medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (16. June) is the feast day of:
1) Ferreolus and Ferrutius (d. 211 or 212, supposedly). F. and F. (in French, Ferréol et Ferjeux/Fargeau), priest and deacon, are the legendary apostles of Besançon. According to their Passio (BHL 2903, etc.) they were Greek-speakers from somewhere in the East who had studied at Athens and who had been converted to Christianity by St. Polycarp of Smyrna. Having transferred to Lyon, they were sent out as missionaries by St. Irenaeus of that city and spent thirty years evangelizing in Besançon and vicinity until they were martyred by a prefect of Gallia Sequana unhappy over their conversion of his wife. During their torture F. and F. continued to pray audibly after their tongues had been cut out.
The cult of F. and F. is widely disseminated in the Franche-Comté. It was already well established by 556, when St. Germanus of Paris is said to have erected in his church there an altar in their honor. Their legend was known to Gregory of Tours as was also a reported Inventio of their remains at Besançon and the presence in that city of a church dedicated to them. Here they are as depicted in a breviary for the Use of Paris of 1414 (Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 193v):
http://tinyurl.com/6e8888
2) Quiricus and Julitta (d. ca. 304, supposedly). We know nothing about the historical Q. (also Cyricus, Cyriacus, Cyr, Kirik, etc.) and J. (also Julietta, Julita, etc.), whose cult was already widespread in late antiquity and whose church in Rome, since rebuilt, goes back to the sixth century. They are the subject of legendary Acta in Latin (BHL 1801-1814), in Greek, and in Coptic, declared spurious in the so-called _Decretum Gelasianum_ of the early sixth century. These accounts make them Christians of Iconium martyred at Tarsus, with Q. a child or a youth slain in front of J., his mother, who is then tortured and put to death in her turn. In the versions most widely disseminated, Q. is a toddler who proclaims that he too is Christian, who physically attacks the official, and who, thrown down by the latter from his tribune, fatally smashes his head on the tribune's steps.
In the East Q. and J. are traditionally celebrated, in Catholic churches as well as in Orthodox ones, on 15. July. That is also where they appear on the early ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples with its admixture of "eastern" and of "western" feasts.
Black-and-white views of Q. (second from right) and J. (second from left) in the eighth-century frescoes of Rome's Santa Maria Antiqua occur on this page, along with a detail of Q.:
http://tinyurl.com/23o7pl
Here they at the King's Church at Gračanica (in, depending on your view of recent events, the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's Kosovo province) in the early fourteenth-century frescoes of the large north wall, with C. depicted as a young man rather than as a boy:
J. (in the fresco, Ioulita):
http://tinyurl.com/3a3n6r
C. (misidentified in the accompanying text -- but not in the painting itself -- as Cyril):
http://tinyurl.com/2u9ket
Here's J. at right in Simone Martini's and Lippo Memmi's Annunciation Altarpiece (betw. 1229 and 1331), now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence:
http://www.wga.hu/art/s/simone/6annunci/ann_2st.jpg
In the same gallery is this painting by Verrocchio (Andrea di Cione, 1435-88) of the Baptism of Christ with J. and Q. at left:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Julitta.jpg
Here's their martyrdom in a fourteenth-century French ms. (Paris, BN, ms. Français 185, fol. 233v):
http://saints.bestlatin.net/images/gallery/julitta_bnfms.jpg
And here's their Passio as depicted in a set of predella panels by Borghese di Piero (1427-63), now in the Courtauld Gallery in London:
http://tinyurl.com/42ufhg
The cathedral of St-Cyr-et-Ste-Julitte at Nevers (Nièvre) is dedicated to C. and J. and claims to have their relics. Herewith a few views:
http://home.eckerd.edu/~oberhot/im-nevers2.jpg
http://www.pillien.org/Photos/Nevers/Nevers03.html
http://tinyurl.com/26vqhw
http://tinyurl.com/yr4nqy
http://tinyurl.com/55o9ub
Views, etc. of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta in San Quirico d’Orcia (SI) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/46fqej
http://tinyurl.com/4jmlf3
http://tinyurl.com/48dkof
http://tinyurl.com/3rvbcw
http://tinyurl.com/59rwzp
Views of the fifteenth-century church of St Cyr and St Julitta in Newton St Cyres (Devon), restored 1914-21. The text in the first of these has been misapplied from a description of St Cyriac and St Julitta in Swaffham Prior (Cambs):
sxterior:
http://tinyurl.com/6g4qjd
http://tinyurl.com/4uwf6t
http://tinyurl.com/657oqg
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/164723
interior:
http://tinyurl.com/4dbg8w
http://www.wissensdrang.com/stabb/stabb168a.jpg
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Devon/NewtonStCyres.html
And here's a page on C.'s and J.'s church in Swaffham Prior, with an expandable view of its fifteenth-century tower terminating in a polygonal lantern:
http://www.druidic.org/camchurch/churches/swaffhampriorcyr.htm
Lastly, some expandable views of the very largely fifteenth-century church of St Cyriacus and St Julitta at Luxulyan in Bodmin (Cornwall) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/3fcn8n
3) Aureus, Justina, and companions (d. 415, perhaps). A., J., etc. are martyrs of Mainz, said to have been killed by invading Huns. According to Rabanus Maurus, A. was the city's bishop and J. was his sister. Their relics, said to have been rediscovered in the eighth century, were venerated at Mainz' church of St. Alban (A. of Mainz, of course). These saints have a Passio (BHL 823-24), a Miracle collection (BHL 825) by the eleventh-century Goswin of Mainz, and a thirteenth(?)-century Passio, Inventio, et Translatio (826).
4) Ceccardus of Luni (?). C. (also Cechardus) is the patron saint of Carrara (MS) in Tuscany, for whose marble works -- much older than the town itself -- Luna (now Luni) was anciently the port. Our earliest source for him is an inscription on the Renaissance altar in Carrara's cathedral containing his remains; this calls him a bishop of Luni and martyr and dates his death to the year 600. As we know that in 600 the bishop of Luna was someone named Venantius and as Ceccardus is a Lombard name, unlikely in a bishop of a town that then was still East Roman, the date on the inscription is erroneous. Though the altar may have replaced some earlier inscription, there is no proof of that.
Possibly earlier was the now lost Office for C. at Carrara, from which the early seventeenth-century hagiographer Filippo Ferrari deduced that this saint has been martyred by locals whom he had reprimanded for their immorality. Papebroch, unable to find Ferrari's source, thought C. more likely to be the bishop reported to have been slain in the destructive ninth-century raid by Norsemen, now dated to ca. 860, when Luna had dwindled to being only a very small town. C. is said to have been canonized ca. 1630 by a decree of Urban VIII.
5) Palerius of Telese (?). Today's less well known saint of the Regno is a supposed bishop of today's Telese (BV) in one part of Campania venerated medievally only at today's San Martino Valle Caudina (AV) in another part of the same Italian region.
We have no attested names for any of Telese's bishops between 601 and 1068. Our very limited evidence for P.'s actual human existence comes from one of two twelfth-century inscriptions reportedly discovered in 1712 in the ruins of San Martino's earthquake-destroyed (and previously abandoned) church of San Palerio. According to these texts, this was the resting place of the bodies of the holy Palerius bishop of Telese and of his colleague, the deacon Equitius, revealed by P. (in a vision, presumably) in 1164 to a notary named Marandus, who then built on his property a rural church honoring them and who in 1167 got the bishop of Avellino to consecrate the church and to grant a forty days' indulgence to those who visited it on the anniversary of this consecration.
Human remains presumed from their location to be of those the two saints were also discovered on the site and were soon pronounced authentic by a synod of the diocese of Benevento presided over by a cardinal who later became pope Benedict XIII. In 1795 their cult was confirmed for the dioceses of Benevento and of Telese-Cerreto, with P.'s feast fixed for today (the anniversary of the inventio of 1712) and E.'s for 18. June. P. and E. have never graced the pages of the RM. In 2000 the archbishop of Amalfi - Cava de' Tirreni dedicated a chapel to them in their present church at San Martino Valle Caudina (there's another in the town's principal church of San Giovanni Battista).
6) Benno of Meißen (d. 1106). The Hildesheim-educated Benno was ordained priest at the ago of thirty. A scion of the Saxon nobility, he became a canon at Goslar and, in 1066, bishop of Meißen. His refusal to join Henry IV's war against the Saxons together with his support for the pope in the Investiture Conflict caused his imprisonment for a year starting in 1075. Ten years later Henry ousted Benno from his see altogether, installing a replacement of his own choosing. B., who spent his exile evangelizing among the Wends, returned unopposed in 1088. In 1097 he again supported the pope of the Reform party (Urban II).
Meißen's present cathedral was begun between 1240 and 1260. In about 1270 B. was translated to an ornate sepulchre there (destroyed in 1539):
http://tinyurl.com/22mdnk
Miracles at B.'s tomb were reported starting in 1285. He was canonized in 1523. B.'s relics are said to have survived the events of 1539, to have been transported later in the same century to Munich, and to have reposed there since 1580 in the Frauenkirche. The cathedral of Dresden has what is called his mitre:
http://www.bistum-dresden-meissen.de/Detailed/1987.html
Some views of Meißen's ex-cathedral of St. John and St. Donatus:
Exterior:
http://tinyurl.com/2msydg
http://tinyurl.com/3ypv9d
Exterior in 1921:
http://tinyurl.com/yrmm64
Interior:
http://tinyurl.com/23l3ba
http://www.a-richter.de/bilder/foto/meissen2.jpg
7) Lutgardis (d. 1246). The Flemish mystic L. (also Liutgardis, Liutgarda), a native of Tongeren (Tongres) has an immediately posthumous Vita (BHL 4949v) and another, only slightly later, by the learned Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré (BHL 4950). She is said to have entered a Benedictine convent at perhaps the age of twelve and to have left it for the more austere Cistercian house at Aywieres, where despite her difficulties with the French language, she became famous as a visionary, healer, and spiritual advisor. For the last eleven years of her life she was blind.
Best,
John Dillon
(last year's post revised)
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