medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. July) is the feast day of:
1) Martyrs of Scili (d. 180). This is a group of seven men and five women tried and executed at Carthage under the emperor Commodus. Their brief Acta, consisting almost entirely of an abstract -- sometimes erroneously characterized as a transcript -- of a hearing before a magistrate, survive in various versions in Latin and Greek. Progressive corruption of the Acta's proper names produced the gemination of the letter 'l' in the adjectival form of these saints' place of apprehension or prior incarceration (Scili in Africa Proconsularis), whence they came to be known in the Early Modern period as the _martyres Scillitani_ and are still widely referred to today -- despite abundant evidence that the second 'l' is incorrect -- as the "Scillitan martyrs".
Today is the date given in the Acta as that of the aforementioned hearing. It is also the day on which the _sancti Scilitani_ are commemorated in the early sixth-century Calendar of Carthage.
What appears to be a copy of J. Armitage Robinson's edition of the earliest version Latin text of these martyrs' Acta is here:
http://members.aol.com/txt34567/passio.htm
Links to three electronic presentations of Robinson's translation of these Acta into English will be found on this page (where, though, Robinson is not credited; for that one has to go to the several electronic presentations):
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/scillitan.html
2) Justa and Rufina (d. later 2d cent. or early 3d cent. ?). J. and R. are virgin martyrs of Seville. According to their legendary Passio (BHL 4566, etc.), they were daughters of a maker of ceramics. During a festival they refused to sell items for use in pagan rituals. Enraged would-be clients trashed their stock in trade. When the image of the Syrian deity Salambo was carried past them, J. and R. pulled down and destroyed this cult figure. They were promptly arrested, found guilty of sacrilege, and executed. In some early versions, J. is male (Justus). Today is J. and R.'s feast day in the Mozarabic rite. Ado, followed by Usuard, places it on 19. July.
The thirteenth-century Christian conqueror of Andalusia, Ferdinand III of Castile and Léon (d. 1252) erected a church to J. and R. in Seville over what was said to have been their place of execution. Their cult spread widely across Iberia in the later Middle Ages. Herewith some pages with views and, in some cases, brief accounts of churches dedicated to them at Orihuela (Alicante):
http://www.dip-alicante.es/orihuela/a014_003.htm
http://www.arteguias.com/alicante/orihuela.htm
http://www.enorihuela.com/monumentos.html
http://tinyurl.com/2c5axt
and at Maluenda (Zaragoza), a fortified church:
http://tinyurl.com/2rugc3
http://www.inicia.es/de/maluenda/justa1.jpg
http://www.inicia.es/de/maluenda/justa2.jpg
3) Marcellina (d. ca. 398). M. was the older sister of Sts. Ambrose of Milan and Satyrus of Milan; we know about her from A.'s writings and from a late antique panegyric on her (BHL 5233). After the death of her father M. decided to live as a bride of Christ and in the early 350s took the veil from pope Liberius at St. Peter's on the Vatican. She seems to have spent most of the remainder of her life in Rome, making occasional visits to Milan. Ambrose dedicated his _De virginibus_ to her. M. was buried in the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan. Her feast on this day is first recorded in an eleventh-century Ambrosian calendar. M.'s relics, rediscovered in Sant'Ambrogio's crypt in 1722, are now kept in the nave in an originally fifteenth-century chapel (rebuilt in the early nineteenth century) dedicated to her:
http://tinyurl.com/5kqe89
4) Ennodius (d. 521). The literary and ecclesiastical writer and church diplomat Magnus Felix Ennodius became bishop of his native Pavia in 513. His metrical epitaph survives in that city's Basilica di San Michele. A text of it is here:
http://www.sanmichele-pavia.it/html/ita_9.htm
Christian Rohr (Institut für Geschichte, Universität Salzburg) maintains a website devoted to E. in English-, French-, German-, and Italian-language versions, at:
http://www.sbg.ac.at/ges/people/rohr/ennodius/ennodste.htm
5) Kenelm (Cynehelm; d. early 9th cent., supposedly). The boy saint of the Cotswolds, K. is legendarily the son of a king of Mercia whom he is said to have succeeded at the ripe of age of seven only to be slain shortly afterwards at the instigation of his sister. He has a cult dating from at least the early eleventh century and an eleventh-century Passio in several versions (BHL 4641m, etc.) that has him secretly buried in the Clent Hills of Worcestershire, miraculously discovered with the aid of the pope and of the archbishop of Canterbury, and then translated on a 17. July to Winchcombe Abbey where until the Dissolution he was venerated as a martyr.
Herewith views of two late medieval churches dedicated to K.:
Clifton-upon-Teme (Worcs):
http://www.clifton-upon-teme.co.uk/church.html
http://www.communigate.co.uk/worcs/stkenelm/
Minster Lovell (Oxon):
http://tinyurl.com/3aynnu
6) Leo IV, pope (d. 855). A native of Rome whose father bore a Lombard name, L. became pope in 847 without prior imperial approval and without imperial opposition. He did much to restore the church's treasure after the Muslim sack of the Eternal City in 846 as well as to prepare for future assaults by fortifying the Vatican _borgo_ (the Leonine Wall is named for him) and by securing promises of aid from the maritime states of Amalfi, Naples, and Gaeta. In 849 the latter's combined naval squadrons together with vessels from the papal ports, all previously blessed by L. and operating under the command of Caesarius the brother of St. Athanasius of Naples, were victorious over a flotilla of Muslim raiders off Ostia.
L. is famously depicted in the Vatican's Stanze di Rafaele both at the scene of this battle and suppressing by means of a benediction a fire that had broken out in the _borgo_ (paintings by assistants of R., 1514-17).
Fire in the Borgo (attributed to Giulio Romano):
http://tinyurl.com/39y6u9
Battle of Ostia:
http://tinyurl.com/ynubeb
L. was an active administrator of the church both in Italy and abroad. He was buried in St. Peter's. Here's his signature ('Bene valete') on a charter of 849 (Rome, BAV, Papiro lat. 1):
http://tinyurl.com/2v22g5
7) Jadwiga (Hedwig) of Poland, d. 1399. J. (also J. of Anjou, her dynastic name) was the youngest daughter of Louis I of Hungary and of his wife, Elizabeth of Poland, sister of the king of Poland, Casimir III the Great. She succeeded in 1382 to the throne of Poland in place of her elder sister Mary, who because of her marriage to Sigismund of Luxemburg was unacceptable to many Polish nobles. In 1385 J. was married to the Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila, who accepted Christianity and who became king of Poland under the name Władysław. Queen J. was very pious, sponsored important cultural institutions (including the academy in Kraków that became today's Jagiellonian University), and was venerated as a saint shortly after her death. She was canonized in 1997.
Best,
John Dillon
(Martyrs of Scili, Justa and Rufina, Ennodius, Kenelm, Leo IV, and Jadwiga reprised with minor changes from last year's post)
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