medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (24. May) is the feast day of:
1) Manahen (d. 1st cent.) M. (also Manaen), foster brother of Herod the tetrarch (H. Antipas), is named in Acts 13:1 as an associate of Sts. Barnabas and Paul at Antioch. He enters the martyrologies with Ado and Usuard, who in the identical _laterculus_ maintain that he finished his days in that city. The basis, if any, for that assertion is unknown.
2) Donatian and Rogatian (d. 3d or early 4th cent.). D. and R. are martyrs of today's Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). According to their fifth(?)-century Passio (BHL 2275), they were young brothers. In French they are the _enfants nantais_. D. had been baptized and was preaching the Christian faith when he came to the attention of the authorities during a persecution and was jailed. The unbaptized R. was quickly apprehended and ordered to sacrifice to the idols. When he refused, he too was jailed. Both underwent torture before being executed. After the promulgation of the edict of Milan their bodies were placed in a little martyrium. They are Nantes' patron saints.
D. and R. are entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology. Their cult seems to have been continuous at Nantes. It spread widely in Brittany and elsewhere in West France.
A not very good view of the originally twelfth-century église St-Donatien et St-Rogatien at Tancrou-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne):
http://ns3850.ovh.net/cpa77/Moyen/C460N32.jpg
The baptistère Saint-Jean at Le Puy-en-Velay is said to preserve on its north wall a thirteenth-century mural painting of D. and R. confessing their faith. I could find no images of that on the Web. But the site is well visited, so perhaps some subscriber to the list has one to share. For the painting's existence, see this notice from Patrimoine de France:
http://tinyurl.com/5nwffu
These two interior views of the baptistery aren't very promising (the second one shows work perhaps connected with the dig that's going on in there now):
http://tinyurl.com/6lqcbc
http://tinyurl.com/5j6ved
Nor are these views from the Structurae site:
http://tinyurl.com/6fv28q
Nantes' present cathédrale St-Pierre et St-Paul was begun in the fifteenth century and completed in the nineteenth. The lower portions of the west front were the first to be built (the cathedral replaced an eleventh-/twelfth-century predecessor and incorporated the latter's crypt). The west front has five portals: the three clearly visible here
http://tinyurl.com/5lq8o4
plus one each on the south side of the south tower and on the north side of the north tower. The latter is known as the porte St Donatien et St Rogatien; its sculptures, now dated to 1455-1465, include these statues of D.:
http://tinyurl.com/6gxdc9
and of R.:
http://tinyurl.com/56q4sj
NB: This is the corner of the cathedral that's now being "restored" (i.e., cleaned).
While we're here, a page of view of the cathedral's crypts:
http://nantescathedrale.free.fr/crypte.htm
and another with a somewhat different view of the eleventh-century crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/6fo9fj
More views of the cathedral:
http://tinyurl.com/6y9seu
http://tinyurl.com/5n84fy
The Musée Dobrée at Nantes preserves this late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century carved corner post with statues of D. and R.:
http://www.culture.cg44.fr/Musee_en/collections/look/corner.html
http://tinyurl.com/247yaa
Today's basilique St-Donatien at Nantes is a nineteenth-century rebuilding of what had originally been a late fifteenth-century church. A view of the martyrs' resting place in its crypt is here:
http://tinyurl.com/34a3nn
3) Zoellus, Servulus, Felix, Silvanus, and Diocles (d. 283, supposedly). Z., S. (also Servilius), and the others are martyrs of Syria entered under this day in the Syriac Martyrology and who thanks to a false reading in the Epternach family of the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology were entered by Ado and by Usuard, also for today, in their martyrologies as martyrs of Istria. Since at least the late eleventh century S. has been celebrated on this day at Trieste, where he and St. Justus flank Christ in the mosaic in the right apse of the cathedral of San Giusto
http://tinyurl.com/yovuqz
and where he has a Passio (BHL 7642) whose earliest witness is of the later twelfth century.
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale's page on Trieste's San Giusto is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yptush
That page's early thirteenth-century date for the mosaic in question is standard but has been challenged by Mara Mason in a recent dissertation at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice, who places it in the late eleventh century.
4) Thirty-eight Martyrs of Philipopolis (d. 304, supposedly). The very little we know about this group of martyrs of Thrace comes from the Synaxary of Constantinople, from other synaxaries, and from a brief Martyrion of Sts. Severus and Memnon (BHG 2399). Nine of the thirty-eight are said to have come from Byzantium; the remainder are said to have been of Philipopolis (today's Plovdiv). We have their names, the name of the Roman proconsul under whom they are said to have suffered, their place of martyrdom. and -- if their connection with Severus and Memnon is historically accurate -- dubious testimony to their having been victims of the Great Persecution at its outset.
Herewith some views of the second-century Roman theatre at Plovdiv (the largest Roman building in today's Bulgaria), including its reconstructed _scaenae frons_:
http://tinyurl.com/5pshve
http://static.flickr.com/121/294929663_b2d1adbbff.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/6h29pt
http://tinyurl.com/5nalm7
http://static.flickr.com/105/295417120_129a016470.jpg
5) Vincent of Lérins (d. between 434 and 450). The theologian V., author of the _Commonitorium_ ('Remembrancer'), an anti-Augustinian treatise on distinguishing heresy from true doctrine, was buried at his abbey in the isles of Lérins (in today's Alpes-Maritimes). Although his grave was revered, he appears not to have had a medieval cult. Cardinal Baronio entered V. in the RM. His liturgical celebration at Lérins dates from the very end of the sixteenth century.
6) Simeon the Younger (d. late 6th or early 7th cent.). Like his fifth-century namesake, S. was a stylite. He spent most of his life in self-denial atop one pillar after another. The last, on a mountain near Antioch on the Orontes, became the site of a monastery named for him. He has an interesting Bios (BHG 1689), edited by P. Van den Ven as _La vie ancienne de S. Syméon Stylite le jeune (521–92)_, Subsidia Hagiographica, 32 (Bruxelles, 1962–70).
Best,
John Dillon
(Manahen, Donatian and Rogatian, Zoellus, Servulus, Felix, Silvanus, and Diocles, Vincent of Lérins, and Simeon the Younger lightly revised from last year's post)
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