medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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

1)  John and Paul (?).  J. and P. are martyrs of the Caelian Hill in Rome, where a paleochristian church in their memory was succeeded in the early twelfth century by today's Santi Giovanni e Paolo.  They have a legendary Passio that exists both as part of that of St. Gallicanus and as an independent narrative (BHL 3236-2237b and 3238-3242e, respectively).  This makes them first household officials of Constantine's daughter Constantina, then military officers under Gallicanus, and finally private citizens living in retirement who are martyred under the emperor Julian (for Western saints, at least, this last is a good indication that the account is fictional) and buried in their house in an attempt to keep the deed secret.

Excavations under the the present basilica in the twentieth century revealed 1) fragments of an inscription, similar to those put up by pope St. Damasus, that almost certainly honored J. and P. and 2) a chamber, dated to the fourth century, frescoed with scenes of martyrdom and containing a trench divided into two parts.  The presumption is that this area functioned as a confessio and that the trench had served, or at least was shown as, the martyrs' original burial site.

J. and P. are in the Roman and the Ambrosian Canons of the Mass.  They are entered for today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology and in the early medieval Roman sacramentaries.

An Italian-language account, without illustrations, on medieval aspects of Rome's Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo is here (scroll down to "Ss. Giovanni e Paolo" or use the menu at left):
http://tinyurl.com/3dx28v
And a companion account of the basilica's twelfth-/thirteenth-century belltower is here (scroll down to "Ss. Giovanni e Paolo" or use menu at left):
http://tinyurl.com/3st9nw
A couple of English-language pages on this church:
http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi53.htm
http://tinyurl.com/2e74ey
Some expandable views are here:
http://tinyurl.com/ow9fy

Two of those expandable views are of frescoes in the remains of ancient Roman houses underneath the basilica.  A brief discussion of that site is here:
http://www.caseromane.it/en/history.html
and a few more illustrations of the frescoes, including a medieval one of the crucified Christ, is here:
http://www.caseromane.it/en/pic.html

Rome's basilica of J. and P. is a basilica architecturally as well as ecclesiastically.  Venice's (San Zanipolo to the locals) is only the latter.  The medieval city's Dominican church, in its present form it is of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  An English-language account with expandable views (and with a plan that one can click on to see, inter alia, smallish views of funerary monuments of medieval doges) is here:
http://www.savevenice.org/site/pp.asp?c=9eIHKWMHF&b=67636
Other illustrated, English-language accounts:
http://www.answers.com/topic/basilica-di-san-zanipolo
http://www.wga.hu/database/churches/zanipolo.html

This church's south transept has a noteworthy late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century glass window (colored glass and grisaille).  A brief, English-language account is here:
http://www.veniceinperil.org/projects/pastprojects/giovannipaolo.htm
An overview is here:
http://www.icvbc.cnr.it/bivi/schede/veneto/venezia/1zanipolo1.htm
And a detailed, Italian-language account with hotlinks to some detail views is here:
http://www.icvbc.cnr.it/bivi/schede/veneto/venezia/1zanipolo.htm


2)  Vigilius of Trent (d. 400).  V. was the bishop of Trent who in two surviving letters reported the late fourth-century martyrdom of Sts. Sisinnius, Martyrius, and Alexander (the Martyrs of the Val di Non) to the bishops of Milan and of Constantinople (Sts. Simplician and John Chrysostom, respectively).  He has a legendary Passio (BHL no. 8602), whose basic text seems to have been written at some point during the seventh, eighth, or ninth century and which served as the base for his elogium in the mid-ninth-century matryrology of Florus of Lyon.  Evidence that V. really was a martyr and reasons for even supposing it likely that he was are nonexistent.

Trent's thirteenth-/fourteenth-century cathedral is dedicated to V.  A brief, English-language account is here:
http://floc99.itc.it/turism/trento/duomo.htm
An Italian-language account:
http://www.arcidiocesi.trento.it/giubileo/giub_cattedrale.htm
Another (click on red words and on green for pop-ups):
http://www.arcidiocesi.trento.it/arte/trento_fr_piazza_duomo.htm#inizio_pagina
The Italia nell'Arte Medievale pages:
http://tinyurl.com/3psesq
http://tinyurl.com/4bd98f
Various views:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Trento_Duomo.jpg
http://www.girovagandointrentino.it/puntate/2003/estate/trento/trento.htm
(scroll about a quarter of the way down the page)


3)  Deodatus of Nola (d. 5th or 6th cent.).  Today's less well known saint of the Regno, also known as Adeodatus, was once thought on the basis of his brief Vita (BHL no. 2135) to have succeeded St. Paulinus (d. 431) as bishop of Nola and to have died in 473.  But it is now believed at Nola that Paulinus' immediate successor was a younger relative also named Paulinus.  And 1974 it was shown that the bishop of Nola from 442 to 480 was one Aurelian, whose funerary inscription (_CIL_ X, 1366) had previously been misread as furnishing a sixth- or seventh-century date.  D.'s sarcophagus, carved out of a single block of marble, survives at Cimitile (the site of Paulinus' basilica honoring St. Felix); this gives him the title of archpriest.

The diocese of Nola no longer considers D. to have been one of its bishops.  The RM, its editors perhaps unpersuaded of the episcopacy of the younger Paulinus, still treats D. as Paulinus' immediate successor in the see of Nola. 


4)  Pelagius of Córdoba (d. 945).  According to his tenth-century Passio of Iberian origin (BHL 6617), P. (Pelayo, Paio, Pelaio) was the sister's son of Hermoigius, (arch)bishop of Tuy.  The latter, captured in battle by forces of the Muslim king Habdarraman (the caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III), left the approximately ten-year-old P. as a hostage, hoping to redeem him later.  P., held as a prisoner at Córdoba, was according to fellow prisoners a model young man who retained his Christian faith.  When P. reached the age of thirteen and a half, the king, contrasting the delights of the court to P.'s confinement, attempted to seduce him into apostasy and, it is suggested, into a sexual relationship as well.  P.'s refusal earned him torture and a grisly execution: he was gradually dismembered by sword strokes.  His body was thrown into a river whence it was later recovered by Christians.  Thus far the Vita.

P.'s cult seems to have been almost immediate.  His putative relics were in León by 967; later they were translated to Oviedo.  P.'s legend spread well beyond Spain.  The tenth-century poet Hrotswitha of Gandersheim's wrote a verse Passio of P. (BHL 6618).  

The colegiata de San Isidoro at León still has an eleventh-century reliquary created to house relics of P. and of St. John the Baptist:
http://tinyurl.com/5fhlzg
Along with St. Isidore, P. (at right) is one of the flanking figures on that church's twelfth-century portada del Cordero:
http://tinyurl.com/6gs4as
Click on P.'s outline here for better views:
http://www.sanisidoro.de/englisch/cordero/index.html

Some views of the ermita de San Pelayo at Perazancas de Ojeda (Palencia), consecrated in 1076:
http://geo.ya.com/froilan1958/PueblosBoedoPerazancas.html
http://tinyurl.com/6owelr

Some views of the rupestrian ermita de San Pelayo at Villacibio (Palencia), documented from 1155:
http://tinyurl.com/6rlhot
http://www.valentinv.com/romanico/Sampelayoermita.jpg
http://www.valentinv.com/romanico/Sampelayoermita1.jpg

Two illustrated, Spanish-langauge pages on the later twelfth-century church of San Pelayo at Diomondi (Galicia):
http://www.arquivoltas.com/11-Galicia/01-Diomondi.htm
http://www.arteguias.com/monasterio/sanpelayodiomondi.htm

Views of the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century ermita de San Pelayo at Bakio (Vizcaya):
http://tinyurl.com/4633mm
http://tinyurl.com/3log5n

Views of the tower and other remains of the fourteenth-/fifteenth-century church of San Pelayo at Villavicencio De Los Caballero (Valladolid):
http://tinyurl.com/5oasyo
http://tinyurl.com/6kkcek
http://tinyurl.com/3l9gzp

Exterior views of the fifteenth century church of San Pelayo at Olivares de Duero (Valladolid):
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6604202
http://tinyurl.com/5w6nn3

Interior views of the sixteenth-century church of San Pelayo martir at Baños de Rio Tobía (La Rioja):
http://tinyurl.com/46or6p
http://tinyurl.com/52ljb2
http://tinyurl.com/4wx7f2


5)  Anthelme of Belley (d. 1178).  The Savoyard A. (also A. of Chignin) was a priest at today's Belley (Ain) who at the age of thirty became a Carthusian at the order's house at Portes-en-Bugey.  Two years later, in 1139, he was named prior of the then dilapidated Grande Chartreuse.  He made remarkable progress over the next twelve years both in improving conditions at this house and in elevating the order's profile more generally.  In 1152 A. resigned his office to become a hermit.  Two years later he was recalled to active service and was briefly prior at Portes-en-Bugey.

In 1163 Alexander III made A. bishop of Belley.  A few years later A. excommunicated the count of Maurienne who had imprisoned one of his priests and had another who was attempting free the first put to death.  When Alexander annulled the excommunication A. resigned his office and retired to the Grande Chartreuse until persuaded by the pope to stay on.  Only when A. was _in articulo mortis_ did the repentant count seek his forgiveness.  A.'s contemporary Vita (BHL 560) adds that he was good to the lepers of Belley and to its poor.  His relics are in Belley's ex-cathedral of St-Jean-Baptiste.

Best,
John Dillon
(John and Paul, Vigilius of Trent, Deodatus of Nola, and Anthelme of Belley revised from older posts)

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