-haute-saone.com/images/st_didier_autrey-ebde.jpg
3a) Spes and 3b) Eutychius of Nursia/Norcia (d. earlier 6th cent.). S. (formerly in the RM on 28. March) and E. are saints of Gregory the Great's _Dialogues_. Both were heads of small monasteries near Nursia (today's Norcia in Umbria). S. endured blindness cheerfully for forty years; on his death, his soul was seen to depart in the form of a dove. E. and his friend Florentius were a pair of monks who shared an oratory. E. was an extrovert who by his exhortations converted many souls to God and who was called to direct a nearby monastery. The introverted F. remained behind. Some of E.'s monks killed a tame bear who was F.'s servant and faithful companion. E. could not console his friend, who called down divine vengeance upon the evil-doers and then regretted this for the remainder of his life.
By the early tenth century there was a monastery some eighteen kilometers distant from Nursia/Norcia that was named for E. Today's Abbazia di Sant'Eutizio (situated in the Val Castoriana near Preci), it flourished from the tenth century into the thirteenth and considered itself -- as it does today -- to be both the institution founded by St. Spes and the one directed by E. in the story summarized above. It has what are said to be the remains of both saints, housed in a splendid Renaissance tomb (1514); these relics were officially recognized in 1594. Many of the products of the abbey's scriptorium were given to St. Philip Neri and are now in Rome's Biblioteca Vallicelliana, though the one containing the miniature shown here is at Montecassino (cod. 117):
http://tinyurl.com/chgrg
Some views of E.'s abbey:
http://www.bellaumbria.net/Preci/abbazia_preci.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/cxwsw
http://tinyurl.com/d83rl
http://tinyurl.com/d9fw3
And a four-page Italian-language account accompanied by most of the views cited above is here:
http://tinyurl.com/75hya
4) Honoratus of Subiaco (d. late 6th cent.). St. Gregory the Great (_Dial._ 2, prol. and ch. 15) names H. as one of his oral sources for the life of St. Benedict of Nursia and Montecassino and says in the first of those passages that O. is now (i.e. early 590s) the head of the monastic cell where Benedict previously had lived. It's assumed that Subiaco is meant and the general consensus now is that of the several monasteries there the one in question is that dedicated by Benedict to St. Clement and later was re-dedicated to Sts. Cosmas and Damian (the site is now occupied by the monastery of Santa Scholastica). Tradition at Subiaco at least as old as the eleventh century made H. the recipient of rich gifts from pope St. Gregory and the builder of the church of St. Cosmas and Damian. H. has been one of Subiaco's local saints since at least the early twelfth century.
5) Desiderius of Vienne (d. 608). One of the correspondents of St. Gregory the Great, this 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.
Best,
John Dillon
(Ephebus, Desiderius of Langres, abbots Spes and Eutychius, and Desiderius of Vienne lightly revised from last year's post)
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